Bad Company

Bad Company didn't simply play blues rock — they roared, ripped, and stomped out sweat-soaked, testosterone-stoked eruptions of rock 'n' roll fever. Mick Ralphs' depth-charge guitar detonations and Paul Rodgers' hungry howl power the ultimate classic-rock love cry, "Feel Like Makin' Love." These British blues hounds pump a Chicago shuffle up into a raw, ravenous blast of can't-be-satisfied riff-rockin' mojo on "Can't Get Enough" — and we'll give you three guesses what they can't get enough of. And hard-rock road warriors become dusty, dangerous, six-gun-toting outlaws as the band makes its own myth with the slow-burning theme song "Bad Company."

In Next Steps, travel Bad Company's timeline from hard-rock roots to supergroup territory.

Bad Company's strategically aimed electric sledgehammer shattered preconceptions about blues and hard rock's boundaries into smithereens that lodged permanently in the ears of anyone who's ever listened to classic-rock radio for more than 30 seconds. But the band didn't emerge out of nowhere. Feral frontman Paul Rodgers started out with heavy-rock heroes Free, who carved a classic-rock milestone of their own with the atomic crunch and primal riffs of "All Right Now." It wasn't all hard charging and heavy breathing for Bad Co., though — check the moody, smoldering folk-rock of the slowly swaying "Seagull." And for a peek at what happens when two blues-rocking titans clash, put on your Hazmat suit for the penetrating power of "Radioactive" by the Firm, Rodgers' '80s project with Led Zep guitar god Jimmy Page.

In Deep Cuts, find out what keeps Paul Rodgers rough and ready when he's not surrounded by Bad Company.

Paul Rodgers just might be the owner of the quintessential rock 'n' roll voice, full of blood-pumping passion and biting, bluesy grit. So he wasn't about to put himself out to pasture after Bad Company disbanded. You can hear him reaching back to his Chicago blues roots when he brings his big, tough British Steel pipes to blues guitar god Buddy Guy's "Some Kind of Wonderful." Rodgers brings it back on home to his Brit-blues pal/Fleetwood Mac-founder Peter Green's Splinter Group in a low-key acoustic take on the timeless boogie "Sweet Home Chicago." And on his own, Rodgers funks things up fearlessly when "Overloaded" blends breakneck James Brown-with-a-jetpack grooves and pile-driver power chords.

If aliens landed on Earth with no idea what classic rock meant, world leaders might very well sit them down in a room with nothing but a boombox and a fistful of Bad Company albums. Paul Rodgers and Mick Ralphs wrote the book on larger-than-life British rock in the early '70s with Free and Mott the Hoople, respectively, but when they fused hard-rockin' riffs with the smokin' sounds of Chicago blues under the Bad Company banner, a new chapter was burned into the pages of rock history. Here's where you can run with the pack and soak up the whole story, from their platinum-plus radio regulars to their under-the-counter stash, with some extracurricular activities thrown in for good measure. Just make sure you're nowhere near anything breakable when you're overcome with the need to bang, stomp, and shout along.