Badfinger
Badfinger were a
rock/
pop (or '
power pop') band formed in
Swansea, Wales in 1965. During the early
1970s the band was touted as the
heir apparent to
The Beatles in part because of their close working relationship with the 'Fab Four'. Badfinger's meteoric rise and demise became a cautionary tale for the rock music industry.
Badfinger originated with guitarist/keyboardist
Pete Ham and a group called
The Panthers. Ham, Ron Griffiths (
bass guitar) and David 'Dai' Jenkins (
guitar) went on to form
The Iveys, named after a street in Swansea, Wales (and a pun on influential
British Invasion group,
The Hollies). By
1965, Mike Gibbins had joined as the
drummer, and the band began playing locally with such groups as the
Spencer Davis Group,
The Who,
The Moody Blues and
The Yardbirds. The following year, The Iveys moved their base to
London, performing both for
David Garrick, a local singer, and as a solo act. In
1967, David 'Dai' Jenkins left, and was replaced by Liverpudlian guitarist Tom Evans.
|
Ron Griffiths, Mike Gibbins, Pete Ham and Tom Evans on the cover of their first album, Maybe Tomorrow, released in 1969 |
This line-up signed with
The Beatles' label
Apple Records in
1968. The Iveys recorded and released a single, "Maybe Tomorrow", in 1968, and an album of the same name was issued in some European countries, and Japan, in
1969. (See
Maybe Tomorrow).
Deciding a style and name change were both needed, The Iveys changed from the '60s pop sound to that of a rock band and changed their band name to Badfinger, passing on McCartney's suggested 'Home' and Lennon's suggestion of 'Prix'. Instead, The Iveys chose another Beatles-inspired moniker, 'Badfinger', as suggested by Apple's Neil Aspinal. This was a reference to 'Bad Finger Boogie', an early working title of "
With a Little Help from My Friends" (from
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).
Paul McCartney wrote the band's breakthrough song, "
Come and Get It", intended for the soundtrack to
The Magic Christian. It was a hit throughout
Europe and the United States, where it reached the Billboard Top 10. During the recording session for "Come And Get It", original compositions of "Rock of All Ages" and "Carry On 'Till Tomorrow" were recorded. These three songs appeared in the film and soundtrack album. Badfinger's own album,
Magic Christian Music, was released several months after the film's premiere.
Griffiths left the band in the fall of 1969. After his departure the band reorganized, with Evans moving to the bass-guitar position and adding Liverpudlian guitarist
Joey Molland in December of 1969.
In late
1970, Badfinger released the album
No Dice. It was accompanied by the single "
No Matter What," which also reached the Billboard Top 10. More notably, another track from
No Dice, "
Without You", became a bigger hit when recorded by
Harry Nilsson in 1971 (where it reached the Billboard #1 slot) and
Mariah Carey in 1993.
Badfinger subsequently enlisted a New York business manager named
Stan Polley. Although Polley's reputation was well presented to Badfinger at the time, his connections to organized crime and dubious financial arrangements would only become clear to the group in later years. Badfinger toured in America, where their debut album had been well-received, but the group still saw relatively little money and felt like they were living in the shadow of The Beatles. Many music critics of the time unfavorably compared Badfinger and The Beatles, which haunted the group for years to come.
The band's popularity began
increasing exponentially. The band recorded many sessions for fellow Apple Records labelmates, notably playing acoustic guitar on tracks from
George Harrison's "
All Things Must Pass" and providing backing vocals on
Ringo Starr's single "It Don't Come Easy". Evans and Molland performed on
John Lennon's album
Imagine, and all four members of the band appeared as backup musicians throughout George Harrison's
Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971.
Badfinger's second album,
Straight Up, was released in
1972, and spawned two successful singles, "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue."
George Harrison and
Todd Rundgren took production credits on the LP, Badfinger's most commercially successful record, with Harrison and Ham trading slide guitar solos on "Day After Day". ' Decades later,
Straight Up ranked as the most-requested CD release among out-of-print albums in a readers poll for
Goldmine magazine.
Unfortunately,
Straight Up was apparently poorly marketed in the UK with radio airplay hampered by poor singles distribution. Apple Records' finances in the post-Beatles era were also in chaos and Polley reportedly did not negotiate well with
Apple President
Allen Klein. Even more egregious for the band's fortunes, Stan Polley had been exploiting artists he had contracts with, including misrepresenting his management of client
Al Kooper.
The sessions for what would be Badfinger's fourth and last album for Apple,
Ass, began in September 1972 at
Apple's basement studios at 3,
Savile Row and would continue at five recording studios over the next nine months. During the recording of "Ass", Polley autonomously negotiated a multi-million dollar deal with
Warner Brothers Records. The album's release would be held up until February 1974 by legal proceedings which followed Badfinger's departure from Apple. "Ass" featured a satirical record cover of a donkey (the band) following a carrot on a stick (Polley's promises to the band) - a theme more recently purloined by the American band
Styx. "Ass" and its accompanying single, "Apple Of My Eye," failed to reach the
Billboard Top 100.
Merely six weeks after the
Ass sessions were completed, Badfinger entered the studio to begin recording the material for their first Warner Brothers release,
Badfinger (the intended Warner title,
For Love Or Money, was accidentally excluded). Neither
Ass nor
Badfinger were well-received by music critics.
Badfinger and its two accompanying singles, "Love Is Easy" (UK) and "I Miss You" (US), also did not reach chart positions.
Badfinger did manage to maintain U.S. fan support as a result of several American tours. A performance at the Cleveland Agora in March 1974 was released on CD in 1990, although it became a subject of controversy because of Molland's later studio overdubbing.
