Biography
Mick Ralphs, born in Hereford, England, near the Welsh border in 1948, served as lead guitarist for both Mott the Hoople and Bad Company, two groups that rank among album rock’s most enduring acts, with the former earning a cult reputation in glam and the latter achieving far greater commercial reach. During his teenage years he performed in the blues-rock outfit the Buddies, which issued a single in 1964, before joining the mod-styled Doc Thomas Group; their self-titled debut appeared exclusively in Italy in 1967. The band adopted the name Silence in 1968 and had transformed into Mott the Hoople by the next year. After several lean years, the group scored its breakthrough when David Bowie supplied the hit single “All the Young Dudes” in 1972. As Mott’s popularity grew, Ian Hunter’s songwriting increasingly took precedence, a development that clashed with Ralphs’ preference for straightforward, riff-based hard rock. Following the release of the album Mott in 1973, he departed to co-found Bad Company alongside two former members of Free. The track “Can't Get Enough,” which Mott had been unable to record because of its vocal range, became an instant success and propelled the band’s self-titled 1974 debut to the top of the U.S. charts. A succession of major-selling albums kept Bad Company among the world’s leading arena acts through 1982. Once the original lineup dissolved, Ralphs issued the solo album Take This! on the modestly distributed Rock Machine label in 1984; it later received a CD reissue. Bad Company began a series of reunions in 1986 that have persisted to the present, with Ralphs participating in every iteration and contributing guitar to all subsequent albums and singles. His second solo effort, the entirely instrumental It’s All Good, appeared on the Angel Air imprint in 2001.
Albums
