Badfinger: BBC In Concert 1972-73

BADFINGER: BBC IN CONCERT (1972-73; 1997)

1) Better Days; 2) Only You Know And I Know; 3) We're For The Dark; 4) Sweet Tuesday Morning; 5) Feelin' Al­right; 6) Take It All; 7) Suitcase; 8) Love Is Easy; 9) Blind Owl; 10) Constitution; 11) Icicles; 12) Matted Spam; 13) Suitcase; 14) I Can't Take It; 15) Come And Get It.

And we finish off our exciting journey with the world's unluckiest rock band by dropping a few words on yet another attempt at a live album, and yet another somewhat unlucky one, although it is by far the best one available — certainly a huge improvement over the horrendous plastic surgery of  Day After Day.

Badfinger did three major recording sessions for the BBC services, one of them apparently lost and two others saved. Both of the saved ones were recorded in a real live setting, at the Paris The­atre in London, with a year's interval in between, and both are well representative of Badfinger's «authentic» live act. The sound, unfortunately, seems to have been taken from soiled copies, and leaves a lot to be desired, especially for the first show, where the vocals sometimes barely ma­nage to rise above the noise level, and the noise level is sometimes a little overwhelming due to the lack of proper instrument separation. But — hey, still beats an electronic drum overdub.

On the other hand, here, at last, we get to fully appreciate Badfinger as a sweaty, hard-rocking band onstage — and not just hard-rocking, but intentionally and consciously ignoring all of the hits in favor of extended instrumental jams and crunchified LP-only tracks. Each of the two sets includes up to not more than two «light» numbers (ʽWe're For The Darkʼ / ʽSweet Tuesday Mor­ningʼ and ʽIciclesʼ); everything else is distor­ted, loud, heavy, well in the scheme of the early 1970s hard rock scene à la Free and Grand Funk Railroad (as distinguished from the darker «heavy metal» scene of Led Zep and Sabbath).

In a total state of defiance, two of the first seven numbers even happen to be Dave Mason / Traf­fic covers — six minutes of ʽOnly You Know And I Knowʼ and nine minutes of ʽFeelin' Alrightʼ, although, frankly, the songs are just used as excuses for jamming, as is ʽSuitcaseʼ, the only num­ber here that was played at both shows. And the jamming is predictably passable — Pete and Joey do all they can to create a good mix of their own pop melodicity and the old stock of rock and roll clichés, but they cannot keep it interesting for longer than a minute or two, and very quickly start going in circles (on ʽSuitcaseʼ, actually, they seem to be going in circles for almost the entire duration — hey guys, if you can't do better than get stuck with the same riff for bar after bar after bar, it might be a good idea to stop and try something else).

Much is forgotten for the sheer kick-ass power of the bookmarks — ʽBetter Daysʼ, sped up and grittified, is as energetic a lead-in as ʽI Can't Take Itʼ is a lead-out. In general, the shorter the per­formance, the higher the resonance: in the overall heated context, even the funky ʽMatted Spamʼ, which was hardly a highlight on Badfinger, feels right at home in between the metallicized ʽCon­stitutionʼ and ʽSuitcaseʼ.

Cutting it short, these sessions do finally prove that, with proper planning and effort, Badfinger could have easily landed themselves a fine, respectable live album that could hold its own next to all the biggies of the era. Could, but did not. In order to truly qualify, these BBC sessions should have (a) belonged to a single, coherent show (because, what, two versions of ʽSuitcaseʼ? Ple­ase!); (b) cut down on the jamming (the six fast minutes of ʽOnly You Know And I Knowʼ are perfectly enough, completely lay out all the instrumental techniques of all the band members and do not require to be further supported by the nine slower minutes of ʽFeelin' Alrightʼ); (c) included a few of the hits — not ʽDay After Dayʼ, perhaps, which never worked well live, but why not ʽNo Mat­ter Whatʼ?; (d) been recorded, or preserved, in better quality. Satisfy all these conditions, and you get yourself a platter worthy of a... well, of a T. Rex or a David Bowie live album, at the very least (we won't be pushing things too far here).

So it's a damn appropriate way to finish up the section — show just one more thing that Badfin­ger could have been, yet never became. In the end, their legacy for the wide crowds consists of Mariah Carey's version of ʽWithout Youʼ (and she actually learnt the song from Harry Nilsson and pro­bably does not know the real authors herself up to this day), and their legacy for the nar­row crowds mainly consists of three old power pop hits (ʽNo Matter Whatʼ / ʽBaby Blueʼ / ʽDay After Dayʼ) plus, maybe, ʽCome And Get Itʼ (a Top Of The Pops version of which is, by the way, included on this BBC disc as a small bonus to fill up empty CD space). Is this explainable? Yes. Understandable? By all means. Justified? No way. If you haven't already done it, go buy a Bad­finger CD. Do good by Petera Ham, who did not even get to see her dad.

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Badfinger: Day After Day

BADFINGER: DAY AFTER DAY (1974; 1990)

1) Sometimes; 2) I Don't Mind; 3) Blind Owl; 4) Give It Up; 5) Constitution; 6) Baby Blue; 7) Name Of The Game; 8) Day After Day; 9) Timeless; 10) I Can't Take It.

Amazingly, Badfinger's bad luck went on to hold the band in a tight grip even long after all the breakups and suicides. By all means, they were quite a decent little band when playing live; their goal was to establish themselves as an authentic «rock» act onstage — developing and practicing a much more rough and aggressive sound than the cuddly power pop of their studio records — and in that, they succeeded. Of course, nobody is going to mention Badfinger while listing the most obvious «gritty rock'n'roll acts» of the early 1970s, but the very fact that they can please a closet headbanger like myself (unlike, say, The Beach Boys, who were never truly able to gene­rate a genuine rocking vibe during their live shows, even though they did try occasionally) has to count for something.

Problem is, the band never got around to releasing a proper live album in their lifetime — and by the time public interest in Badfinger slowly started to grow for nostalgic reasons, most of the ar­chival recordings were either lost, deteriorated, or turned out to be unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons. In 1989, Joey Molland got hold of the tapes recorded at the Agora venue in Cleveland on the band's 1974 American tour and offered them for official release on the Rykodisc label. Clai­ming, however, that the tapes were all but unusable in their original state, he went on to overdub most of his vocals... most of his guitars... some of Pete's guitars... a bit of the bass... and... well, you know. Even today, judging by some of the reviews, people still wreck their brains trying to understand if the whole thing can officially count as a real Badfinger live album, by seeking out old bootlegs  and running comparative tests.

The absolute worst thing, however, and one that really brings Day After Day close to unlistena­ble, is that Joey slapped on a thick electronic echo on all the drumwork. Maybe he wanted to have it out with Mike Gibbins, or perhaps the drum mike was indeed dysfunctional that evening, but, anyway, the result is honestly godawful: first thing you get when ʽSometimesʼ hit the speakers is this moronic BASH-BASH-BASH — and a cognitive dissonance: this is Badfinger, right? how do they get this stereotypically Eighties sound in friggin' 1974?

The effect is hard — nay, almost impossible — to overcome; the ridiculousness of the situation completely bars Day After Day from any sense of respectability. Which is sad, because the band happened to be in fine form that evening. The setlist was rather evenly spread between all the al­bums from No Dice and up to Badfinger, omitted some of the most obvious hits (ʽNo Matter Whatʼ) in favor of a few dark horses (ʽBlind Owlʼ), and the rest of the power-pop numbers were sped up, distorted, and «crunch-formed» for extra rock'n'roll excitement, bridging the gap be­tween formerly cuddly songs like ʽI Can't Take Itʼ and originally hard-rocking material like ʽCon­stitutionʼ. Quite a solid bridge, as a matter of fact.

