Badfinger - Straight Up

For all the talk about the Beatles remasters, there’s a hefty amount of Apple material that could also use a quick tidying up from their original cd releases of two decades ago. Topping the list wouldn’t be a release by a former Beatle, but instead the band that seemed to be handpicked ambassadors to the Fab Four’s power pop division.

Badfinger was indeed a band that could sound remarkably similar to the Beatles, but it was 1972′s Straight Up that demonstrated how the band could actually compose material that lived up to the Beatles in terms of quality.

It’s here where you can find the band’s two most recognizable songs, “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue.” But the best thing about Straight Up is how you’ll discover that those two awesome songs are packed tightly inside a collection of equally great tunes.

It’s also impeccably sequenced, with the slow building “Take It All” introducing the album while its closer “It’s Over,” with its multi-tracked chorus and sweet slide guitar solo, appropriately wrapped up the band’s best album.

You’d never guess it, though, as Rolling Stone magazine inexplicably panned the album, deaf to Straight Up‘s pop charms and attacking the album’s lack of “rock and roll spirit.”

They’re wrong.

Straight Up has plenty of rock and roll spirit; it just happens to the spirit that doesn’t jibe with what the R.S. reviewer had in mind from a band that routinely rubbed elbows with the Beatles.

There’s “Suitcase,” the obligatory “touring sucks” song. “Sweet Tuesday Morning,” the obligatory “I’ve been all around the world but you—my lady back home—are still the apple of my eye” ballad. There’s even an eerie foreshadowing of the future financial ills (“Money”) that would plague the band and prompt half of the band’s members to take their own lives.

Yes, Badfinger was a band riddled with tragedy, and it often overshadows just how good they were during their prime. “Don’t you know there’s a song to sing / Keeping us together,” sings vocalist Pete Ham during the bridge of “Take It All,” hinting that Badfinger was still making music out of sheer joy at this point. It would be just a matter of months before they’d be writing music that faced scrutiny for its commercial potential.

With Straight Up, the band hired both a Beatles guitarist (George Harrison) and a Beatles enthusiast (Todd Rundgren) to help trim down the band’s growing repertoire to a handy dozen. But it’s the band’s own musicianship and wonderful chemistry that make Straight Up‘s twelve songs a stunning piece of power-pop and a timeless slice of post-Beatles salvos.

I played Straight Up constantly growing up. It caught the attention of my babysitter, who tried to get me to trade it for John Lennon‘s Mind Games.

I refused; Straight Up stands tall against even the Beatles’ solo efforts while reaching for the band’s lofty mid-period gems.

Guess I got what I deserved...

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Happy Birthday, Tom Evans

If there ever was a band that seemed to be unfairly cursed, it would have to be Badfinger. They were a band of enormous talent and potential, only to be doomed with poor management deals and pointless side-issues that distracted the members from making some of the best power pop music known to man.
They signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records, they were provided with their first hit single courtesy of Paul McCartney, they shared the stage for The Concert For Bangla Desh, and they seemed poised to become the legitimate heirs to the The Beatles.
It all came crashing down on April 24, 1975 when Badfinger leader Pete Ham hung himself in the garage of his London home.
Tom Evans, Ham’s bandmate was born 60 years ago today. He helped Pete co-write one of the band’s most well known tracks, “Without You” (later covered by Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey) and was tapped by McCartney himself to sing lead on “Come And Get It.”
After Ham’s suicide, Tom Evans and Joey Molland decided to restart Badfinger as a duo.
My Dad, knowing that I liked Badfinger, got me one of these “comeback” album for Christmas one year. Airwaves sounded nothing like the Badfinger of old and the band was quickly dropped by Elektra records.
Strangely, the band signed to another label and attempted one more follow up in 1981. After it became clear that the band wouldn’t regain the heights of the early 70’s, Tom Evans split with Joey Molland and the two started separate versions of Badfinger.
The two never were able to regain their friendship; Molland argued with Evans concerning the royalties of “Without You” (a song that Molland had little creative input on) and it prompted the already financially strapped Evans to go in his own backyard and hang himself from a tree.
Molland continued on using the Badfinger name and toured around the Midwest during the summer to take advantage of the fair and festival circuit. They (or he, in this case) played around the Southeast Iowa area a few times to little attendance; it seemed that Molland was a little tipsy and trying to take advantage of the name during a time when Ryko was releasing a live Badfinger album.
The death of Tom Evans is an eerie event. Both he and Ham were caught in the middle of financial disputes and both used hanging as methods on which they left the planet. I don’t remember the slightest mention of Evans’ death in 1983 but I remember specifically thinking how crazy it was once I did read about that half….HALF of the band Badfinger killed themselves via hanging.
How crazy is that?
And how crazy is it that they’re not revered today as much as they should be. After all, any band that had access to The Beatles’ inner circle couldn’t be all that bad.