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Best of Badfinger
This collection is unavailable via iTunes, but other suitable collections exist: Badfinger
To buy this CD from Amazon.com, click here: The Best Of Badfinger
_________________________________________________
Apple Records
CDP 7243 8 30129 2 3
1. Come And Get It 2:21
Recorded August 2, 1969, Abbey Road
(Paul McCartney)
Produced and Arranged by Paul McCartney
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
2. Maybe Tomorrow 2:51
Recorded August 9, 1968, Trident
(Tom Evans)
Produced and Arranged by Tony Visconti
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
3. Rock Of All Ages 3:16
Recorded September 18, 1969, IBC
(Tom Evans/Pete Ham/Mike Gibbins)
Produced and Arranged by Tony Visconti
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
4. Dear Angie 2:39
Recorded April 1969, Trident
(Ron Griffiths)
Produced and Arranged by Tony Visconti
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
5. Carry On Till Tomorrow 4:47
Recorded August 22 & 26, 1969, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Mal Evans
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
6. No Matter What 2:59
Recorded May 13, 1970, Abbey Road & May 20, 1970, Trident
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Mal Evans
Taken from “No Dice”
7. Believe Me 2:58
Recorded May 13, 1970, Abbey Road & May 20, 1970, Trident
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Mal Evans
Taken from “No Dice”
8. Midnight Caller 2:48
Recorded August 24, 1970, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Geoff Emerick
Taken from “No Dice”
9. Better Days 3:59
Recorded July 15 & 18, 1970, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Geoff Emerick
Taken from “No Dice”
10. Without You 4:42
Recorded July 15 & 29, 1970, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Geoff Emerick
Taken from “No Dice”
11. Take It All 4:25
Recorded June 1971, Abbey Road
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
12. Money 3:29
Recorded October 29, 1971, Command Studios
(Tom Evans)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
13. Flying 2:35
Recorded June 1971, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
14. The Name Of The Game 5:17
Recorded June 1971, Abbey Road
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by George Harrison
Taken from “Straight Up”
15. Suitcase 2:54
Recorded May 31, 1971, Abbey Road
(Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by George Harrison
Taken from “Straight Up”
16. Day After Day 3:09
Recorded June 3, 1971, Abbey Road
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by George Harrison
Taken from “Straight Up”
17. Baby Blue (U.S. Single Mix) 3:35
Recorded September 25, 1971, Air Studios
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
18. When I Say 3:06
Recorded January 20, 1972, Apple Studios & December 7, 1972, Morgan Studios
(Tom Evans)
Produced and Arranged by Chris Thomas & Badfinger
Taken from “Ass”
19. Icicles 2:33
Recorded April 2, 1973, Olympic Studios
(Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Chris Thomas & Badfinger
Taken from “Ass”
20. I Can Love You 3:34
Recorded April 1973, The Manor
(Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Ass”
21. Apple Of My Eye 3:05
Recorded April 1973, The Manor
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Chris Thomas & Badfinger
Taken from “Ass”
All tracks published by Apple Publishing, Ltd except “Come And Get It” – Northern Songs Ltd.
Compiled, digitally mastered and researched by Ron Furmanek
Digitally mastered at Abbey Road Studios, London, Englad, March 1994
Tracks 1-17 engineered 2/90, 10/91 and 3/92 by Mike Jarratt. Tracks 18-21 engineered 3/94 by Peter Mews.
This CD was mastered from the original two-track stereo master mix tapes. All tracks are STEREO “AAD”
Typography and package design: Phil Smee
Digital Remasters: Trks 1-5 (P) 1991; Trks 6-10 (P) 1992; Trks 11-17 (P) 1993; Trks 18-21 (P) 1994. The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Apple Corp Ltd under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd (P) 1995. The copyright in this compilation is owned by Apple Corps Ltd under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd © 1995 EMI Records Ltd.
The full BADFINGER single and album discography can be found on the MAGIC CHRISTIAN re-issue.
__________________________________________________
Badfinger’s Without You is unquestionably a timeless classic and will ensure that their music survives the generations, long after many of their contemporaries have faded form memory. Without You may be honoured in the cover versions hall of fame, but ironically, the song was never a hit, or even originally a single, for the band. And the fact that Badfinger are chiefly remembered for a hit which they did not write merely heightens this irony.