ʽDay After Dayʼ, deprived of its piano flourishes for technical reasons, and substituting a sincere, but all too fragile and thin slide solo for the classic bit of Ham/Harrison interplay, is the only ma­jor disappointment (apparently, the band itself understood that and refused to play the song live for several years, before finally succumbing to the temptation in 1974). Minor disappointments include the lengthy jams at the end of ʽGive It Upʼ and ʽTimelessʼ: Ham and Molland are good guitarists, capable of emotionally charged lead work in the studio, but their improvisations tend to fall back on perfunctory blues-rock clichés, and there is really no reason why you should listen to a made-on-the-spot long long long solo by Badfinger instead of, say, Jimmy Page or Santana.

Still, in general, these crunchy re-modelings are quite headbang-worthy, and do a good job in de­molishing the myth of Badfinger as the «exemplary innocent wimps» of the power-pop move­ment. And it would have been a nice, recommendable album, if not for the fact that Joey decided to take care of it in 1989. Had he waited for an extra decade or so, with electronic drums finally going out of fashion and sound-cleaning technologies up a notch, Day After Day could have over­turned the bad luck streak. As it is — who knows where those tapes are now, or really just gives a damn about a better remastering job?

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Badfinger (Iveys): Maybe Tomorrow

THE IVEYS: MAYBE TOMORROW (1969)

1) See-Saw, Granpa; 2) Beautiful And Blue; 3) Dear Angie; 4) Think About The Good Times; 5) Yesterday Ain't Coming Back; 6) Fisherman; 7) Maybe Tomorrow; 8) Sali Bloo; 9) Angelique; 10) I'm In Love; 11) They're Knock­ing Down Our Home; 12) I've Been Waiting; 13*) No Escaping Your Love; 14*) Mrs. Jones; 15*) And Her Daddy's A Millionnaire; 16*) Looking For My Baby.

Curiously enough, Pete Ham's Badfinger actually spent more time playing as The Iveys — they were known under that name as early as 1964, when they were still mostly doing small gigs around Swansea, although back then, Ham was still the only member to remain as part of the clas­sic lineup (it is a bit ironic, though, that he'd actually been out on the scene almost as long as the band itself that was supposed to nurture and foster Badfinger). But throughout the mid-1960s, the band never found its proper way to a recording contract until the (mis)fortune of contacting Apple Records; and as «The Iveys», they only released one sole LP, which, furthermore, never even had any UK or US distribution, being limited to Germany, Italy, and Japan. (Yes, Badfin­ger's streak of bad luck was already there even before they got themselves their name).

There is not much to say about this album, really, since seven of its twelve songs would eventual­ly be incorporated into Magic Christian Music, undergoing only a cosmetic remixing job along the way. The very fact that it did get a limited CD release in the early 2000s, remastered, repack­aged, and with bonus tracks, is somewhat surprising and goes to show the serious amount of re­verence for these guys that some music lovers still hold (good for them). On the other hand, the release was not a total waste, since it adds one more informative stroke to the exciting story of Badfinger's musical evolution.

It is usually assumed that, in creating the running order for Magic Christian Music, the band took what they considered the best of these early Iveys tunes, and left out the dreck. This is not quite the case — the «rejects» were not awful, they just represented additional directions that they were unable to explore properly and convincingly. Or at least, they themselves must have thought that at the time.

Probably the most telling example is Ham's «epic» mindset on ʽI've Been Waitingʼ, an experi­ment in heavy progressive blues-rock à la early Deep Purple / Led Zeppelin, with lengthy distor­ted guitar solos, brutally aggressive drum bashing, and an acid smokescreen — the new-look Bad­finger wouldn't get thus «terrifying» again until Ass. But they do not have a chance to leave their own imprint on the basic melody here (borrowed firstand off ʽMilk Cow Bluesʼ), and the heavy-psycho instrumental jam section can hardly be too exciting if it competes in the same line of duty as, say, Led Zep's ʽDazed And Confusedʼ.

Other unlucky rejects include: ʽYesterday Ain't Coming Backʼ — a loud, anthemic ballad with a quintessential «UK Nuggets» spirit, maybe discarded because it reminded them too much of all those other Brit bands; ʽThink About The Good Timesʼ — an upbeat, but slightly «hushed» pop-rocker with a funky wah-wah guitar arrangement, maybe discarded because they eventually got afraid of the wah-wah (again, the only time they would later use that effect freely would be on the heavy arrangements for Ass); ʽSali Blooʼ — lumbering blues-pop that is neither heavy enough nor memorable; and the triumphant power-pop opener ʽSee-Saw, Granpaʼ, which they could, per­haps, see as way too simplistic and happy (but maybe not).

(The CD reissue adds a few early outtakes as well, even more heavily derivative of contemporary acts — The Kinks, The Move, The Small Faces etc. — all of them kinda cute and cuddly, but the final denominator still remains Manfred Mann: dedicated copycat practice without a face of one's own, only The Iveys happened to lack Manfred Mann's sole serious advantage — musical profes­sionalism. They did well to restrict these harmless, forgettable pastiches to B-sides).

All in all, you are not missing much if you already have Magic Christian Music, but you will not harm your ears, either, if you take a brief listen to these scattered remainders. It doesn't hurt to condescendingly pat somebody on the head for diligently doing their homework on Led Zep and Manfred Mann, and it is also fun to realize that, before getting into real close contact with The Beatles, The Iveys never even attempted to model their sound upon the Fab Four — apparently, there must have been some heavy «Beatles-conditioning» in the air of Apple Records.

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Badfinger: Say No More

BADFINGER: SAY NO MORE (1981)

1) I Got You; 2) Come On; 3) Hold On; 4) Because; 5) Rock'n'Roll Contract; 6) Passin' Time; 7) Three Time Loser; 8) Too Hung Up On You; 9) Crocadillo; 10) No More.

Badfinger's last album was recorded throughout 1979 and 1980 with more lineup changes: no Joe Tansin, a new guitarist in Glenn Sherba, a new drummer in Richard Bryans, and a new keyboard player in ex-Yes member Tony Kaye. Since the band was quite heavily touring at the time, the lineup turned out to be a bit more stable, tight, and focused, and Say No More certainly sounds much more like a «rock'n'roll band» product than the shiny gloss of Airwaves. But this is where the good news ends (provided this is good news at all).

Because, honestly, Say No More must have been designed as a conscious «antidote» to the gloss, sweetness, and poppiness of Airwaves. Everything here is loud, upbeat, more often fast than not, and usually relying on keyboards and guitars battling it out in a melodic, but «aggressive» man­ner. In other words, this is Badfinger trying to be what Badfinger never were — a muscular, an­ti-sentimental, sweat-pumpin' pop-rock band and just about nothing else. Not a single ballad in the pot. Not that Molland and Evans were inept at rocking out, of course; it's just that their melody skills rarely stood out whenever they began to «crank it up».