Following the group's last American tour, Badfinger recorded
Wish You Were Here at the
Caribou Ranch recording studio in Colorado. Unlike their previous two albums, Badfinger's
Wish You Were Here was well received by
Rolling Stone Magazine and other periodicals upon its release in
1974.
Internal friction continued to mount within Badfinger. Molland's wife began taking a more assertive role in the band's politics, advocating a complete break with Polley. This advocacy did not endear her to Molland's bandmates, particularly Ham. Just before the band began rehearsals for an October 1974 UK tour, Ham suddenly quit the band during a management meeting. Ham was temporarily replaced by guitarist/keyboardist
Bob Jackson. However, just before the 1974 tour began, Ham rejoined the group. Jackson remained as full-time keyboardist, making the band a short-lived quintet. After the tour, Molland quit the band over disagreements about how to handle the management situation.
With Polley's urging, Ham, Evans, Jackson and Gibbins reconvened to record a quick follow-up to
Wish You Were Here shortly after it was released. The album,
Head First, was recorded in two weeks at Apple Studios in December 1974. Warner Brothers' publishing division refused to accept the
Head First tapes because of a pending lawsuit against Polley.
Head First became lost in more than a figurative sense, since Warner Brothers Records (which did accept the tapes) never returned the unpublished 16-track masters to the band. Bob Jackson, however, had retained a copy of a rough mix completed by engineer Phil McDonald on
15 December 1974. This tape is the basis of the 2000 Snapper release of Head First. In reference, biographer Dan Matovina
wrote in detail about the events surrounding Head First.
The lawsuit launched by Warner Brothers' publishing division against Badfinger Enterprises, Inc. in December 1974 would work its way through California courts until 1979. At issue was the disappearance of several thousand dollars of publishing escrow money which Polley had access to. When Warner Brothers asked about the money's whereabouts, Polley refused to answer the company. As a result of this legal fray,
Wish You Were Here and all other Badfinger releases by Warner Brothers were stopped and shelved in early 1975. Coupled with the termination of Badfinger's Apple contracts, there soon was no Badfinger product available on record store shelves anywhere.
On
24 April 1975, Pete Ham, financially broken and despairing, hanged himself in his garage studio in Surrey. His suicide note, addressed to his girlfriend and her son, blamed
Stan Polley for his misfortunes:
Anne, I love you. Blair, I love you. I will not be allowed to love and trust everybody. This is better. Pete. P.S. Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me." Ham's daughter was born one month after his death.
Badfinger disbanded after Ham's death, and for years afterward, lawsuits and bankruptcies haunted the members on both sides of the Atlantic. Evans and Molland were both unsuccessful in separate new band projects, and by 1977 they were both out of the music business; Molland was laying carpet while Evans worked as a plumber. That year guitarist Joe Tansin recruited Molland for a new band he was putting together, and when they needed a bass player Molland suggested Evans. Pressure from their management led to the decision to call themselves Badfinger, and together they recorded their "comeback" album
Airwaves which was released in
1979. Tansin left the band immediately after the album was recorded.
To promote the album, Molland and Evans recruited Peter Clarke (
Stealers Wheel) on drums and
Tony Kaye (
Yes) on keyboards. The single "Love is Gonna Come At Last" reached #69 in the US. They recorded and released a second album,
Say No More in
1981, with that year's touring line-up. This LP was distributed on a much smaller independent record label with its single. "Hold On" reaching #56 in the US.
Ultimately, Evans and Molland split acrimoniously in
1981. During
1982 and
1983, they briefly operated rival bands, both using the name Badfinger. On
19 November,
1983, Evans and Molland argued on the telephone, reportedly about the publishing royalty division of the song "
Without You." Following the argument, Evans hanged himself in the garden at his home in an eerie replay of Pete Ham's 1975 death scene.
In August
1984, Molland, Gibbins and Jackson played a small number of U.S. dates as part of a 20th Anniversary of the British Invasion in America package tour. In 1986, Molland and Gibbins reformed Badfinger again as a touring band until Gibbins left for good in 1990. Molland continues to tour as Joey Molland's Badfinger while recording several solo albums. In
1997 and
1999, posthumous collections of Ham home recordings were released on separate CDs.
Mike Gibbins died in his sleep at his home in Oviedo,
Florida on
October 4,
2005. He was 56. He is survived by his wife, as well as three sons, who perform together in the Orlando based rock band the Seven Sisters. The City of Swansea planned a museum exhibit commemorating the Welsh members of Badfinger. A Badfinger convention in Swansea in June 2006 brought together Jackson, Griffiths, and several surviving family members of Ham, Evans and Gibbins.
Evans and Jackson formed The Dodgers after Ham's death in 1975. Molland formed Natural Gas with former
Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley in 1976, and Mike Gibbins went into session work, appearing on
Bonnie Tyler's 1978 hit single "It's A Heartache."
In
1995, Jackson joined
The Fortunes, a 1960s English group still playing on the nostalgia circuit.
Molland currently lives in the
Minnetonka area of
Minnesota and performs frequently in the
United States as "Joey Molland's Badfinger."
*
The Iveys -
Maybe Tomorrow (
1969)
Magic Christian Music (
1970)
No Dice (
1970)
Straight Up (
1971)
Ass (
1973)
Badfinger (
1974)
Wish You Were Here (
1974)
Airwaves (
1979)
Say No More (
1981)
Head First (
2000)
*Dan Matovina:
Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger. ISBN 0965712214
*Dan Matovina:
Badfinger Biography Pages*Tom Brennan:
Badfinger Library*
BBC - Badfinger biography*
Joey Molland Official website*
Mike Gibbins Official website*
Badfinger Web Ring Page - Links to ALL the Badfinger Web Pages*
Badfinger Wish You Were Here*
Badfinger Airwaves: 24 Hour Badfinger Internet Radio*
BBC News - "Tragedy-hit group's drummer dies"