That hit was Come And Get It, written by Paul McCartney for the Peter Sellers/Ringo Starr comedy, ‘The Magic Christian’, and donated to Badfinger in 1969 in order to boost the band’s profile. McCartney also produced the single, an act which not only consummated Badfinger’s links with the Apple label, but also inaugurated a four-year, occasional association between the group and the Beatles. With Come And Get It, the hits No Matter What and Day After Day, and their critically-acclaimed albums, ‘No Dice’ and ‘Straight Up’, Badfinger have become almost legendary among students of rock history; particularly in the United States, where in the early ‘70s both of these albums reached the Top 30. Such is their cult following there, in fact, that when the U.S. collectors’ magazine, Goldmine, ran its album-most-wanted on CD reader’s survey in the 1980s, ‘Straight Up’ topped the poll – ahead even of the yet-to-be reissued Sgt. Pepper.
Badfinger undoubtedly had the Beatles to thank for a great deal of their success. The group’s links with the Fab Four provided them with a launching pad most acts could only dream about. In six years of activity, the Beatles' Apple label only signed two other rock band (White Trash and Elephants Memory, neither of whom made much commercial impact), and Badfinger was one of only two Apple acts to sustain a chart career through the company’s idiosyncratic salad days. The other was Mary Hopkin.
During the four-year period from 1969 to 1972, Badfinger enjoyed the unique opportunity of working with each of the four Beatles individually. They guested on John’s ‘Imagine’ LP, and Paul worked with them on Come And Get It. They performed as back-up musicians on George’s ‘All Things Must Pass’ triple-album, onstage with him at the ‘Concert For Bangla Desh’, and Harrison was credited as one of the producers on ‘Straight Up’. Members of the band also provided Ringo with instrumental assistance on his Top 5 single, ‘It Don’t Come Easy’.
If a soundalike band had been a prerequisite, the Beatles would probably never have found Badfinger: the fact that their memorable melodies and close harmonies were so reminiscent of their paymasters’ can only be seen as a coincidence. Tony Visconti, for one, in his role as producer of the band’s debut album ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ (credited to their earlier incarnation, the Iveys), was one of the first to recognize this. “The thing which impressed me so much was how similar their voices were to the Beatles',” he says, ‘I sometimes had to look over the control-board down into the studio to make sure John and Paul weren’t singing lead vocals!”
As unprecedented and as gratifying as they were, such ties to the Beatles inevitably proved to be a delicate balancing act, with the critical scales liable to tip either way. The ever-suspicious British music press typified the home-grown reaction to Badfinger with headlines like: “The accusing finger…are they copying?”. In America, on the other hand, the group was embraced in the early seventies as a kind of surrogate Beatles, championing the cause for melodic harmonic rock into the new decade. America eventually made Badfinger its own, awarding them chart and live successes which ensured that the States became their spiritual home.
Britian’s inability to get to grips with Badfinger was down to a lack of easy pigeon-holing at a time of drastic polarization in pop music. While the quality of the band’s songwriting was undeniable, and the power of their delivery unquestioned, no one could quite decide which camp they fitted. On the evidence of the Iveys’ Maybe Tomorrow debut in 1968, the band clearly wasn’t hip enough to be part of the London-based underground scene, for example; neither did they have anything in common with the by-then dated sounds of psychedelia. The Iveys developed into Badfinger, of course, and their sound toughened up, but still their music was hard to pin down; they demonstrated few of the stylistic pretentions of the new progressive rock; and they weren’t heavy in a burgeoning heavy-rock sense. In short, Badfinger’s robust guitar-based pop, with its reliance on harmonic structures, was unquantifiable – it harked back to the sound of beat groups, though recorded long after the Sixties’ beat boom was over, and it pre-dated Seventies power-pop long before its time. In short, they were their own band.
Somewhere in between Britain’s critical reservations and America’s Anglophile acceptance, lies a body of work which remains a resounding testament to both the Beatles as talent spotters and Badfinger’s ability to cut it in the unforgiving world of rock. The music speaks for itself – there is no filler on ‘The Best Of Badfinger’. Indeed, several of the album tracks included here could have been plucked from side-one/side-two obscurity to become chart-topping singles, not least that original version of Without You.
