Song of the Day 6/30: Mott the Hoople, “Ready for Love”
Nobody ever had to tell Mick Ralphs “shut up and play your guitar.” The founding guitarist for Mott the Hoople and Bad Company, who died last week, always let his guitar do most of the talking. When he did speak up he made it clear he had little use for any part of the music business except the music.
He was the British blues rock equivalent of a Nashville cat – comfortable in a variety of styles, his playing tasteful rather than flashy, his ego in the back seat, or maybe staying back at the hotel. When an interviewer for a classic rock magazine asked him in 2016 where he’d rank himself as a guitarist on a scale of 1 to 10, Ralphs responded, “Minus 20. I never think about things like that. I like to be an all-round guitar player who can play rhythm and lead breaks. That’s because I’m a songwriter and songwriting is all about doing what the song dictates.”
The songs he wrote were like his guitar solos: Direct and punchy, never fancy. When “Can’t Get Enough” gave Bad Company a No. 5 hit as its debut single, he recalled, “A lot of people got really excited about it, but I couldn’t understand what they were all raving about. It was a three-chord bash. It was only when Paul put his vocal on it that turned it into something a bit special. Of course, when we had the big hit everyone said: ‘Write another one!’ I said: ‘Well, it’s really not that easy. What do I do, play it backwards?’”
Obviously, Ralphs lacked the ego to be a frontman, and he wasn’t a standout vocalist. He sang lead on a few Mott songs, including “Ready for Love,” which appeared on the band’s breakthrough “All the Young Dudes” LP in 1972.
Two years later the song appeared on Bad Company’s debut album, and Paul Rodgers illustrated Ralphs’ point about Paul Rodgers.
Ralphs came up at a time when guitarists particularly prized the tone they could coax from what today seems like primitive equipment. Influenced by Leslie West of Mountain, he likewise got his dirty tone from of a Les Paul Junior (he switched to the leaner sound of Fenders after he moved to Bad Company), and was similarly praised for it. Listen to him on “Rock and Roll Queen,” from Mott’s 1969 debut.
That’s the sort of band Mott the Hoople was before Bowie rescued their career by producing “All the Young Dudes” and making them unlikely avatars of the glam movement. Ralphs, naturally, disliked it because it detracted from the music, which was also trending away from his preferred blues (that’s him looking unglamorous on the far right of the album cover). It all came to a head during the studio sessions for their 1973 eponymous LP in an infamous argument between Ralphs and Ian Hunter, part of which made it to vinyl on “Violence” (it begins under the music at about 3:30 before breaking into the open 20 seconds later). Ralphs quit the band at that point, but agreed to stay on until they found a replacement.
Bad Company disbanded in the early ’80s, and though Ralphs joined their frequent reunions, he didn’t tour with them often outside Britain. He did play on the band’s final concert in London in October 2016. Days later he suffered a severe stroke that left him bedridden until his death.
