"It's a gift that there are so many recordings of him, so his legacy will live on and inspire guitarists for an eternity." Remembering Mott The Hoople and Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs

By Rob Hughes ( Classic Rock, Louder ) published 13 hours ago
A tribute to Mick Ralphs, who died on June 23, 2025 – includes interviews with Ian Hunter and Paul Rodgers


It’s fair to say that Booker T. & The M.G.’s changed the course of Mick Ralphs’s life. The Herefordshire electrician was 18 when he first heard Green Onions on Radio Luxembourg in 1962.

“I loved the nasty guitar of it and the groove,” he told Classic Rock in 2016. “I’d never heard anything like it before, and that inspired me to want to play guitar like that. It basically got me into blues and soul music and people like Howlin’ Wolf and Chuck Berry. That was the trigger.”

Ralphs wasted little time, and passed through a number of local acts prior to making an album with the Doc Thomas Group in 1967. After a brief spell as lead guitarist in Jimmy Cliff’s backing band, he hooked up with Verden Allen, Dale Griffin, Pete Overend Watts and Stan Tippins to record demos as Silence. A name change and a personnel tweak later - out went Tippins, in came natural frontman Ian Hunter – and Mott The Hoople were born.

Mott’s early status as underground cult favourites, nourished by a fiercely devoted fan base, was due in no small part to Ralphs’s versatility. Powerhouse riff-rock, heaving sound textures, country blues, acoustic delicacy, he was across it all.

-snip-