The Firm – Mean Business
(Atlantic Records 1986 WX43)
Matrix No’s: A4/B4
Sleeve in Nr MINT- condition
– small nick/tear near bottom of spine edge
Inner Sleeve in Nr MINT condition
Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
The Firm were a British rock supergroup composed of singer Paul Rodgers (Free and Bad Company), guitarist Jimmy Page (The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin), drummer Chris Slade (Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Uriah Heep and AC/DC) and bass player Tony Franklin.
Both Page and Rodgers refused to play any material from their former bands and instead opted for a selection of Firm songs plus tracks from both their solo albums. The new songs were heavily infused with a soulful and more commercially accessible sound, courtesy of Franklin’s fretless bass guitar underpinning an understated song structure. Despite refusing to play old material, the last track from The Firm, “Midnight Moonlight”, was originally an unreleased Led Zeppelin song entitled “Swan Song”. This caused some critics to believe that Page had begun to run out of ideas. In subsequent press interviews, Page had indicated that the band was never meant to last more than two albums. After the band split, Page and Rodgers returned to solo work while Chris Slade joined AC/DC and Franklin teamed up with guitarist John Sykes in Blue Murder.
Mean Business is the second and final studio album by The Firm, released by Atlantic Records on 3 February 1986. Repeating the same bluesy formula as on the first album, The Firm (1985), Mean Business did not achieve the same commercial success.
One of the album’s tracks, “Live in Peace”, was first recorded on Paul Rodgers’ first solo album in 1983, Cut Loose. The versions differ in that Chris Slade played the drums slower than on the original version, apart from the ending, and Jimmy Page added a bluesy guitar solo at the end of the song.
The album’s title was intended to have a double meaning: that the music business is a hard one, and that the band was serious about its music (“The Firm mean business”). However, perhaps due to the lukewarm-at-best critical and financial success which the band met, Page and Rodgers decided to disband The Firm within months of this album’s release.
The album peaked at #22 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. and at #46 on the UK Albums Chart. The single “All the King’s Horses” spent four weeks at the top of Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
“Fortune Hunter” was originally co-written by Page and Chris Squire for the aborted XYZ project in 1981. Squire was not credited on The Firm’s version and later said he would have sued for royalties if the album had been a hit, but since it failed he dropped the idea because he saw it as inappropriate at a time when he was receiving six-figure yearly income from the sales of 90125.
Track listing
| Side one | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
| 1. | “Fortune Hunter” | Jimmy Page, Paul Rodgers | 5:00 |
| 2. | “Cadillac” | Page, Rodgers | 5:57 |
| 3. | “All the King’s Horses” | Rodgers | 3:16 |
| 4. | “Live in Peace” | Rodgers | 5:05 |
| Side two | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
| 1. | “Tear Down the Walls” | Page, Rodgers | 4:43 |
| 2. | “Dreaming” | Tony Franklin | 6:00 |
| 3. | “Free to Live” | Page, Rodgers | 4:13 |
| 4. | “Spirit of Love” | Rodgers | 5:06 |
Personnel
Band
- Paul Rodgers – vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, piano, producer
- Jimmy Page – acoustic and electric guitars, producer
- Tony Franklin – fretless bass, keyboards, synthesizer, back vocals
- Chris Slade – drums and percussion
Other
- Julian Mendelsohn – producer
- Aubrey Powell Productions – cover design
- Barry Diament – mastering
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