Nature Of The Beast

You are locked into The Zoo, the place where the deep cuts still get a fair shake, and the next one up is a pedigree rocker that never quite got the room it deserved on the big commercial stations. "Nature Of The Beast" sits sixth on The Law, the one and only album from the short-lived English outfit built around Paul Rodgers and Kenney Jones. Atlantic put the record out on March 19, 1991, and if the name on the sleeve looked like a supergroup, that is because it was. Rodgers was already the voice of Free, Bad Company, and The Firm. Jones had driven the Small Faces, the Faces, and, after Keith Moon, The Who. Drop those two into the same room and the expectation writes itself. What came out was bluesy AOR with a hard spine, stacked with outside writers, and spiked with guest players who would make any session sheet look ridiculous. You can keep the whole station rolling, free and commercial-free, over at THE ZOO.

"Nature Of The Beast" was not a Rodgers original. Bryan Adams and his longtime writing partner Jim Vallance put it down around 1986, and they wrote it with Tina Turner in mind. Vallance has said they tried to climb inside Tina's head and imagine what she might say to Ike, the same cheeky approach they had used on "Back Where You Started," which Tina did cut for Break Every Rule. She passed on "Nature Of The Beast." The references were a little too plain. A year or so later the song found its way to Paul Rodgers, and Adams himself played guitar on the track. Vallance, for the record, has admitted he prefers the home-studio demo he cut with Adams. Fair enough. That demo never had Kenney Jones on the kit or the man who sang "All Right Now" leaning into the warning. Rodgers takes the lyric like a cross-examination. You have been up to your old tricks. You keep putting your hand in the fire. You are going to get your fingers burned. Who would believe you ever cared. The refrain lands like a verdict. That is just the nature of the beast. Three minutes and fifty-three seconds, no fat, no apology.

The band name came out of a London pub, not a marketing meeting. Rodgers and Jones ran into each other, got to talking about a new group, and spotted a sign about underage drinking that carried the phrase "It's the Law." That was the christening. They did not lock in a fixed lineup the way Free or Bad Company had. The idea was a core and a revolving cast, so Rodgers could chase whatever style he felt like. The core that actually made the album was guitarist Jim Barber, whose credits already included the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger's Primitive Cool, second guitarist John Staehely out of Spirit and Jo Jo Gunne, and bassist Pino Palladino, the man who had anchored Paul Young and would later hold down The Who. Guests walked in and out of the sessions. David Gilmour and Chris Rea both played on "Stone." Adams was on "Nature Of The Beast." Producers on the project included Chris Kimsey, the Albert brothers Howard and Ron, Ahmet Ertegun, Shane Keister, and the two principals themselves. Bob Ludwig mastered it. London studios, a stack of hired guns, and two of the heaviest names in British rock trying to see if the chemistry would hold for more than one record.

It held for one. The Law peaked at number 126 on the Billboard 200, number 61 in the UK, and number 53 in Canada. The single that carried the radio load was Rodgers' own "Laying Down the Law," a number 2 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and a number 1 AOR smash by the count of the people who worked the record. "Miss You in a Heartbeat," written by Def Leppard's Phil Collen, followed it onto the rock chart. "Nature Of The Beast" was the album cut that sat between those calling cards and Chris Rea's "Stone," the one with Gilmour's guitar. It never became the single. It became the song the fans who actually bought the disc kept coming back to, because it sounds like Rodgers doing what he has always done, which is stare a bad situation down and sing it like a man who has already decided the argument. Jones plays it straight and heavy, no Moon theatrics, no Faces swing, just a pocket that lets the vocal own the room. That is the trick of a drummer who has already been in three of the biggest British bands of his era. He does not need to announce himself.

Paul Bernard Rodgers was born in Middlesbrough on December 17, 1949, and by the end of the 1960s he was the singer in Free, the band that gave rock "All Right Now" and a standard for how a blues voice could sit inside a hard-rock arrangement without turning into a shout. Free split, he built Bad Company with Mick Ralphs, Boz Burrell, and Simon Kirke, and the 1970s belonged to them. "Can't Get Enough," "Feel Like Makin' Love," "Shooting Star," "Bad Company." He walked away from that, formed The Firm with Jimmy Page, and put out two albums that still get spun by people who know the difference between a supergroup and a photo opportunity. After The Law he kept going. Queen asked him in as the singer for a run of shows and a studio album, The Cosmos Rocks, in 2008. Rolling Stone has ranked him among the greatest singers in rock. The official tally on his own site runs past ninety million records, three bands led to worldwide success, and a solo catalog that never stopped. The voice on "Nature Of The Beast" is the same instrument that carried "The Hunter" and "Mr. Big." Lower in the chest, a little more weathered, still impossible to mistake for anybody else. His house is paulrodgers.com, with the socials at Facebook, Instagram, and X.

Kenney Jones, born Kenneth Thomas Jones in Stepney on September 16, 1948, was a founding drummer of the Small Faces alongside Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, and Ian McLagan. When Marriott left and Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood walked in, the band became the Faces, and Jones was the engine under "Stay With Me" and "Ooh La La." After Moon died in 1978, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle asked Jones to take the drum stool in The Who. He played on Face Dances and It's Hard and stayed through the early 1980s. That is a résumé almost nobody else can match. Three bands that defined British rock, then a one-album partnership with the best singer of his generation. After The Law he later formed The Jones Gang with Foreigner's Rick Wills. His own site still carries the Law chapter, name origin and all, at kenneyjones.com. He is on Facebook, Instagram, and X.

The rest of the album is a map of who was writing hard rock in that window. Collen on "Miss You in a Heartbeat." Tamara Champlin on "Stone Cold." Jerry Lynn Williams, the man behind several Eric Clapton cuts, on "Best of My Love." Rodgers himself on "Laying Down the Law," "Tough Love," and "Missing You Bad Girl." A bootleg of outtakes has circulated for years under the name The Law II, with titles like "Too Much Is Not Enough" and "Wanna Make Love to You," proof that the sessions ran longer than the official eleven tracks. In 1993 Rodgers turned up with Adams on a BBC Johnny Walker session at Maida Vale and they played "Nature Of The Beast" live, the writer and the singer in the same room, which is about as close as the song ever got to a second life. Vallance's own notes on the tune, including the Tina Turner origin story, still sit on his song archive at jimvallance.com. For the Free and Bad Company years that made the voice possible, the long-running fan archive at badcompany.com remains the cleanest door in.

So here it is, track six, the one Adams and Vallance aimed at Tina and Rodgers kept for himself. A warning dressed up as a groove. A supergroup that lasted one album and still sounds like the sum of its parts when the vocal hits the refrain. That is the nature of the beast, and that is The Law, on The Zoo.