Badfinger: C/D

They didn't really seem to have much luck with their album titles really.

None of their records is really fantastic all the way through. But what's essential is generally what Pete Ham added to the group. While the rest of the group did some decent tracks here and there, most of the classic material is his. Unfortunately, there's no single record that really has all his stuff on one record.

"Day After Day," is the big hit, but also "Baby Blue," "Know One Knows," "Apple Of My Eye," "Midnight Caller," "No Matter What" "Lonely You," "Take It All," "I Miss You," and "Name of the Game." Those are more or less his best Badfinger songs from the period and stone-cold classics all.

I would also recommend the first Pete Ham comp, "7 Park Ave," which somewhat ironically does a better job of illustrating his genius than any Badfinger record proper. Their story's so sad; he's just incredible.

Highlights include are No Matter What, Midnight Caller, Apple of my Eye... There's also a great Pete Ham song on & Park Ave called It Really Doesn't Matter.

On another note, the similarity between Badfinger and Abbey Road era Beatles is plain spooky, I reckon.

Badfinger had no idea that Nilsson had recorded it and after he finished it Badfinger happened to be in the same studio and were called in to hear it. They were apparently blown away, as you would imagine given the grand scale of it compared to their version.

What more contributed to the suicide was probably the years of being ripped off and suffering really bad luck at every turn. Who knows if they even saw any of the money that Without You must have made for them.

In addition to their own records they also got to play on the Lennon and Harrison albums, Imagine and All Things Must Pass which must have been cool. Harrison even wrote an unreleased song called Going To Golders Green about going to visit them.

I like some of the Apple era stuff but I keep hearing that Wish You Were Here is the real unsung gem in the catalogue

And if you think Badfinger sound spookiy like Abbey Road-era Fabs, wait til you hear the AeroVons LP!!

I meant theft as in literally stealing the song - unless I've got my wires crossed, Pete Ham was actually removed from the writing credits.

wait til you hear the AeroVons LP!!

I'm intrigued - any more info?

For my money "Baby Blue" is the only Badfinger song I need.

"...Worse yet, Molland had indicated he felt entitled to monies from Without You, the oft-covered Ham/Evans standard. This pushed Evans over the edge, right before the night of his suicide, when the two exchanged angry words about the matter. "

"...In 1985, Gibbins, Molland, and Collins attached their names to Without You, forcing Ham's and Evans' estates to cough up a percentage of whatever ASCAP royalties it had earned to date, according to Matovina. Collins, Gibbins, and Molland got 90,000 pounds each; the Evans and Ham estates, half as much... "

So it would appear that the rest of the band added their names to the writing credits in the mid eighties though not quite sure how it could be proven that they had anything to do with it when the 2 guys who actually wrote it were dead.

I'm not saying that everyone who sticks it on will be blown away, but once you're familiar with the band you'll certainly be amazed at Pete Ham's fire and Molland-gone-sinister. lovely, powerful tunes with a fantastic production from Chris Thomas. fans of Joy Division Closer should investigate, though Big Star fans may warm to it more easily.

I think there's some fix-up in the studio added to that by guitarist Joey Molland. Maybe he gave it more of a boogie feel because when I saw his solo act (called, of course, "Badfinger," to the annoyance of many) doing Badfinger tuneage, it sounded a lot like a pop southern rock band. It's the second kick at the can for "Day after Day." I liked it in a grubby and slopped hard rock kind of way but it doesn't sound like their studio stuff, obviously.

Oh, I dunno about Cheap Trick being annoited after the fact, they were doing those Move songs from day one, and I always thought they fit right in with those groups myself--a bit more one-dimensional, but that's all right, and they recorded stuff at the Sun Studios of powerpop, Ardent, in Memphis, as I recall.

xp

Also, some of the Pete Hamm demos are worth seeking out.

Super classic, especially the Warner years. That Rhino "Best of: Vol II" that came out 7 or 8 years before the EMI sanctioned "Best of Vol I" is a great comp.

I love the Move. Roy Wood was one odd lookin' simian type dude.

