Laying Down the Law

There is a certain kind of record that walks into a room like it already owns the furniture, and "Laying Down the Law" is one of them. It is the fifth track on the only album The Law ever made, the self-titled set Atlantic put out on March 19, 1991, and it is the one song on that record that Paul Rodgers wrote by himself. Four minutes and change of voice, drums, and a guitar line that does not ask permission. On the album it sits right after "Come Save Me (Julianne)" and right before Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance's "Nature of the Beast," which is a pretty good neighborhood if you like your rock with a little muscle and a little polish. The single went out with "Tough Love" on the flip, a 45 for the stations that still knew what a 45 was, and a promo CD for the ones that did not. Rock radio took it immediately. Depending on which chart book you trust, it either topped the AOR list or parked at number two on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks. Either way, it was the smash. The album itself was a quieter story: number 126 on the Billboard 200, number 61 in Britain, number 53 in Canada. The song did the talking.

The Law was never meant to be a permanent address. Paul Rodgers, the man whose voice carried Free, Bad Company, and The Firm, ran into Kenney Jones in a London night spot and the two of them decided they were not finished making records. Jones had already been the engine room for the Small Faces, the Faces, and, after Keith Moon, The Who. Rodgers had spent years being the guy who wrote or co-wrote almost everything his bands played. This time he wanted the opposite. Bring in outside writers. Bring in different players. Leave the door open. The name, according to Jones, came off a sign in the bar about the rules of the house, the kind of notice that says it is the law. They liked the sound of that. A core crew formed around them: Jim Barber on lead guitar, a player whose résumé already included the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger's Primitive Cool; John Staehely, late of Spirit and Jo Jo Gunne, on second guitar; and Pino Palladino on bass, the Welshman who had been holding down Paul Young and Jools Holland and would later hold down The Who. Keyboards and programming came from the likes of Jon Astley and Steve Pigott. Chris Kimsey, the man who had engineered and produced so much of the Rolling Stones' late-seventies and early-eighties work, was among the producers, alongside Ahmet Ertegun, the Albert brothers, Jones, Rodgers, and Shane Keister. Sessions happened in London studios. Guests drifted through the wider album: David Gilmour and Chris Rea on the track "Stone," Bryan Adams on guitar elsewhere. "Laying Down the Law" did not need the guests. It needed Rodgers and Jones and a band that could hit it clean.

What you hear when the track starts is Rodgers doing the thing nobody else has ever quite copied. The tone is low, grainy, and sure of itself, the same instrument that turned "All Right Now," "Can't Get Enough," and "Feel Like Makin' Love" into permanent radio furniture. He is not shouting the title. He is stating it. Jones plays behind him the way a Faces drummer plays, which is to say with swing under the power, not a click-track march. Barber's guitar is lean rather than stacked, more bite than chorus pedal, and Palladino's bass walks the song instead of just pinning the root. It is blues-rock dressed for 1991, tighter than Free, slicker than Bad Company, and still miles away from the hair-metal that was already losing the room. Rodgers had leaned on other writers for most of the album, Phil Collen for "Miss You in a Heartbeat," Chris Rea for "Stone," Adams and Vallance for "Nature of the Beast," Jerry Lynn Williams, Benny Mardones, and a stack of Nashville and Los Angeles names for the rest, and the irony is that the only real chart record on the thing was the one he wrote alone. Collen's song would later become a hit for Def Leppard on Retro Active. Rea's "Stone" had already lived on Shamrock Diaries. "Laying Down the Law" belonged only to this band.

The rest of the story is short, which is part of why the record still feels like a found object. The Law played one show. One. Milton Keynes Bowl, opening for ZZ Top and Bryan Adams, with John Young added on keyboards. Rodgers later called the whole business completely barmy. He and Jones were ready for the road. The phone did not ring. They had to push just to get that single date, and not everybody on the bill was thrilled about it. After that, the project folded. An album of outtakes has circulated for years under the bootleg name The Law II, with titles like "Too Much Is Not Enough" and "Wanna Make Love to You" attached to it, but there was no second official record and no tour. Rodgers went on to a solo career and, for a stretch, to front Queen. Jones later formed The Jones Gang with Rick Wills of Foreigner. The 1991 album got a reissue in the 2000s, and the song never quite left the classic-rock libraries. Programmers who lived through the spring of 1991 still know the intro.

A little more on the two men, because the band only makes sense if you know the résumés. Rodgers was born in Middlesbrough in 1949, sang in local bands, and by the end of the sixties was the voice of Free, a group that made "All Right Now" sound like it had always existed. Bad Company, formed with Mott the Hoople's Mick Ralphs and King Crimson's Boz Burrell under the wing of Led Zeppelin's management, took that voice to American arenas and gave FM radio a decade of staples. The Firm, with Jimmy Page, was the mid-eighties chapter. By the time he met Jones he had nothing left to prove and, apparently, no interest in proving it the same way twice. Jones, born in Stepney in East London in 1948, was sixteen when the Small Faces started handing Britain hits and defining the Mod look. When that band split he helped build the Faces around Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, a group that treated the stage like a bar that happened to have a PA. After Moon's death he joined The Who and stayed through It's Hard. Putting those two histories in one room in 1991 was the whole idea. The Law was the room.

Play "Laying Down the Law" loud enough and you can hear the argument the record was making. Supergroups were supposed to be finished. Grunge was about to redraw the map. Rodgers and Jones answered with a song that sounds like a warrant, sung by a man who had already written half the warrants on the classic-rock shelf, drummed by a man who had kept time for three of the loudest bands England ever exported. It did not save the album from a modest chart life, and it did not save the band from a one-gig career. It did not have to. Some records are catalogs. This one is a summons. If you want the long version of the story, the singers, the drummers, and the deep cuts that never made the tight playlists, that is what THE ZOO is here for, commercial-free and built for the album side of rock radio. Rodgers keeps the office open at paulrodgers.com, with the official pages at Facebook, Instagram, and X. Jones tells his side, Small Faces through The Law, at kenneyjones.com and on Facebook. The band itself left no standing fan club behind. The song did not need one.