The Sol, a studio in Berkshire, hosted the first full session of a band that no longer sounded like its old self. Bad Company, the British rock group behind a decade of rugged hard-rock hits, was back in October 1986 with a new voice at the front. Guitarist Mick Ralphs and drummer Simon Kirke remained from the original lineup, but the man singing was Brian Howe, formerly of Ted Nugent's band. The album they were making, Fame and Fortune, was the group's seventh studio record and its first since a reunion in a changed form. The title said plenty: this was a band gambling on a second life.
A new singer and a new sound
Howe had stepped into a spot that once belonged to Paul Rodgers, the original singer whose bluesy growl defined Bad Company's early years. That was no small shadow. Yet the group did not simply swap one frontman for another; the whole operation shifted. Keith Olsen, known for his work with Foreigner, produced the record, and Mick Jones of Foreigner served as executive producer and co-wrote two of the songs. The sound leaned toward the cleaner, radio-ready edge of hard rock and AOR, a move that promised a wider audience but risked abandoning the rough charm fans remembered.
Even the bass chair was unsettled. Original bassist Boz Burrell appeared in the credits, but the album's booklet shows session musician Steve Price actually played on the record. It was a quiet signal that Bad Company was now a different animal, held together by Ralphs, Kirke and a new singer learning to carry the name. The sessions took shape in England, with keyboards from Gregg Dechert and songwriting split across many hands. Howe wrote or co-wrote most of the material, including the opening single 'This Love', written with Andy Fretwell.
Singles and a modest chart showing
That first single arrived the same month as the album, in October 1986, and became one of the group's better-known songs. The record itself climbed to 106 on the Billboard 200, a modest showing for a band that had once filled arenas. Still, the singles kept coming: 'That Girl' was released in the United States in February 1987, while the title track 'Fame and Fortune' came out in the United Kingdom that same month. Each one tested whether the new Bad Company could hold attention without its old frontman.
The songwriting credits read like a map of the compromises behind the reunion. Mick Ralphs wrote the title song alone and teamed with Mick Jones for 'Burning Up'. Howe worked with Ralphs on 'That Girl', 'Tell It Like It Is' and 'Valerie', and with Gregg Dechert on 'Long Walk'. Kirke joined Howe and John Bettis for 'When We Made Love', and the four-way team of Howe, Ralphs, Kirke and Dechert produced 'If I'm Sleeping'. No single voice dominated, which was exactly the point: Bad Company was being rebuilt as a cooperative machine.
Atlantic, mixing and mastering
Atlantic Records released the album, and the production team gave it a polished finish. Mixing happened at Goodnight L.A. and The Hit Factory in New York, with Frank Filipetti and Mick Jones handling the console. Ted Jensen mastered the record at Sterling Sound in New York, and engineers Stuart Epps, Brian Foraker and Jay Healy captured the sessions. The whole album runs just over 39 minutes, tight enough for the AOR format that was reshaping rock radio in the 1980s.
Fame and Fortune arrived four years after the previous studio album, Rough Diamonds from 1982, and followed the 1985 compilation 10 from 6. For fans, that gap had been long enough to wonder if Bad Company would ever return. The answer was a record that split opinion: some heard a band chasing trends, others heard a smart adaptation. The next studio album, Dangerous Age in 1988, would push further in the same direction, proving that the new lineup was not a one-off experiment.
What remains clearest is the bet the band placed in that Berkshire studio. Bad Company traded its original singer and its old grit for a commercial sheen and a new set of collaborators. The result was an album that never matched the group's early chart peaks but kept the name alive through a decade that punished many of its peers. Fame and Fortune stands as the moment Bad Company chose reinvention over memory, and dared its audience to follow.
Fame and Fortune stands as the moment Bad Company chose reinvention over memory, and dared its audience to follow.