No, not necessarily. For example, southern boogie bands can and have, at times, sounded "Brit" in the way of heavy white boy blooz going into very hard rock. Blackfoot were one example. They did "Wishing Well," "Shapes of Things," "Easy Livin'." Blackfoot were kind of the extreme heavy end of southern rock, too, although there were moments when they could sound quite different. So there is no reason it doesn't/didn't/or couldn't go the other way, too. Think of it as an equilibrium in musical style and tastes with a lot of basic overlap.

It can be as simple as the density of the guitars and amps combination. If I'm remembering "Day after Day" right, a sleeve cover pic, if accurate from the performance, has them playing what look like Hiwatts. Which live would give them a lot more thud than the Beatle-esque equipment in the studio. And so it can kind of be a technical thing as much as a stylistic change.

xpost--whether it was called "power pop," it was generally recognized that there were these groups updating the Brit invasion and the Byrds and the late-'60s west coast groups, like Moby Grape, who certainly have a claim to be proto-powerpop if anyone does. Listen to that song "Truly Fine Citizen" and to Big Star, it's the same thing and the same way of playing. I don't think "powerpop" is even a very useful term to begin with.

This is absolutely not true - what a slur on Harry!!!!

(PS they were from Youngstown!)

"Immediately got raves from the hipper critics of the day. Metal Mike Saunders gave it a great review in PRM. Ed Naha went haha over it in Circus. Everyone raved over this great slab of TEENPOP garage rock that sorta was the offspring of Brit Invasion and Who pop ("Abracadabra," the LP opener, shoulda been a boffo hit!)."

Yeah, "Abracadabra" - that's the one on that Rhino comp. Great.

I am such a fan of Moby Grape--I feel as though they don't get enough credit. They were so damned good. And boy, that bass playing on the song "Truly Fine Citizen" is so great--I think it's some Nashville session guy, actually.

According to the Badfinger bio from a few years back, this was de riguer at their '70s shows. They felt compelled to resort to playing extended jams of "Feelin' Alright" and so forth.

The bio also describes some truly embarrassing situations the band experienced after Ham died - like being held hostage by a shady manager from Wisconsin, and getting involved with a promoter who sent out demos under the name of, wait for it, "Goodfinger." Squeamish, to say the least.

I bet they cursed Humble Pie a lot.

"And then you had bands like Toby Beau, a nominal southern rock band that boogied live and for one or two songs per LP, that would devote about half their albums to a sub-Badfinger style of mediocre pop rock."

Speaking as a Badfinger fan, I hope he's not comparing them to the sappy "My Angel Baby" (Toby Beau's only hit, thank God).

Conspicuously absent from this ancient thread: the two comeback albums that Badfinger did for Elektra ('79) and Radio ('81), both immensely better than people give them credit for. Get them now while they're still cheap!

Absolutely classic, particularly the "Straight Up" album.

I didn't realise they did comeback albums in 1979 and 1981 though. I thought most key members were dead by then...

Airwaves, the 1979 record, is really good. i mean, it's a badfinger record. if you are a fan, you'll like it. it's just joey molland and tom evans and some other dudes.

i had to look up what the 1981 album was. Say No More! yeah, another good record. and, yeah, both totally dollar records at used stores. i like them both. i don't think i've ever heard a badfinger album i didn't like though. again, Say No More is just Molland/Evans.

i still need a copy of Wish You Were Here on vinyl. i never see it anywhere.

"i don't think i've ever heard a badfinger album i didn't like"

I'll admit, the closest I've heard to a bad 'Finger album is ASS, their "contractual obligation"/"outtakes" LP on Apple. And even then, it's not horrible so much as just unexceptional.

At the end of an interview of McCartney by James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers (and no, I did not expect to ever be typing that) regarding Pipes of Peace, this exchange:

JDB: Can I ask you a silly question at the end? This is more for me than anyone else. I’m a gigantic fan of Badfinger, so you know what I’m going to ask. You obviously wrote ‘Come And Get It’ for them, and you played a lot of the song, let’s face facts here. Did you feel that they were going to get confidence, after you gave them that initial step up?

