Mean Business

Studio album by The Firm

Released

3 February 1986

Recorded

1985

Genre

Rock

Length

39:20

Label

Atlantic

Producer

Jimmy Page, Paul Rodgers and Julian Mendelsohn

The Firm chronology

The Firm
(1985)

Mean Business
(1986)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Rolling Stone	(unfavorable)

Mean Business is the second and final studio album by The Firm, released by Atlantic Records on 3 February 1986. Repeating the same bluesy formula as on the first album, The Firm (1985), Mean Business did not achieve the same commercial success.

One of the album's tracks, "Live in Peace", was first recorded on Paul Rodgers' first solo album in 1983, Cut Loose. The versions differ in that Chris Slade played the drums slower than on the original version, apart from the ending, and Jimmy Page added a bluesy guitar solo at the end of the song.

The album's title was intended to have a double meaning: that the music business is a hard one, and that the band was serious about its music ("The Firm mean business"). However, perhaps due to the lukewarm-at-best critical and financial success which the band met, Page and Rodgers decided to disband The Firm within months of this album's release.

The album peaked at #22 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. and at #46 on the UK Albums Chart. The single "All the King's Horses" spent four weeks at the top of Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

"Fortune Hunter" was originally co-written by Page and Chris Squire for the aborted XYZ project in 1981. Squire was not credited on The Firm's version and later said he would have sued for royalties if the album had been a hit, but since it failed he dropped the idea because he saw it as inappropriate at a time when he was receiving six-figure yearly income from the sales of 90125.

Recorded and mixed at The Sol Studios, Cookham, Berkshire, England.
Mastered at Atlantic Studios, New York City, United States.

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Wikipedia