SACD Bad Company – Burnin’ Sky

Burnin’ Sky as a hybrid stereo SACD from the Atlantic 75 Series: Bad Company’s fourth studio album, recorded in the summer of 1976 at Château d’Hérouville in France. All twelve tracks play in one sequence – from the title song to the seven-minute-plus finale “Master Of Ceremony”.

A French château, a British rock band

In the summer of 1976, Bad Company travelled to Château d’Hérouville to make their fourth studio album. Released in 1977, Burnin’ Sky brings together Paul Rodgers’s vocals, Mick Ralphs’s guitar, Boz Burrell’s bass and Simon Kirke’s drums. The band produced the album themselves, with Chris Kimsey engineering – and at its heart stands a compact rock group building every song from voice, rhythm and guitar.

The title track opens the album and sets a clear point of reference. From there the sequence moves through shorter songs and the occasional detour towards the extended “Master Of Ceremony” – follow the whole route and you’ll find a broader range of forms than the band’s name alone might suggest.

Songs with a past

“Like Water” reaches back to Rodgers’s days before Bad Company: he had already recorded it with his short-lived group Peace. On Burnin’ Sky the song finds a new home in the band’s repertoire – a lovely example of how an album can gather material from different stages of a musician’s career.

The brief “Knapsack”, derived from “The Happy Wanderer”, is a playful surprise that interrupts the flow between the longer rock songs. Mick Ralphs contributes “Too Bad” and “Man Needs Woman”, Simon Kirke supplies “Peace Of Mind” – Rodgers writes much of the material, but the other writers get room to shape the album’s character too.

Between the vocal and the guitar

Listen to what Ralphs plays underneath a vocal line – and what he adds after it. In a group of this size, the way responsibilities are shared shapes every song directly: bass and drums keep the momentum going while voice and guitar set their accents in different places. You can move your attention between the individual parts and the whole arrangement without ever losing the thread.

At the end, “Master Of Ceremony” runs beyond seven minutes and widens the scale once more: after several compact songs, the band takes a longer stretch to develop the closing piece. A defined opening, songs with different histories and a substantial finale – and if you mostly know the early hits, this album opens up another part of the band’s repertoire.

The Atlantic 75 hybrid stereo SACD

CAPA 057 SA is a hybrid stereo SACD from the Analogue Productions Atlantic 75 Series. According to the publisher, the album reached No. 15 on the Billboard 200. The SACD layer plays on SACD-capable players, the CD layer on any conventional CD player. The disc contains the twelve tracks 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: Burnin’ Sky

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

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.