The 21 tracks on ‘The Best Of Badfinger’ are sampled from the band’s four LPs for Apple: ‘Magic Christian Music’ (1970), ‘No Dice’ (1971), ‘Straight Up’ (1972) and ‘Ass’ (1973). Each album shows a clear development: from a pop band with a naïve, cherry outlook, and a knack for Beatle-esque melodies, on ‘Magic Christian Music’, to a more considered and sober, yet nonetheless commercial, approach on ‘No Dice’. From the finely-crafted, understated splendour of ‘Straight Up’, where furrowed brows replaced innocent smiles; to the grittier, rockier ‘Ass’, on which Badfinger bowed out from their Apple contract with probably the label’s most powerful non-Beatles LP. ‘Ass’, incidentally, was the last such release, and it’s fitting, therefore, that ‘The Best Of Badfinger’ should be the first new Apple album in 20 years.
If such things can ever be divided into left and right, black and white, fast and slow, there were two sides to Badfinger. One captures Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Joey Molland and drummer Mike Gibbins as an upbeat, rocking quartet, responsible not only for the pounding treatment of McCartney’s Come And Get it, and riff-rich belters like No Matter What and Baby Blue, but also no-nonsense, out-and-out rockers like Better Days, Evan’s Rock Of All Ages and Molland’s anthem to life on the road, Suitcase. The other side of Badfinger is the reflective one – evident on the wistful Dear Angie (recorded as the Iveys and penned by Ron Griffiths, who left to be replaced Joey Molland); the plaintive lullaby, Carry On Till Tomorrow, the seductive When I Say, punchy ballads like Maybe Tomorrow, Day After Day and the ascending majesty of Pete Ham’s Name Of The Game. The quieter side of Joey Molland, a man usually cast as Badfinger’s rock ‘n’ roller, is also represented here, with two of this collections most poignant songs, Icicles and I Can Love You. Then, of course, there’s Without You. Harry Nilsson, and more recently Mariah Carey, my have both taken this song to new heights, investing it with an emotional response and commercial success only previously hinted at, but Badfinger’s original, with its melancholic verse and soaring chorus, contains all the elements of a power ballad to beat all power ballads.
Badfinger’s legacy is a songbook of a quality and consistency which, unfortunately, wasn’t reflected in their personal lives. Despite their run of hits, and the recognition of Without You as a world-class standard, the band experienced many difficulties in later years. These culminated in the desperate and lonely acts of suicide of Pete Ham in April 1975, and of Tom Evans in November 1983. Like many great things, Badfinger’s true worth was perhaps only realized after its demise. As an Apple press release had said in 1972, “You are born and you die, it’s the bit in between which takes the effort. The better the effort the better it is”. During that ‘bit in between’, the band put in more than their share of effort, and poured their lives into their music – and, tragically, suffered the ultimate sacrifice for their art. Badfinger should not be forgotten, and this album – a collection of their finest works – can only help to preserve their memory.