Here, for instance, despite the relentlessly bash-it-out attitude, there are next to no memorable rock'n'roll riffs, apart from a few basic chord sequences nicked off past experiences: everything that could be worth something is invested in the pop choruses. The rock'n'roll attitude seems to be all-pervasive here for one reason only: to prove Badfinger's ongoing «authenticity» — none of that commercial shit, none of those New-Wave-style gimmicks, just good old power-pop straight out of 1971 and forget about the last ten years. (Renegade Tony Kaye does manage to slip in a few new-fangled synthesizer solos and effects from time to time, but never long enough to make the listener suspect «relevance in a modern world» within even a single song).

The vocals are sweet enough, though, and Say No More is never a total waste. The single ʽHold Onʼ, a last-minute collaboration between Evans and Tansin, even made a tiny bump on the charts — for a good reason, since Tom's singing here is excellent; it captures a shade of Badfinger's trademark romantic chivalry with some nifty mood-sequencing (going from calm, unexciting se­renading to the heated-up passion of the chorus and then to the seductive falsetto resolution of "baby hold on..." — quite a respectable example of songwriting as far as I am concerned). ʽToo Hung Up On Youʼ is also a nice love confession, but with nowhere near as much personality as there is on ʽHold Onʼ (maybe it's all the double-tracking that spoils the effect).

The basic rock'n'roll stuff, in comparison, just sounds tasty for 1981, a year in which basic rock'n'roll stuff mattered about as much as Doris Day (maybe even less); thirty years on, there is little reason to listen to ʽI Got Youʼ or ʽCome Onʼ if you can just throw on some vintage Stones or T. Rex in­stead. Still, even despite the garage rock clichés of the former and the wannabe-Slade attitude of the latter, the only real failure is the ridiculously titled and ridiculously delivered ʽCro­cadilloʼ, which they try to do with a bit of a «pop-metal» flair: a big mistake on Evans' part, since playing it really down-and-dirty is a no-go for these guys.

There is also a remake here of ʽRock'n'Roll Contractʼ which, as we now know, was originally re­corded in 1974 for Head First; as could be expected, the song is tightened and sped up, and now features longer and leaner guitar solos, yet its gloomy pathos still feels a bit out of place on this generally cheerful record. As we now know, too, it wasn't really out of place, given that, in two years time, Evans would be joining Pete Ham in the noose; but on the whole, Say No More is even less indicative of the tragedy to come than Wish You Were Here and Head First were in­dicative of the upcoming suicide #1.

Fact is, as troubled as Badfinger's life was, they rarely let their everyday personal problems in­fluence the atmosphere of the music — unlike, say, Fleetwood Mac, theirs was the old-time ide­o­logy of keeping their «routine» feelings apart from the artistry, and leaving most of their troubles behind the doors of the recording studio (even on Wish You Were Here, most of the real-life in­spiration they brought with them was based on positive, not negative emotions, ʽGot To Get Out Of Hereʼ being the major exception). Of course, some would condemn this as artistic insincerity, while others might praise it as a sign of lack of vanity («ain't it just grand, the way I can make myself suffer and show it so well on my recordings?»).

But, in reality, it's just whatever works for you that really matters. And Say No More does not work all that well, I'm afraid. Not a bad album by any means, but doomed from the start by the wrongly chosen direction, it now has to formally count as the band's «swan song» while quali­fying more for a sparrow rather than swan level. It's one of those moments where I wish time would loop the wrong way and let Say No More be the first, «tentative» effort of the two reunion albums and Airwaves be the second — because, despite all the gloss and Joe Tansin, Airwaves has more of the old Badfinger spirit in it.

On the other hand, who knows how Molland and Evans would have fared in the future, had Tom not been driven by fate to the same level of insanity as Pete. Fantasizing about a whole string of Say No More-like albums throughout the 1980s actually makes me feel happier than listening to one single Say No More — the way these guys went about their music in 1979-81 makes one suspect that they might have withstood the synthesizer / drum machine onslaught, had they ma­naged to hold on to a record contract. But maybe that was impossible even in theory, and with the Eighties upon us, Badfinger just had to finally go down, once and for all. Maybe, had they not reunited to take this last chance, Evans would still be alive and well. Maybe it was all a very bad idea. Still, something deep inside me says that it is a nice thing, after all, to have these two al­bums as a last-minute, half-hearted souvenir — Badfinger have always had this simple magic aura about them, such that even their worst records can still sound endearing... under certain cir­cumstances, at least.

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Badfinger: Airwaves

BADFINGER: AIRWAVES (1979)

1) Airwaves; 2) Look Out California; 3) Lost Inside Your Love; 4) Love Is Gonna Come At Last; 5) Sympathy; 6) The Winner; 7) The Dreamer; 8) Come Down Hard; 9) Sail Away; 10*) One More Time; 11*) Send Me Your Love; 12*) Steal My Heart; 13*) Love Can't Hide; 14*) Can You Feel The Rain.

Slay me on the spot, but I am really somewhat fond of this one, in spite of all the objective pres­sure that pressures me into stoning it together with the rest of the critically-minded crowds. Yes, the obligatory first impression is that this is a «Badfin­ger» album in name only, one of those suspicious cases when a brand is resus­ci­tated mostly for commercial reasons. The whole thing was not intended to be a reunion — it just so happened that Joey Molland, in yet another of several failed attempts to assemble a new band, hooked up with Evans, among other guys who never had anything to do with Badfinger, and when Elektra Re­cords saw two of Badfinger's principal songwriters working together again, guess what the reac­tion was? Never mind the fact that, by 1979, most of the public's memories of Badfinger had been completely erased — here was at least a little something to latch on to.

It is true that Badfinger was not exclusively Pete Ham's backing band: both Evans and Molland contributed mightily to the original music and image, and one could theoretically imagine the two trying to resuscitate and preserve the original spirit. That is, however, not the case with Airwaves. First, much of it was done with the active participation of a third creative member, guitarist and vocalist Joe Tansin, whose songwriting and arranging techniques were seemingly raised not on the Beatles, but rather on mid-1970's dance hits, ballads, and MOR «classics».

Second, Molland and Evans themselves are trying to bring their sound more in line with late-1970's «standards» of power-pop. They completely ignore any punk/New Wave innovations of the past few years — the backbone of ʽLook Out Californiaʼ, opening the album, is so defiantly Chuck Berry-esque that it ain't even funny — and that may be a plus, because a Badfinger taking lessons from Blondie or the Cars sounds like a miserable idea. But, on the other hand, this does not prevent the cur­rent Badfinger incarnation from taking extra lessons not only from Cheap Trick, but maybe even from... Billy Joel? At any rate, it all sounds very much like clean-shaven, well-meaning, slick, glossy, generic mid-1970s pop.

Worst of all, I like it. Behind all the gloss lies a bunch of well-crafted hooks, memorable melodies and even some genuinely resonating emotional content. Joe Tansin is responsible for the two weakest numbers — the «heavy» rockers ʽWinnerʼ and ʽSympathyʼ, combining gruff distorted riffs with dance beats, keyboards, and strings in a loud show of nothing in particular (although even under these conditions, there is still some nice jerky tension in ʽSympathyʼ). But Evans and Molland manage to stuff this new formula with plenty of fresh meat.

Molland's ʽLove Is Gonna Come At Lastʼ was the right choice for a single, and it even made a brief chart appearance (#69 on the US charts wasn't so bad, considering the band's past reputation of «commercial poison») — dominated by a fabulous slide guitar riff on top of an old-timey jangle pattern, but with a modernistic-mainstreamish hook in the chorus (so it sounds a little like ABBA, what's really wrong with that?). Evans' sentimental piano ballad ʽLost Inside Your Loveʼ is even better — it's as if he took the whole «Badfinger reincarnation» thing really seriously, and tried here to compensate for the lack of Pete Ham by coming up with something comparable in sheer vulnerability: his "what can I say, what can I do..." is a genuine tugger and ranks among the band's finest moments of soulful purity, whatever that might mean.

