Paul Rodgers - Night of 100 Guitars, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-26-1994

In 1994, the Gibson guitar company had their 100th anniversary as a business. To celebrate this, they staged a concert that brought together several famous lead guitarists. Headlining the show, however, was a singer, Paul Rodgers, formerly of Free and Bad Company. Here is a bootleg of that show.

In 1982, Bad Company broke up. After that, Rodgers was in some other bands, such as the Firm. He released his second true solo album in 1993, "Muddy Waters Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters." He brought in a whole bunch of famous lead guitarists to play on different songs. So it wasn't a stretch for him to play with some of them for this concert: Brian May of Queen, Slash of Guns N' Roses, and Neal Schon of both Santana and Journey. Schon was part of Rodgers' band for the whole concert, while the others only joined in for certain songs. Additionally, bassist Andy Fraser was featured on some songs. He had a critical role in Free with Rodgers back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, writing or co-writing many of the band's songs. He'd kept a low musical profile since then, suffering from both HIV and cancer since the early 1980s. So this concert was a bit of a Free reunion as well.

Most of the songs were classics originally by either Free or Bad Company. Only two songs, "Muddy Water Blues" and "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl," were from his recent Muddy Waters tribute album.

This concert is an hour and four minutes long.

01 talk (Paul Rodgers)
02 Travellin' Man (Paul Rodgers)
03 talk (Paul Rodgers)
04 Wishing Well (Paul Rodgers)
05 talk (Paul Rodgers)
06 Fire and Water (Paul Rodgers)
07 talk (Paul Rodgers)
08 Muddy Water Blues (Paul Rodgers)
09 talk (Paul Rodgers)
10 Feel like Making Love (Paul Rodgers)
11 talk (Paul Rodgers)
12 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl (Paul Rodgers with Brian May)
13 A Little Bit of Love (Paul Rodgers with Brian May & Andy Fraser)
14 talk (Paul Rodgers)
15 Mr. Big (Paul Rodgers with Andy Fraser)
16 talk (Paul Rodgers)
17 Let Me Love You (Paul Rodgers with Slash)
18 talk (Paul Rodgers)
19 The Hunter (Paul Rodgers with Slash)
20 Bad Company (Paul Rodgers with Slash)
21 All Right Now (Paul Rodgers with Andy Fraser, Brian May & Slash)
22 talk (Paul Rodgers)
23 Crossroads (Paul Rodgers with Andy Fraser, Brian May, Slash & Zakk Wylde)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15136495/PaulRdg_1994_Nghtof100GuitrsWmbleyArena__6-26-1994_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Rodgers comes from this exact concert. I would have liked to have one or more of the lead guitarists in the photo too, but I couldn't find any good ones like that. The writing at the top comes from the promotional material for the show, including the font type and color. So I replicated that design for the writing at the bottom.

Bad Company - Acoustic, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH, 7-21-1999

The British band Free did a ton of stuff for the BBC during their short time as a band in the late 1960s and early 1970s. So I expected to find BBC performances by lead singer Paul Rodgers' successor band Bad Company. However, it seems Bad Company didn't play for the BBC until long after their 1970s heyday. But while looking for something from them, I stumbled upon this interesting acoustic concert from 1999. 

In short, Bad Company put out their first album in 1974, and immediately found success. They had lots of hits through the rest of the 1970s. But in the early 1980s, Rodgers left the band, and their popularity declined. After nearly two decades with two other lead singers, the original four band members, including Rodgers, reunited in 1999. So while this isn't from their heyday, it does feature that line-up. (This line-up would break up by the end of 1999, and never reunite again, due to one of the band members, bassist Boz Burrell, dying in 2006.)

There are two other aspects of this concert that make it a must-have for any fan of the band. One is that the sound quality is fantastic. Although it's a bootleg, you'd never know, since it was professionally recorded for a radio station broadcast. Even better, it was recorded for a small club audience, so you don't get that cavernous large arena sound. The second factor is that it's a genuinely acoustic show (with minimal drums). Apparently, it's the only time this hard rocking band played a concert that way. Rodgers makes some comments between songs about how he's looking forward to coming back with all their instruments. But I think it's very interesting to hear the songs in this different way.

This took place at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. It seems they had some kind of effort to put on acoustic concerts there, because I've posted another acoustic concert that took place there from Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, and I know of another one by the Allman Brothers Band. If anyone know of other great sounding acoustic concerts from this venue, let me know so I can post those too. 

One downside is that the concert is rather short, at only 42 minutes long. I trimmed a little bit of dead time between songs. I also cut out a long intro by a DJ. They didn't necessarily play all of their biggest hits, focusing instead on the songs they felt worked for the acoustic format.

01 talk (Bad Company)
02 Feel like Makin' Love (Bad Company)
03 talk (Bad Company)
04 Shooting Star (Bad Company)
05 talk (Bad Company)
06 Soul of Love (Bad Company)
07 talk (Bad Company)
08 Seagull (Bad Company)
09 talk (Bad Company)
10 Tracking Down a Runaway (Bad Company)
11 talk (Bad Company)
12 Youngblood (Bad Company)
13 talk (Bad Company)
14 Silver, Blue and Gold (Bad Company)
15 talk (Bad Company)
16 Bad Company (Bad Company)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15900469/BadComp_1999_AcoustcRockandRollHllofFame__7-21-1999_atse.zip.html

The cover photo features only Paul Rodgers, at a concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in 1999. The band name text was taken from one of their album covers. I duplicated the font and color for the text at the bottom.