SACD Bad Company – Desolation Angels

Bad Company’s fifth album as a hybrid stereo SACD from the Atlantic 75 Series: Desolation Angels opens with the gold-selling single “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy”, and all ten songs play as one continuous sequence through to “She Brings Me Love”.

Time out before album number five

Bad Company had kept up a demanding pace since their 1974 debut: four albums in four years, plus touring. Before Desolation Angels, the band gave itself a longer break. The fifth studio album was recorded at Ridge Farm in August and September 1978 and released in 1979 – made in an English residential studio rather than squeezed into another turn of the recording-and-touring cycle.

Paul Rodgers, Mick Ralphs, Boz Burrell and Simon Kirke were still the original quartet. They produced the sessions themselves, with Tony Patrick as engineer. The instrumental credits show how much ground four musicians could cover: keyboards appear next to the familiar voice, guitars, bass and drums.

A title that had waited since Free

The title comes from Jack Kerouac’s 1965 novel Desolation Angels. Rodgers remembered considering it for Free’s second album about a decade earlier, so its eventual appearance on a Bad Company sleeve turns the name into a small thread between two bands and two chapters of his working life.

The album opens with “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy”, whose riff was sparked by a guitar synthesizer – an unfamiliar tool brought into the writing process. Listen to how the recurring figure relates to the vocal rather than expecting the instrument to define every song: the detail matters precisely because it shows experimentation inside an established group.

Four writers, one band

Rodgers is not the only songwriter here. Burrell wrote “Gone, Gone, Gone” and shares “Rhythm Machine” with Kirke, and Ralphs’ contributions include “Oh, Atlanta”. All four members helped shape the repertoire – another route into an album usually introduced through its opening song.

“Oh, Atlanta” later gained another chapter when Alison Krauss recorded it for her 1995 collection Now That I’ve Found You, a reminder of how a song can travel beyond the band that first recorded it. Here it remains part of a ten-song Bad Company programme, with the sleeve designed by Hipgnosis. Moving between the different writers’ songs shows both their individual choices and the continuity of the same four players.

The Atlantic 75 hybrid stereo SACD

CAPA 058 SA is a hybrid stereo SACD from the Analogue Productions Atlantic 75 Series. The original album appeared on Swan Song, distributed by Atlantic – which is why it belongs in this series. The SACD layer plays on SACD-capable players, the CD layer on any conventional CD player. The disc contains the ten songs of the original album.

You order from Michael 45 in Germany. We arrange the US import and ship from Hilden.

More from the series: Atlantic 75 Series

Also in another edition: Desolation Angels

More SACDs by Bad Company: Bad Company · Straight Shooter · Run With The Pack

Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe

Musicians

Documented selection of participating musicians. Personnel may vary by track; this list does not claim to be complete.