Then, on side B, Joey contributes the excellent ʽThe Dreamerʼ, a big lump of power chords, lush piano, and romantic strings, and the mediocre ʽCome Down Hardʼ, an even bigger lump of power chords that uses the mean trick of double-tracking its rhythm guitar parts to imitate brawn and hooks; and Evans brings things to a close with the cozy McCartney-esque piano balladry of ʽSail Awayʼ... yes, eight songs in all, not counting the brief acoustic intro (title track), but for a «B-quality» record like this, thirty minutes seems just all right anyway.

At the end of the day, Airwaves still is, in some way, a Badfinger album — just as it was with the band's output in the early 1970s, they are modifying their sound to «suit the times», but they still never end up suiting the times because they never go all the way. Behind all the production gloss we still see Tom Evans, the charming, idealistic small town bumpkin, and Joey Molland, the slightly snub-nosed street punk, not having altered their original personalities one bit. As usual, there are hits and misses — hardly atypical for even the best Badfinger records — but the hits are strong enough to keep the album in a modestly respectable position in the catalog. Thumbs up.

PS. Please keep in mind that the five bonus tracks, even though they do a fine job of beefing up the album's length, should be kept separate — all of them are Joe Tansin songs, with the first three recorded by the man solo in the mid-Eighties (the only reason they are here is that they were allegedly written, not recorded, during the Airwaves sessions). Most are power ballads or synth-pop tunes, and ʽSend Me Your Loveʼ sounds bit-by-bit like something off a Christine McVie solo album, if you need a guideline. Skippable.

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Badfinger: Head First

BADFINGER: HEAD FIRST (1974; 2000)

1) Lay Me Down; 2) Hey, Mr. Manager; 3) Keep Believing; 4) Passed Fast; 5) Rock'n'Roll Contract; 6) Saville Row; 7) Moonshine; 8) Back Again; 9) Turn Around; 10) Rockin' Machine.

I really should be doing this in the «Addenda» section, but this album almost made it on the store shelves. Almost, that is, before Warner Bros. suspected that the band's manager Stan Polley was stealing funds (actually, Badfinger themselves suspected the same, but for whatever reason War­ners sued both Polley and Badfinger) and, over the course of the accident, rejected the completed album. The master tapes were subsequently left to rot, and were never recovered, so this particu­lar Head First, finally out with a twenty-five year retardation, has been reconstructed from rough mixes (so that one can only guess what the actual ʽSaville Rowʼ must have looked like: this track here is only thirty six seconds long, an atmospheric, artsy keyboard-based introduction that fades away before you can even try guessing where it might lead).

Head First was cut in two weeks over a focused work period in December 1974 — an admirable feat, actually, considering the heavy blow that befell the band with the withdrawal of Wish You Were Here, the subsequent resignation of Pete Ham (replaced by Bob Jackson), the subsequent return of Pete Ham (because Warners were not willing to work with the band without Pete), and the subsequent resignation of Molland. Under such circumstances, you'd normally expect either a disaster or a masterpiece — but Head First is neither. Maybe the master tapes, had they survived, could produce a different impression, yet I somehow doubt it.

Just like in the days of Ass, Pete is keeping his head down here. He gets the usual honor of open­ing the album, and ʽLay Me Downʼ is a respectable power-popper, but without a particularly me­morable or emotional riff to kick it up to the skies of ʽNo Matter Whatʼ or even ʽJust A Chanceʼ, and the nagging chorus of "need your loving, need your loving, need your loving, it's everything to me" sounds a bit perfunctory and repetitive. The rhythmic acoustic-and-slide ballad ʽKeep Belie­vingʼ is a little better if you like your Pete Ham in a subtle / tender / confessional mode bet­ter than you like him in «power» mode, but the hooks are nowhere near great.

Since Molland was already out, Evans, Gibbins, and new band member Bob Jackson had to take the burden of songwriting on their own shoulders. Jackson's solo contribution ʽTurn Aroundʼ is a rather lumpy hard rock anthem that, truth be told, is more Grand Funk than Badfinger, only with­out all the testosterone. Gibbins continues with his fairy-light folksy stuff with ʽBack Againʼ, a pleasant cowboy ditty without any cowboys, but with some curious harmonica vs. synthesizer interplay. And Evans is the one to serve as the band's personal spokesman here. He takes it out vi­ciously and vivaciously on their enemies with telling titles like ʽHey Mr. Managerʼ and ʽRock'n'Roll Contractʼ — the two best songs on the album, actually, suggesting that, before set­ting up an installment plan for sui­cide, it might have been a good idea to come up with a fully conceptual album on the evils of rock management.

Overall, I wish I could say that it doesn't show this whole thing was tossed off in two weeks time, but more often than not, it does. But if we look at this from a different side — yes, they really needed something out on the market quick, yes, they were in a complete mess, yes, none of them were genius songwriters, yes, these are rough mixes, and still it's a perfectly nice record that does not in the least pathetically wallow in self-pitying (even such a lyrically bitter tune as ʽHey, Mr. Managerʼ tries to be as upbeat as possible when castigating Mr. Manager for "messing up my life"). As a «swan song» for the original Badfinger, it does not work, but as a worthy addition to the hardcore canon, it isn't any worse than any of the band's second-tier albums. Thumbs up, but do not expect a revelation or anything.

The official edition, by the way, adds a whole extra CD of mostly acoustic demos saved up from the same sessions — some of which could have been nourished to full health, had they had the time and will, but by early 1975, they clearly had nothing left. Was it all really that desperate? Did Pete really have to hang himself, or was that just the hideous effect of a nerve wreck shatter­ing an already unstable mental system? Who the hell could tell? In a way, I've always thought that, perhaps, it wasn't all just a matter of bad luck and unfortunate accidents — maybe the eerie downfall of Badfinger has to be thought of in «Altamont terms», sort of one of those symbolic events that separate the idealistic 1960s from the grim 1970s. After all, Badfinger were an idea­listic 1960s band at heart — at a time when the whole thing was becoming cynically obsolete. They learned to sound different from the Beatles, but they did not want to learn to sound like the Bay City Rollers, either, and paid the symbolic price for that. In any case, there must have been more to the whole thing than just a treacherous manager and poor understanding from the record industry bosses. Mustn't there?

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Badfinger: Wish You Were Here

BADFINGER: WISH YOU WERE HERE (1974)

1) Just A Chance; 2) You're So Fine; 3) Got To Get Out Of Here; 4) Know One Knows; 5) Dennis; 6) In The Mean­time/Some Other Time; 7) Love Time; 8) King Of The Load (T); 9) Meanwhile Back At The Ranch/Should I Smoke.

Wish You Were Here may be no masterpiece for the ages, and it might not have the most easily memorable, stay-with-you-for-life Badfinger songs, but it is definitely the Badfinger-est album of the all. A record, that is, which tries to dig as deep and to climb as high as could be physically possible for these guys, without a single overtly wrong twist or turn, a single glaring lapse of taste, a single court case of the band trying hard to be somebody else. It probably would not have been a big commercial success even if it did not undergo the proverbial «Badfinger luck» treatment  (due to legal haranguing between Warner Bros. and the band's management, it was pulled from the stores only seven weeks after the initial release; we cannot even technically call it a «flop», since it did not have enough time to flop). But it is exactly due to the fact of sounding like a Bad­finger album, not like a «1974-oriented album», that it has aged much, much better than nume­rous hit records from that year.