Andy Davis, Record Collector magazine
To buy this CD from Amazon.com, click here: The Best Of Badfinger
_________________________________________________Apple Records
CDP 7243 8 30129 2 3
1. Come And Get It 2:21
Recorded August 2, 1969, Abbey Road
(Paul McCartney)
Produced and Arranged by Paul McCartney
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
2. Maybe Tomorrow 2:51
Recorded August 9, 1968, Trident
(Tom Evans)
Produced and Arranged by Tony Visconti
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
3. Rock Of All Ages 3:16
Recorded September 18, 1969, IBC
(Tom Evans/Pete Ham/Mike Gibbins)
Produced and Arranged by Tony Visconti
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
4. Dear Angie 2:39
Recorded April 1969, Trident
(Ron Griffiths)
Produced and Arranged by Tony Visconti
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
5. Carry On Till Tomorrow 4:47
Recorded August 22 & 26, 1969, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Mal Evans
Taken from “Magic Christian Music”
6. No Matter What 2:59
Recorded May 13, 1970, Abbey Road & May 20, 1970, Trident
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Mal Evans
Taken from “No Dice”
7. Believe Me 2:58
Recorded May 13, 1970, Abbey Road & May 20, 1970, Trident
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Mal Evans
Taken from “No Dice”
8. Midnight Caller 2:48
Recorded August 24, 1970, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Geoff Emerick
Taken from “No Dice”
9. Better Days 3:59
Recorded July 15 & 18, 1970, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Geoff Emerick
Taken from “No Dice”
10. Without You 4:42
Recorded July 15 & 29, 1970, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Geoff Emerick
Taken from “No Dice”
11. Take It All 4:25
Recorded June 1971, Abbey Road
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
12. Money 3:29
Recorded October 29, 1971, Command Studios
(Tom Evans)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
13. Flying 2:35
Recorded June 1971, Abbey Road
(Tom Evans/Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
14. The Name Of The Game 5:17
Recorded June 1971, Abbey Road
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by George Harrison
Taken from “Straight Up”
15. Suitcase 2:54
Recorded May 31, 1971, Abbey Road
(Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by George Harrison
Taken from “Straight Up”
16. Day After Day 3:09
Recorded June 3, 1971, Abbey Road
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by George Harrison
Taken from “Straight Up”
17. Baby Blue (U.S. Single Mix) 3:35
Recorded September 25, 1971, Air Studios
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Straight Up”
18. When I Say 3:06
Recorded January 20, 1972, Apple Studios & December 7, 1972, Morgan Studios
(Tom Evans)
Produced and Arranged by Chris Thomas & Badfinger
Taken from “Ass”
19. Icicles 2:33
Recorded April 2, 1973, Olympic Studios
(Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Chris Thomas & Badfinger
Taken from “Ass”
20. I Can Love You 3:34
Recorded April 1973, The Manor
(Joey Molland)
Produced and Arranged by Todd Rundgren
Taken from “Ass”
21. Apple Of My Eye 3:05
Recorded April 1973, The Manor
(Pete Ham)
Produced and Arranged by Chris Thomas & Badfinger
Taken from “Ass”
All tracks published by Apple Publishing, Ltd except “Come And Get It” – Northern Songs Ltd.
Compiled, digitally mastered and researched by Ron Furmanek
Digitally mastered at Abbey Road Studios, London, Englad, March 1994
Tracks 1-17 engineered 2/90, 10/91 and 3/92 by Mike Jarratt. Tracks 18-21 engineered 3/94 by Peter Mews.
This CD was mastered from the original two-track stereo master mix tapes. All tracks are STEREO “AAD”
Typography and package design: Phil Smee
Digital Remasters: Trks 1-5 (P) 1991; Trks 6-10 (P) 1992; Trks 11-17 (P) 1993; Trks 18-21 (P) 1994. The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Apple Corp Ltd under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd (P) 1995. The copyright in this compilation is owned by Apple Corps Ltd under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd © 1995 EMI Records Ltd.
The full BADFINGER single and album discography can be found on the MAGIC CHRISTIAN re-issue.
__________________________________________________
Badfinger’s Without You is unquestionably a timeless classic and will ensure that their music survives the generations, long after many of their contemporaries have faded form memory. Without You may be honoured in the cover versions hall of fame, but ironically, the song was never a hit, or even originally a single, for the band. And the fact that Badfinger are chiefly remembered for a hit which they did not write merely heightens this irony.
That hit was Come And Get It, written by Paul McCartney for the Peter Sellers/Ringo Starr comedy, ‘The Magic Christian’, and donated to Badfinger in 1969 in order to boost the band’s profile. McCartney also produced the single, an act which not only consummated Badfinger’s links with the Apple label, but also inaugurated a four-year, occasional association between the group and the Beatles. With Come And Get It, the hits No Matter What and Day After Day, and their critically-acclaimed albums, ‘No Dice’ and ‘Straight Up’, Badfinger have become almost legendary among students of rock history; particularly in the United States, where in the early ‘70s both of these albums reached the Top 30. Such is their cult following there, in fact, that when the U.S. collectors’ magazine, Goldmine, ran its album-most-wanted on CD reader’s survey in the 1980s, ‘Straight Up’ topped the poll – ahead even of the yet-to-be reissued Sgt. Pepper.
