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Mick Ralphs, guitarist, singer, songwriter and founding member of classic British rock groups Bad Company and Mott the Hoople, has died.
A press release published on the official Bad Company website announced on Monday the death of Ralphs at 81 years old. Ralphs had a stroke a few days after what would be his last performance with the group at the London O2 Arena in 2016, and had been in bed since, according to the press release. No other details on the circumstances of his death have been provided.
Ralphs should become a member of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Bad Company in November.
“Our Mick has passed, my heart just touched the ground,” said the singer of the bad company Paul Rodgers in a press release. “He left us exceptional songs and memories. He was my friend, my writing partner of songs, an incredible and versatile guitarist who had the greatest sense of humor.”
Ralphs wrote the song of the 1970s “Ready for Love” for Mott the Hoople, later renovated for the first album of Bad Company in 1974, which also included the Hit of Ralphs-Penned “Can’t Get Enough”. He co-wrote the Bad Company classic in 1975 “Feel Like Makin ‘Love” with Rodgers.
Born in Stoke Lacy, Herefordshire, England, Ralphs began playing the Blues guitar in adolescence, and at the beginning of the twenty in 1966, he co -founded the Doc Thomas group. In 1969, the group would become Mott the Hoople, a name from the title and title of title of a novel by Willard Manus from 1966.
The group’s first eponymous album, recorded in a week, won a following cult, but the two that followed were critical and financial flops. They finally found popular success and became glam-rock giants with the 1972 song at David Bowie’s house “All the Young Dudes”. But Ralphs felt creatively in the group led by the singer-songwriter Ian Hunter and left in 1973.
He would soon form a bad company with Rodgers, a singer who had left his own group, Free.
The two intended to write songs together, and perhaps making a unique album as a project. But when the free drummer Simon Kirke asked to sit, they realized that they were already almost an appropriate group and went to get a bass player. They found it in the former member of King Crimson Boz Burrell.
“We did not really plan to have a group,” said Ralphs in a 2015 interview with Gibson Guitars. “It was a kind of accidental, I guess. Lucky, really.”
Kirke said in a statement on Monday that Ralphs was “a dear friend, a wonderful songwriter and an exceptional guitarist. We will miss it deeply”.
A bad business was an immediate success. His albums were full of radio hymns for radio, and her live sound was perfectly suited to the 1970s of Arena Rock.
Their first eponymous album went to the No. 1 of the Billboard album’s album. And “Can’t Get Enough” by Ralphs – often wrongly called “Can’t Got enough of your love” because of his choir words – would be their greatest successful single, culminating in n ° 5 of the Billboard Hot 100.
“We actually did it all in one time live,” said Ralphs in Gibson’s interview. “It was not perfect, but we just said:” Yes, it’s great, it will capture the moment. “This is what I like to do in recording.
The follow -up of Bad Company in 1975, “Straight Shooter”, was also a success, going to No. 3 on the albums’ list of albums in the Billboard Hot 100 in the list of American and British albums.
His opening piece, “Good Lovin ‘Gone Bad”, written by Ralphs, was a modest success, and the song that followed him, “Feel Like Makin’ Love”, was a big one that would remain in rotation on classic rock radio for decades.
The group’s declaration indicates that Ralphs is survived by “the love of his life”, his wife Susie Chavasse, as well as two children, three fine children and “comrades of beloved groups” Rodgers and Kirke.
“Our last conversation a few days ago, we shared a laugh,” said Rodgers. “But it will not be the last.”