With all the neuroses and psychoses pursuing the band's members, I do not even manage to un­derstand how they succeeded in getting it so right after two relative misfires in a row. Maybe things had temporarily settled down, and the band just had a chance to sit down, catch a breath, and realize that, perhaps, if they were not able to achieve success with stuff that they weren't too good at (hard rock, funk, arena-rock, whatever), then they might be able to do better if they just concentrated on what they did best — folk-based pop songs with «power» arrangements, with varying degrees of complexity.

Chris Thomas is still retained as producer, but who could tell? The production is no longer mud­dy: the guitar sound is effervescently clear, and the vocals are for the most part echo-free (with one or two exceptions) — there is simply no need to compensate for the melodic weakness with extra varnish, since the melodies are anything but weak. Furthermore, there is not a single song here — not one — that has any direct connotations to a Beatles predecessor. On Wish You Were Here, Badfinger are, for the first time in their life, fully transformed into a self-sustainable band. Big tragic irony, considering all that happened next.

Song-wise, Pete Ham is almost absent on Side B, but his creations dominate Side A, creating a somewhat tilted balance of quality. ʽJust A Chanceʼ is one of the band's crunchiest pop-rockers: the riff may not be nearly as much in your face as on ʽNo Matter Whatʼ, but it's still a good roots-rocky riff that earns extra points for subtlety — and the song could have easily become a classic rock radio staple, if only there had been an opportunity to cull a couple singles from the album. ʽDennisʼ is a slightly veiled ode to Pete's little son, Blair, which starts off a little lumpy (not un­like, say, a «prog ballad» à la Styx, with a somewhat heavy accent on «anthemic» power chords), but soon picks up steam, conjures some genuine fatherly love, and then ends in an optimistic explosion of heavenly harmonies — the coda is a brilliant example of the band's «lush pop» sen­sitivity, here rivaling the Beach Boys themselves in force of expression, I'd say, if not necessarily in the technicalities (perhaps if Pete Ham only had two brothers and a cousin...).

Most won'drous of all, and my personal favorite Badfinger song of all time (yes, with these guys, I'm really quite a sucker for conciseness and simplicity), is the orthographically silly ʽKnow One Knowsʼ, which, as a chivalrous love confession, I'll take over ʽDay After Dayʼ, well, day after day after day. Where that particular classic had a little blemish — it was way too self-consciously designed as a thing of «heavenly beauty ™» — ʽKnow One Knowsʼ is perfectly natural, and it might even have been by pure supernatural accident that Pete (or was that Joey?) fell upon that particular sparkling guitar tone when recording the rhythm parts, the kind of deep ringing that affects the subconscious in such a special way (later favored so much, for obvious reasons, by the Cocteau Twins). The riff itself could hardly be any simpler, but this is gorgeous simplicity, and taken together with Pete's catchy and ever so «humanly» singing, the sparse, but meaningful gui­tar solo aping the vocal melody, and the strange gimmick of having Japanese artist Mika Kato reciting the chorus words translated to Japanese over the instrumental section (somehow it does add a little extra mystery spice, particularly if you have no knowledge of Japanese) — well, per­sonally, I like to describe these moments as «breathtaking beauty». There's not much of it in the overall Badfinger catalog, but there's plenty of bands who aren't capable of even a single moment like this, so let us give due where due is due, I say.

Amazingly, the rest of the guys generally rise to the challenge. Gibbins contributes the light­weight, but amicable folk-rocker ʽYou're So Fineʼ — perfectly adequate, especially when you remember that, only a year ago, he was veering into the realm of the cowboy song instead. Evans' ʽKing Of The Loadʼ is a bit of meditative Brit-pop with Dylanish lyrics, which they decided to set to the sound of two different keyboards and no guitars (bar Pete's shrieky solo) — again, nothing great, but it gets where it wants to get. And Molland's highest point is ʽGot To Get Out Of Hereʼ: an attempt not to «rock out», but to create an oscillating mood piece that would take you from despair to hope and back to despair and back to hope depending on whatever simple organ chord is played at the moment. J. S. Bach would certainly be appalled at the crudeness of it, but for less demanding tastes, it works quite well.

The two long medleys on Side B are not quite as striking — I am not even sure they should have been medleys, even if Ham's ʽMeanwhile Back At The Ranchʼ and Molland's ʽShould I Smokeʼ do belong together quite naturally, with a melody overlap in the chorus. They seem to have a little too much of everything thrown in, without the ability to grow a face of their own. Still, there is nothing embarrassing about them or even particularly boring — I just wish they didn't put that goddamn echo on Pete's vocals on ʽRanchʼ — and quite a few people list them among their favo­rite tracks on the album, maybe because of some sort of Abbey Road-esque thrill which I do not think was intended here at all (in line with the overall «no more Beatles dependence!» policy).

Contrary to what one could expect, and contrary to the lonely whiff of the title and the album co­ver, Wish You Were Here is not a particularly depressed record. On Side A, in fact, there is only one track dealing with despair — ʽGot To Get Out Of Hereʼ — and although some of the songs on Side B are a little more mopey, nothing here even remotely approaches the universalist grief of ʽTimelessʼ. Rather, it is just a very humane record, and a mature one at that. The love songs are never sappy, the complaining songs never wallow too heavily in misery, and there are no attempts to suck up to someone or something just for the sake of «trying out something that's not us». All of which makes this one of the most wonderful not-to-be-thought-of-as-wonderful albums of the decade, and my guess is that, had Badfinger's career not crashed right upon its release, this is as high as they could go anyway. Naturally, a delighted thumbs up.

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Badfinger: Badfinger

BADFINGER: BADFINGER (1974)

1) I Miss You; 2) Shine On; 3) Love Is Easy; 4) Song For A Lost Friend; 5) Why Don't We Talk?; 6) Island; 7) Mat­ted Spam; 8) Where Do We Go From Here?; 9) My Heart Goes Out; 10) Lonely You; 11) Give It Up; 12) Andy Nor­ris.

Badfinger's move to Warner Bros. was hardly «smooth». The new label would poke its nose into the band's results just as frequently as the old one did, and for a short while, it seemed completely unclear what exactly the record people were to expect from this band, and what exactly this band would want to turn out for the record people — being so 1969 in spirit, when the body was al­ready dragged into early 1974.

A nasty problem of this self-titled album is that the producer, Chris Thomas, actually did a hor­rendous suckjob. For some reason, he must have thought that, since these guys are such mediocre singers, things will work better if they all sing from under the bed, with a mike stuck under the pillow. Except Ham, that is, who is the only one regularly allowed a «clean» sound. Similar mud­diness, extra echo, bland guitar tones, etc. mar the instrumental work as well. And when this sloppy production style is overlaid on songs that are melodically decent, not spectacular — well, you can see real well why Badfinger never wooed the critics upon release.

Sadly, sadly, the record starts out tremendously strong, with two terrific Ham contributions that might set you up for a masterpiece. ʽI Miss Youʼ is a heart-on-sleeve piano-and-organ ballad that might be the most subtly chivalrous piece Pete ever wrung out of himself; and the interlocking keyboard parts, half McCartney, half «baroque pop», with no guitar presence whatsoever, are one of the most unusual arrangements these guys ever did. And then the Ham/Evans collaboration ʽShine Onʼ flips the switch to catchy, rousing, energetic folk-pop, flawlessly conceived and at­tractively executed. Nice, optimistic, energizing, toe-tappy, whatever.

