Happy 40th: Bad Company, Run with the Pack

40 years ago this month, Bad Company released their third album, an effort which provided Paul Rodgers and company with their third consecutive album to land in the top five in both the US and the UK.

Recorded in France using the Rolling Stones’ Mobile Truck and mixed in Los Angeles, Run with the Pack found Bad Company maintaining their momentum and keeping their success on more or less the same level that it had been for the previous two albums, proving to be their third million-selling album. In addition, it provided the band with another top-20 hot on the Billboard Hot 100 – “Young Blood,” a cover of the classic Coasters song – as well as scoring a moderate hit with the band-composed “Honey Child,” which topped out at #47.

In 2014, Rodgers rated Run with the Pack as his favorite Bad Company album after their self-titled record, but there’s also a tragic memory attached to the general timeframe of the album: the band had originally planned on doing a joint British tour with Back Street Crawler, the band led by Paul Kossoff, Rodgers’ former Free bandmate, but Kossoff died of heart failure the month before the pairing’s first scheduled concert date. Whether or not Kossoff’s death had anything to do with it is impossible to say, but drummer Simon Kirke acknowledged in a 2014 interview with Team Rock that things changed for the band in the wake of the album’s release.

“I still think Run with the Pack was a great album,” said Kirke. “But I think after that the pace started to get to us.”