MICK RALPHS 1944-2025

We bid farewell to Mick Ralphs, the highly innovative founding guitarist of Mott The Hoople and Bad Company

- Amit Sharma

On 23 June, it was announced that English guitarist Mick Ralphs, famous for his work with Mott The Hoople and Bad Company, had passed away at a care facility in Henley-On-Thames, aged 81. He will be remembered as one of the most influential rock guitarists to emerge in the late 60s and 70s, though he continued writing and recording with Bad Company through the 80s and 90s, and even released a pair of albums with his own blues band in times more recent.

Born in 1944 in Stoke Lacy, Herefordshire, Ralphs picked up the guitar as a teenager and began his career playing in bands like The Buddies and Mod Doc Thomas Group, the latter of whom would go on to rename themselves Mott The Hoople in 1969. Their self-titled debut album of that year opened with an instrumental version of You Really Got Me by The Kinks, Ralphs using a 1961 Gibson SG/Les Paul with a sideways vibrola - acquired during his time backing reggae pioneer Jimmy Cliff - through a wah pedal to replicate the vocal melodies heard on the original.

“We were quite outrageous in the Mott The Hoople days, but it was more like a punk band than a glam-rock band,” he told