These two openers really set up the impression of a bright new beginning — now that the band's troubled Apple days are over, and Pete Ham is back in the saddle as the leading creative force, they might finally combine their musicality and maturity in perfectionist bliss. But the impression is blown away before it can solidify: little, if anything, on the record manages to approach the one-two punch of ʽI Miss Youʼ and ʽShine Onʼ.

Funny thing is, there were quite a few things that Badfinger could do right. They could make ex­cellent «retro» pop songs (it only took lighting a candle to George or Paul), or they could fit in well with the soft-rock / folk-pop spirit of early 1970s mainstream American market. They knew how to rock out — in a very «clean» way compared to the hard rock standards of the day, but they did have a small stock of the rock'n'roll bug inside them. With a bit of focus, they could have made an album with no bad songs on it that would be anything but monotonous. Instead, they continued delving into genres, styles, and moods where they had no advantage whatsoever even over second-tier competition.

Pete himself is not exempt from this problem — his ʽMatted Spamʼ (and what a title!) is a white­bread funk-rocker, intelligently conceived but completely unfit for his singing style. Throw in a flexible bass player, a James Brown-caliber vocalist, and a bunch of hot female back vocalists, and you might have something there... but Badfinger, a funk outfit? No way.

Meanwhile, Joey Molland is trying to convert his love for rock'n'roll into something that sounds more «contemporary» — his mutual understanding with Chris Thomas is that «contemporary» means «thick», «muddy», and «lumpy», like ʽIslandʼ, all grayishly distorted power chords, thra­shing drums and cavernous echoes, or ʽLove Is Easyʼ, a wannabe-boogie whose boogie power is only thwarted by ponderous lead balls attached to each chord. Instead of simply letting go — the way they did on ʽLove Me Doʼ, for instance — they are tying weights to their feet. On ʽGive It Upʼ, it looks like Joey was trying to create something to match the tempestuous effects of Ham's ʽTimelessʼ, but the build-up to the climax is a relative failure, and the climax itself is not so much tempestuous as simply messy in comparison.

Overall, the only other song here that strikes a chord without overdoing or underdoing it is Evans' ʽWhere Do We Go From Here?ʼ — soulful vocal hooks, solid electric piano backing, nice tempo, intelligent atmosphere, admission is free; if not for the all-pervasive echo and the unnecessary «calypso» sounds eventually breaking in to clutter the arrangement, this, too, could be perfect in its own humble way. But that arrangement is still less cluttered and generic than, for instance, the one given to Ham's ʽLonely Youʼ and ʽSong For A Lost Friendʼ, both of which just float by me without leaving much of a trace.

In short, Badfinger is inadequate — it simply does not hold enough authentic «Badfinger» for my tastes. Rather, it is Goodfinger — an attempt to trade off some of the things the band held dear in order to appeal to the radiowaves of 1974, and the attempt played a hideous trick on them: none of these songs charted even remotely. Not that, with such stupid decisions, they ever had a chance: instead of doing it right and putting out ʽShine Onʼ as the lead single, they went with ʽLove Is Easyʼ. Who the heck is going to buy a single where the lead singer sounds as if he is whining through a bagpipe while trying to play «kick-ass» rock'n'roll? Ridiculous.

That said, I still have a tiny soft spot for the record: it was my original introduction to Badfinger, and Ham's two-song introduction quickly ensured that I would never regard this band as just a laughable wannabe-Beatles outfit (as some do), so I could never bring myself to giving it a nega­tive rating. It does cast off some colorful shades of life every now and then — as the follow-up would show, the band simply did not have the time or strength to focus while recording it.

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Badfinger: Ass

BADFINGER: ASS (1973)

1) Apple Of My Eye; 2) Get Away; 3) Icicles; 4) The Winner; 5) Blind Owl; 6) Constitution; 7) When I Say; 8) Cow­boy; 9) I Can Love You; 10) Timeless; 11*) Do You Mind.

Badfinger's last album for Apple Records is usually considered their «heaviest» record — which automatically generates a premature bias: «Badfinger? Heavy? Is that a contradiction or a contra­diction?» Well, not so much a contradiction as a slight exaggeration. The trick is, for some rea­son Pete Ham took a relatively small part in the songwriting process this time — he only contributes the first and last track, while the majority of tunes on Ass belong to Joey Molland, and Joey Mol­land was, indeed, the «resident rocker» of the band, its one and only member who had a genuine penchant for boogie, and was always tempted to create it, not just play it.

This does not mean, however, that Badfinger tried to go «heavy metal» or anything like that. In fact, there is only one genuinely «heavy» rocker, with deep metallic bass, dark riffage, and scor­ching wah-wah solos — ʽConstitutionʼ, an amusing attempt on Joey's part to sing about how he chooses to «be like everybody else» against a musical arrangement that sounds like nothing else Badfinger had ever done before. The tune is completely generic, but saved in the nick of time by Ham — he didn't write it, but he plays terrific wah-wah throughout, once again proving how se­riously underrated he has always been as a lead player, learning a little from everyone but directly imitating no one.

In the meantime, Molland's biggest problem is that, unexpectedly faced with the reality of beco­ming the band's main songwriter, he does not live up to the task, and frequently falls back upon clichés or, as I suspect, subconscious rip-offs from whomever he happened to be listening to at the time. The oddest Frankenstein here is ʽThe Winnerʼ, which takes its vocal hook ("you can drive a car, be a movie star...") from Ringo's ʽIt Don't Come Easyʼ, its closing vocal harmonies from the Beatles' ʽThe Wordʼ or suchlike, and its bridge riff from Deep Purple's ʽSpace Truckinʼ (not quite sure about the chronology: ʽThe Winnerʼ is one of two songs that the band recorded while still under the supervision of Todd Rundgren, in early 1972, but ʽSpace Truckinʼ did come out in March — coincidence?).

ʽGet Awayʼ is faceless (but still not very heavy) roots-a-boogie as well, leaving the ballads ʽIci­c­lesʼ and ʽI Can Love Youʼ as Joey's finest contributions to the record — which is not to say they are very good: ʽIciclesʼ is a bit too flat, pathetic, and moralistic, and ʽI Can Love Youʼ tries to establish a cunning hook in the chorus, but fails, I think. Overall, both are just sort of stuck in inoffensive, evenly flowing mid-tempo without generating much excitement. Big difference be­tween both of them and Pete's only ballad on the album — ʽApple Of My Eyeʼ, not too subtly commenting on the band's severing of relationships with the label. It may not be a huge improve­ment on Joey's standards in terms of melody, but Pete was always the better «artist», and his ly­rics, vocal modulation, and phrasing convey the atmosphere of bittersweetness to a tee — making the song into one of the most gallantly and chivalrously delivered «fuck yous» in the business.

Evans' and Gibbins' contributions are not particularly memorable or respectable (Gibbins' ʽCow­boyʼ might, in fact, be one of the most oddly misguided Badfinger efforts ever, along with ʽWat­ford Johnʼ: har­monica, fiddle, and steel guitar-driven coun­try-western? Silliest moment: "...now I know you well enough to say ʽyeahʼ... YEAAAAH!"), which leaves us with a very weak Side B, and the most difficult question here is what to do about Ham's eight-minute epic ʽTimelessʼ, an attempt to suck up to the «pretentious art-rock» movement, but still following the guidance of the Beatles rather than Yes or King Crimson — the structure, the mood, the duration, the chords, the lengthy coda sprayed with blasts of white noise, all of this brings on obvious associations with ʽI Want You (She's So Heavy)ʼ, although in strict factual terms the song is, of course, quite an ori­ginal creation. Does it work or doesn't it?

