Brian Howe

Brian Anthony Howe (22 July 1953 – 6 May 2020) was an English rock singer, best known for replacing Paul Rodgers as the lead vocalist of Bad Company.

Howe was born in Portsmouth in 1953.

He sang with a local band called Shy who had one minor hit single in the UK but he quickly quit, seeking a harder rock band.

He had a brief stint with the NWOBHM group White Spirit, having replaced their recently departed singer Bruce Ruff.

However, the group quickly collapsed, and Howe never recorded an album with them.

Reflecting the musical style of the mid-1980s, the album was laden with keyboards, unlike previous Bad Company albums, and was modestly commercially successful.

The single "This Love" managed to reach No. 85 on the UK Singles Chart, but was not the success the band hoped for, but things were about to change.

Following the discovery of a cassette tape containing studio demos recorded in 1981 of what was to be the second White Spirit album, careful restoration took place to retrieve the original Brian Howe vocals and musical performances.

This was to form the basis of a new White Spirit album Right or Wrong, released through Conquest Music in July 2022.

Guest performers on the album include Neil Murray, Russell Gilbrook, Jeff Scott Soto, Steve Overland and Lee Small.

A sole cut, "Watch Out", surfaced on Neat Records' 60 Minutes Plus cassette compilation in 1982, also issued on vinyl as All Hell Let Loose by Neat in conjunction with Italy's Base Records label in 1983.

Howe's career was jump-started in 1983 when Ted Nugent recruited him to handle lead vocals for his Penetrator album and front its subsequent world tour.

Howe's first gig in the U.S. was with Ted Nugent in 1984.

He had been sending songs to Atlantic Records in London to try to get a deal.

Atlantic said that they did not hear a single but they liked his voice.

One day, Ashley Howe (not related but producer of Ted Nugent's upcoming album) was walking down the corridor of Atlantic’s offices and heard his voice.

Ashley Howe had been looking for a singer for the next Ted Nugent album and thought that Howe would be a good fit.

Howe was soon in New York City and signed a contract to become the lead singer for Ted Nugent and sang on the Penetrator album.

The contract was not favorable to Howe, finding him working at a vastly reduced rate (~$450/week), and he ultimately left to pursue a solo career and album due to lack of writing credits on songs such as "Tied Up In Love".

After a call from Mick Jones of Foreigner, whom Howe tried to work with earlier in his career, Howe was introduced to Mick Ralphs and Simon Kirke of Bad Company.

In 1986, Mick Ralphs and Simon Kirke decided to regroup for a new project.

Their label, Atlantic Records, however, insisted they resume the Bad Company name, but Paul Rodgers was already engaged with a new supergroup called The Firm.

With Rodgers gone, the remaining two members partnered with ex-Ted Nugent vocalist Brian Howe as the new lead singer.

“Mick told me that I had to get away from Ted and go to New York where Mick and Simon wanted to meet up with me,” Howe related.

“So I made up some story to leave and went to the Mayflower Hotel, where we decided to give things a go.”

In addition, they hired Steve Price as the new bass player and Gregg Dechert (ex-Uriah Heep) on keyboards.

Howe's vocal style brought more of a pop-rock sound to the band, which Atlantic Records, looking to bring the band back up to arena status, was looking for after declining turnouts to previous live performances and the dismal sales of Rough Diamonds.

The band hired Foreigner producer Keith Olsen to produce the new line-up's initial album, 1986's Fame and Fortune.

The song was also released on CD by US-based label Prism Entertainment on their Metal Minded compilation in 1987.

In 1987, Dechert was dropped from the line-up as the group decided not to play up the keyboards in their sound as much.

They toured that year supporting Deep Purple.

For the next Howe-era album, 1988's Dangerous Age, the band replaced Olsen with producer Terry-Thomas-athlete">Terry Thomas, who got rid of most of the keyboards and returned the band to a guitar-driven sound.

Thomas also added small amounts of keyboards as well as rhythm guitars and backing vocals and wrote most of the songs with the band.

Dangerous Age fared better than its predecessor, spawning several MTV videos and the AOR hits "No Smoke Without A Fire" (#4), "One Night" (#9) and "Shake It Up" (#9, also No. 89 on the singles chart).

The album went Gold and hit the Top 60.

For the Dangerous Age tour, the band were augmented by Larry Oakes (keyboards, guitar), who had also played with Foreigner.

Price and Oakes left at the conclusion of the tour.

The band's next album, Holy Water written mostly by Brian Howe and Terry-Thomas-athlete">Terry Thomas released in June 1990 on Atco, also produced by Thomas, was enormously successful both critically and commercially, attaining Top 40 and Platinum status by selling more than one million copies.

Holy Water was the band's first album on the Atlantic subsidiary Atco Records.

The album spun off the singles: "If You Needed Somebody" (#16), the title track "Holy Water" (#89) and "Walk Through Fire" (#28).