PM: Yeah, we’d just started Apple Records, and we’d signed them. They were great guys, Pete Ham and Joey and some of the other boys, we hung out, and listened to some of the stuff they were writing. I thought, this is really good, but to get them introduced, they’re going to need a big hit - particularly in America. It’s a difficult place to break. I was in bed one night, twilighty thinking - you know, if you’re a musician it’s always going round in your head. I just got this whole idea of ‘Come And Get It’. I ran downstairs, quietly, so as not to disturb anyone, and started doing this little thing, and did it. The next day we had a Beatles session. It was right round the corner from Abbey Road, where I lived. I knew everyone was coming in at, whatever it was, 2 o’clock, so I’d gone in at half 1, because I knew the engineer would be in, Phil McDonald. Phil was there, and I did one demo. Stuck everything on, sang it, did the harmonies, finished it, The Beatles came in, and that was it, thank you. So then I played this to the guys, and they said, ok, we’ll vary this, we’ll change that, and I said no. I really don’t want you to. Listen, one track, you’ve got to do exactly the way I laid it down. The rest of the album, b-sides, everything, you do what you like.

JDB: This is your foot in the door, sort of thing?

PM: This is the thing. So they were cool, they did it, and they played it exactly.

JDB: I read, I think, that they took it later, with a bit more grace, than they did initially. And Badfinger had an amazing songwriter in Pete Ham, too.

PM: Yeah, such a tragedy, old Pete. To write ‘Without You’ and nobody knew. To this day. Everyone thinks Harry Nilsson wrote it.

JDB: Well, that’s me done. Sorry I yabbered on a bit.

PM: It’s alright. You’re Welsh.

That is McCartney's memory of every single fucking song he ever wrote. Person: "Hey Paul, how did you write that song?". Paul: (thinks) "Shit...was this the one where it came to me when I was lying in bed and I jumped up and wrote it down and went in early the next day and then John maybe added a little bit here or just changed a word...Yeah that sounds right...let's go with that."

I wrote the one bit, then I realized I needed another bit so I wrote that too. John didn't like that particular bit but I persuaded him to keep it but he did change the bit before it transitioned to the next bit.

'Rock of All Ages' is a really good boogie number. The rolling piano and the guitar stabs kind of finds them sounding kinda like the Stones/Pretty Things. Really cool 2 note guitar solos.

The late Joey Molland was perhaps regarded as the George Harrison of the group, but, seemingly less inclined to sentiment than the other band members, wrote and sang a handful of memorable songs:

I'd Die Babe
Suitcase
I Can Love You
Andy Norris

Not sure I’ve ever heard it before but holy shit, Tom Evans’ Rock n’Roll Contract from their unreleased last album, Head Firstis an absolute banger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgEgeQJyTLk

Badfinger have the single worst experience of any band in the music industry so it’s not a surprise that the lyrics are a screed against the manager who fucked then over so badly that bandmate Pete Ham wrote he hoped he would go to Hell in his suicide note.

But the performance absolutely rips and Evans’ vocal is incredible. The tune alternates between some high-energy 1964 Beatles 12-bar blues thing and White Album bits with soft melodic descending chord progressions. For the former, Evans is shrieking things like:

Smokin', chokin', drinkin', sinkin', falling over/Cokin', flyin', speedin', dyin', roll me over/Roll me over (wrapped up in a Rock 'N' Roll Contract)

(Yes, he’s saying he’ll literally be buried in the titular contract he signed)

For the latter, Evans wistfully coos lines like “You made me a slave/Whatever god gave me/You took to the grave/Now it’s gone” as the “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” chords not so subtly suggest the manager isn’t the only one headed to Hell.

Yet this thing is also loaded with massive lush vocal harmonies, drums so relentlessly thunderous they would’ve given a Moonie the shakes and some of Ham’s most understandably furious guitar breaks. Not bad for an album that was reportedly laid down in two weeks and not released until every member of the band was dead.

I’m generally a Pete Ham partisan. And far be it from me to praise yet more complaining about the music industry. But this is one of their best songs.

Maybe Moby Grape also a contender bizwise. Anyway great song, thanks!