It does for me, to some extent. First, everyone is entitled to a little bit of metaphysical panic from time to time, and Pete Ham is as qualified as anybody to ask the question «are we timeless?». Se­cond, it is his first attempt to write something oddly shaped, decidedly removed from the stan­dards of a potential pop hit — the instrumental melody seems cobbled from unpredictable chord sequences, and the vocal melody is more akin to a Shakesperian monolog than a sym­metric pop construction. Third, the coda is very well made, with another of those stirring, aggressive solos of Pete's that are just so goddamn believable.

In the end, Ass is an album riddled with problems — starting with its very title (and the illumi­native picture of a donkey on the front cover does not really help out) and ending with the unfor­tunate story of its creation (Apple once again rejected the original version, and ended up releasing the final product something like a year too late, clashing with the band's new first album for Warner Bros.). It is not a complete disaster, and there is nothing wrong about including one or two heavy rockers as long as Joey Molland remains a rocker deep in his heart and Pete Ham can easily slip into rock'n'roll mode on the strength of his natural gift. But it is a «middle-of-the-road» effort, as it downplays the presence of the band's finest songwriter and, on occasion, slips into embarrassment mode (really, ʽCowboyʼ is something I'd think they should have left behind in their early Iveys days). Ham's contributions are still strong enough to guarantee a shaky thumbs up, but, overall, the album is one of those «transitional» efforts that give more food for thought for band historians than cause for joy for regular fans.

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Badfinger: Straight Up

BADFINGER: STRAIGHT UP (1971)

1) Take It All; 2) Baby Blue; 3) Money; 4) Flying; 5) I'd Die Babe; 6) Name Of The Game; 7) Suitcase; 8) Sweet Tuesday Morning; 9) Day After Day; 10) Sometimes; 11) Perfection; 12) It's Over.

There is clearly a certain distance that separates Straight Up from No Dice, but it is hard to ex­press it in words — with the solid, but not spectacular consistency of Badfinger through those five years during which the band members somehow managed not to hang themselves, it takes a little getting used to their style in order to spot the evolution.

It might have something to do with the experience that the band gained from playing on Harri­son's All Things Must Pass: Straight Up seems to aspire to bigger pop heights, sometimes even to «epic» heights, as if George and Phil Spector somehow showed these kids the light, and the light quickly led them away from the well-focused, but thin sound of No Dice. This is not neces­sarily a good thing.

On one hand, it does result in a more consistent listening experience — not only is there not a single utter embarrassment here, like ʽWatford Johnʼ, there are also fewer straightforward «Beat­lisms», with the band striving further and further towards their own identity. But on the other one — surprisingly, there's always that other one — this does come at the expense of some of the «pure fun» quotient. Here, Badfinger are getting more serious, more philosophical, more pensive and gloomy, and no matter how hard you try to tackle the «power pop» tag on Straight Up, it always seems to come off in a matter of minutes. ʽI Can't Take Itʼ and ʽNo Matter Whatʼ — there's your power-pop: happy crunchy riffs and life-asserting choruses. These songs are more like «epic folk-pop» or something.

The original Straight Up was rejected by Apple, allegedly at the instigation of Harrison himself, and for good reason: the recordings, some of which are now available as bonus tracks on the CD release, sound like demos — with the song structures, lyrics, and melodies fully worked out, but the production and playing leave quite a lot to be desired. Harrison volunteered to produce the new sessions himself, and even ended up playing on a few tracks (he is distinctly credited for a guitar duet with Pete Ham on ʽDay After Dayʼ), but eventually fell out of the project because of the Concert for Bangladesh — where Badfinger actually backed him to return the favor, earning some ambiguous onstage praise from George ("I don't know if they're coming through on the acoustic guitars", quoth George during the band introduction part).

So Todd Rundgren was brought in to complete the sessions, and a fine job he did, with a thick, heavy, and at the same time crisp / sharp production style — re-injecting as much basic pop rock ener­gy as possible into what began life as a somewhat limp folk-pop exercise. Whether this hel­ped the band commercially is hard to guess: both Straight Up and its singles did moderately well on the charts — ʽDay After Dayʼ even broke them into the US Top 5 — but, on the whole, sales and chart positions could hardly be called impressive. There was nothing «titillating» about this kind of music, be it from a T. Rex, Led Zep, or Jethro Tull point of view; and the lack of a gol­den-voiced singer prevented the band from hitting it with the housewives, either. (I do have to say that quite a few of these here songs could have used a different vocal approach — Pete Ham bra­vely, but pointlessly sacrificing his weak throat on ʽTake It Allʼ is hardly the most pleasant expe­rience of my life).

And yet, a careful listen to Straight Up reveals more individual character and maturity than No Dice. The place of ʽNo Matter Whatʼ, with its seriously clichéd lyrics and, what's worse, some­what exaggerated attitudes, is here taken by ʽBaby Blueʼ, an entirely different type of bombastic love anthem — with open slots for some personal insecurity and some credible tenderness, con­densed and then exploded with each chorus release of "my Baby Blue...". And instead of ʽWith­out Youʼ, written according to the strict rules of the sentimental love ballad canon, we now have ʽName Of The Gameʼ — a piano-driven proto-power ballad with philosophical aspirations, clearly inspired by all that extra time shared in George's company; its hooks may not be as well pronounced as on ʽWithout Youʼ, but, on the other hand, there is no danger of ever sniffing a whiff of cheese on this particular occasion.

I am not a huge fan of ʽDay After Dayʼ, if that means somehow singling out this song from the rest of the Badfinger catalog and putting it on some Top 10 pedestal or other. Its main vocal hook seems based on a cheap trick (extra loudness emphasis on the song title in the chorus) and its main instrumental hook seems based on a cheap flourish (don't those piano notes they hit at the end of each chorus sound a bit Carpenter-ish to you?). However, for many people the chief point of attraction here is the Harrison / Ham slide guitar duet (which allegedly took a very long time to work out correctly, and was the chief problem that prevented the band from including the song in their live setlist) — and here I'd have to agree: all the lovers of George's slide style circa 1970-73 will want to include this resplendent example in their collection (and Pete is certainly no slouch, either, when it comes to standing up to the master).

Meanwhile, Joey Molland emerges as the band's only true rocker-in-residence: ʽSometimesʼ and ʽSuitcaseʼ add a necessary pinch of kick-ass excitement (the latter actually rocks harder in its original version, with distorted rhythm guitar ex­changed for a slide guitar and electric piano arrangement under Rundgren's supervision), although the "..tell me why" at the end of the first verse ʽSometimesʼ brings on uncomfortable associations with the Beatles' ʽWhat Goes Onʼ. In ad­dition, Molland and Evans collaborate on ʽFlyingʼ, which also happens to share its title with a Beatles song and its attitude with colorful psychedelia — but actually sounds more like contem­porary solo McCartney than anything circa 1967.

