Badfinger to start the weekend. In concert at Cowtown Ballroom in Kansas City from 1972 and broadcast by KSHE-FM in April of that year.
You can’t help but shake your head in bafflement that such a wildly influential band – a band that did as much to put Power Pop on the map and as any during the early 70s would go through so much bad luck, bad advice, bad management and bad decisions as they did.
Badfinger’s story is one jammed with tragedy. Badfinger, formerly known as The Iveys, got started in 1961 in Swansea, Wales. Their best-known lineup consisted of Pete Ham (guitar), Mike Gibbins (drums), Tom Evans (bass), and Joey Molland (guitar). It’s estimated that the band sold 14 million records.
But . . .after Apple Records folded in 1973, Badfinger struggled with a host of legal, managerial, and financial problems mostly due to their fraudulent manager Stan Polley, leading to Ham’s suicide in 1975. The surviving members struggled to rebuild their personal and professional lives against a backdrop of lawsuits which tied up the songwriters’ royalty payments for years. Their subsequent albums floundered, as Molland and Evans alternated between co-operation and conflict in their attempts to revive and capitalize on the Badfinger legacy. Evans died by suicide in 1983 and Gibbins died from a brain aneurysm in 2005, leaving Molland as the classic line-up’s only surviving member.
But listening to this concert you’re filled with all the enthusiasm and showmanship they excelled at during that time. How you often forget the tragedies when you’re wrapped up in some great music Badfinger supplied and brought to generations after them.
You think “shit, that was awful – but man, they were great”. And maybe it’s only the latter that matters.
Enjoy.