By the time Straight Up finally hit the record shelves, the band was already being ripped off by its managers, but its problems had not yet struck full time; consequently, Straight Up is the last relatively «cloudless» Badfinger record — its «dense», «serious» sound has more to do with a sincere desire to grow up and plant themselves some relevance, rather than with drawing inspira­tion for their art from their personal problems. I am not sure they were quite up to the task, and, faced with an uneasy choice between the «early misguided blunders» of No Dice (ʽWatford Johnʼ) and the occasionally forced, not-too-natural «seriousness» of Straight Up (ʽPerfectionʼ — I have no love for this song at all; it just adds some stuffy bullshit philosophy to an acoustic riff that re-writes ʽNo Matter Whatʼ) — I'd rather choose No Dice, albeit by a very thin margin.

Still, any album with the forceful delicacy of ʽBaby Blueʼ, the slide gorgeousness of ʽDay After Dayʼ, the toe-tapping catchiness of ʽSuitcaseʼ, the sweet bitterness of ʽSweet Tuesday Morningʼ and so on — any such album is a respectable thumbs up by definition; and anyway, Badfinger were not really a band that would dare to, or be capable of significantly overstepping their limits. In fact, probably the only way they could have recorded a bad album would be to live and let live all the way up to the mid-1980s; fortunately for us and unfortunately for them, the silly people at Apple Records took all the necessary precautions so as not to let that happen.

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Badfinger: No Dice

BADFINGER: NO DICE (1970)

1) I Can't Take It; 2) I Don't Mind; 3) Love Me Do; 4) Midnight Caller; 5) No Matter What; 6) Without You; 7) Blod­wyn; 8) Better Days; 9) It Had To Be; 10) Watford John; 11) Believe Me; 12) We're For The Dark; 13*) Get Down; 14*) Friends Are Hard To Find; 15*) Mean Mean Jemima; 16*) Loving You; 17*) I'll Be The One.

It is easy to see why this record is generally seen as Badfinger's «proper» debut. It is their first al­bum with a stable lineup, as Joey Molland replaces Ron Griffiths, with Tom Evans switching to bass duties — and all four members of the band sharing songwriting duties, while no longer ac­cepting donations from outside songwriters (not that they were offered any: by this time, Paul McCartney had his own solo career and could keep all of his non-Beatle-worthy trifles for him­self if he wanted them to appear at all). Furthermore, all the songs were written and recorded wi­thin a limited time period, with the sole purpose of forming a coherent cycle.

And that they do. On No Dice, Badfinger are a perfectly competent, self-assured pop band with one edge very faintly touching the hard-rock scene and the other one reaching out to folk- and country-rock. They are not Beatles clones — even though the album is full to the brim of consci­ous and subconscious Beatles references and quotations, No Dice was made out of love for mu­sic, not just out of the realization that «wouldn't that be cool to be the next Beatles?»

Badfinger did inherit some of the elements of the early Beatles' spirit ­— a propensity to keep it simple (occasionally, simplistic, but we will have to cope with the fact that the songwriting cali­ber of these lads was a little less impressive than that of John/Paul and even George), a predilec­tion for idealistic sentimentality, and a penchant for expressing loneliness in music. But all these things seemed to come quite naturally to the band members — they were lonely, idealistic, unso­phisticated senti­mentalists, born to create lonely, idealistic, unsophisticated melodies.

And therefore, even their «rip-offs» are perfectly forgivable. ʽBelieve Meʼ steals half a hook from Paul's ʽOh Darlingʼ, but steers further proceedings into a soft, ironic, «homely» direction instead of the deep soul tragedy of its main source of inspiration. The chorus of the bonus outtake ʽI'll Be The Oneʼ accidentally (?) coincides with "eight days a week...", but the arrangement of the song is far more «rootsy» than the Beatles usually allowed themselves. And Joey Molland's ʽLove Me Doʼ shamelessly steals its title from one of the Beatles' first songs and almost lifts the basic rhythm from one of their last ones (ʽGet Backʼ), but did the Beatles ever have those crunchy rhythm chords and loud, dynamic, distorted boogie solos on their songs? Not these ones, they didn't, if only because these ones bear the mark of the next musical decade upon them.

The hit single ʽNo Matter Whatʼ is usually singled out as the major highlight of the album, al­though the lead-in number, ʽI Can't Take Itʼ, could be just as representative of Badfinger's brand of power pop — it's just that ʽNo Matter Whatʼ has this instantly captivating monster riff and a strong atmosphere of gallant chivalry about it (speaking in Beatles terms, its chief inspiration would probably be ʽAnytime At Allʼ), whereas ʽI Can't Take Itʼ is a bit more diffuse and does not wear its heart on its sleeve. Over time, though, both songs should be able to take their rightful stand in the "power pop laureates" corner of the museum — ʽI Can't Take Itʼ, in particular, could serve on its own as the blueprint for most of Cheap Trick's career.

At the same time, Badfinger show excellent skill at exploring the depths of the human heart as well. ʽMidnight Callerʼ is a ballad written in strict accordance with the McCartney recipé — sim­ple, but moving piano chords, «humanistic» vocal modulation, and sincere pity for the protago­nist à la ʽFor No Oneʼ. Like McCartney when he's at his worst, though, the song sounds disap­pointingly unfinished — "...she unlocks the door and there's no one there..." is a fairly weak re­solution for the bridge, and, overall, the song seems one or two musical ideas too short, and the exploration of the human heart remains inconclusive.

Whereas ʽWithout Youʼ, a song that I would like to like less than ʽMidnight Callerʼ, preferring lonely melancholy over grand sentimentalism, is certainly one of the most «conclusive» Badfin­ger songs ever, and this version, despite Harry Nilsson's solid job with it several years later, still remains the definitive one for me (granted, there have been many covers since, and the only other one I know of belongs to Mariah Carey — no comments here). One can shed a river of tears to it, or engage in four minutes worth of Bic-flickering, but what I like most about it is: (a) Tom Evans' subtle bass work on the acoustic intro, especially the moment at 0:39 into the song where his syncopated minimalism morphs into full phrasing; (b) the equally minimalistic beauty of the gui­tar solo, again, clearly influenced by Harrison's style but not necessarily following any particular «Harrison-esque» chord layout. These are among the elements that provide ʽWithout Youʼ with integrity and even «grit», saving it from tumbling into a sea of cheap soft-rock mush — a sea that usually eagerly waits for every song whose chorus goes "I can't live, if living is without you". (At the bottom of this sea, you'll find Mariah Carey waiting for you).

If there is anything close to a glaring misstep on the album, it might be ʽWatford Johnʼ — that one time when Badfinger are not trying to be themselves (by «being the next Beatles»), but in­stead try to be... Elvis. (With even a «teddy bear» reference in the lyrics). As long as you keep yourself from realizing that fact, the piece works as a bit of generic boogie, but eventually it just becomes sad, particularly since Badfinger can rock — as long as they do not dress their rock and roll in the clothes of a rockabilly revival. ʽLove Me Doʼ, snappy and modern as it is, works very well; ʽWatford Johnʼ is a near-parodic send-up that doesn't.

But all in all, beginning with the muscular power-pop of ʽI Can't Take Itʼ and ending with the pretty acoustic balladry of Pete Ham's ʽWe're For The Darkʼ (a perennial fan favorite, although I still find the melody somewhat flat), No Dice is the ideal «unpretentious pop album» for 1970 — and marks a brief moment of good time for Badfinger, when the band really had a chance to make it on the strength of their singles; a chance blown away almost entirely due to the incompetence and greed of their management. Not a masterpiece — mainly because the ratio of «cool ideas» per song is too small — but a very solid thumbs up all the same. And the bonus outtakes on the CD edition are well worth taking in as well.

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