Badfinger undoubtedly had the Beatles to thank for a great deal of their success. The group’s links with the Fab Four provided them with a launching pad most acts could only dream about. In six years of activity, the Beatles' Apple label only signed two other rock band (White Trash and Elephants Memory, neither of whom made much commercial impact), and Badfinger was one of only two Apple acts to sustain a chart career through the company’s idiosyncratic salad days. The other was Mary Hopkin.
During the four-year period from 1969 to 1972, Badfinger enjoyed the unique opportunity of working with each of the four Beatles individually. They guested on John’s ‘Imagine’ LP, and Paul worked with them on Come And Get It. They performed as back-up musicians on George’s ‘All Things Must Pass’ triple-album, onstage with him at the ‘Concert For Bangla Desh’, and Harrison was credited as one of the producers on ‘Straight Up’. Members of the band also provided Ringo with instrumental assistance on his Top 5 single, ‘It Don’t Come Easy’.
If a soundalike band had been a prerequisite, the Beatles would probably never have found Badfinger: the fact that their memorable melodies and close harmonies were so reminiscent of their paymasters’ can only be seen as a coincidence. Tony Visconti, for one, in his role as producer of the band’s debut album ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ (credited to their earlier incarnation, the Iveys), was one of the first to recognize this. “The thing which impressed me so much was how similar their voices were to the Beatles',” he says, ‘I sometimes had to look over the control-board down into the studio to make sure John and Paul weren’t singing lead vocals!”
As unprecedented and as gratifying as they were, such ties to the Beatles inevitably proved to be a delicate balancing act, with the critical scales liable to tip either way. The ever-suspicious British music press typified the home-grown reaction to Badfinger with headlines like: “The accusing finger…are they copying?”. In America, on the other hand, the group was embraced in the early seventies as a kind of surrogate Beatles, championing the cause for melodic harmonic rock into the new decade. America eventually made Badfinger its own, awarding them chart and live successes which ensured that the States became their spiritual home.
Britian’s inability to get to grips with Badfinger was down to a lack of easy pigeon-holing at a time of drastic polarization in pop music. While the quality of the band’s songwriting was undeniable, and the power of their delivery unquestioned, no one could quite decide which camp they fitted. On the evidence of the Iveys’ Maybe Tomorrow debut in 1968, the band clearly wasn’t hip enough to be part of the London-based underground scene, for example; neither did they have anything in common with the by-then dated sounds of psychedelia. The Iveys developed into Badfinger, of course, and their sound toughened up, but still their music was hard to pin down; they demonstrated few of the stylistic pretentions of the new progressive rock; and they weren’t heavy in a burgeoning heavy-rock sense. In short, Badfinger’s robust guitar-based pop, with its reliance on harmonic structures, was unquantifiable – it harked back to the sound of beat groups, though recorded long after the Sixties’ beat boom was over, and it pre-dated Seventies power-pop long before its time. In short, they were their own band.
Somewhere in between Britain’s critical reservations and America’s Anglophile acceptance, lies a body of work which remains a resounding testament to both the Beatles as talent spotters and Badfinger’s ability to cut it in the unforgiving world of rock. The music speaks for itself – there is no filler on ‘The Best Of Badfinger’. Indeed, several of the album tracks included here could have been plucked from side-one/side-two obscurity to become chart-topping singles, not least that original version of Without You.
The 21 tracks on ‘The Best Of Badfinger’ are sampled from the band’s four LPs for Apple: ‘Magic Christian Music’ (1970), ‘No Dice’ (1971), ‘Straight Up’ (1972) and ‘Ass’ (1973). Each album shows a clear development: from a pop band with a naïve, cherry outlook, and a knack for Beatle-esque melodies, on ‘Magic Christian Music’, to a more considered and sober, yet nonetheless commercial, approach on ‘No Dice’. From the finely-crafted, understated splendour of ‘Straight Up’, where furrowed brows replaced innocent smiles; to the grittier, rockier ‘Ass’, on which Badfinger bowed out from their Apple contract with probably the label’s most powerful non-Beatles LP. ‘Ass’, incidentally, was the last such release, and it’s fitting, therefore, that ‘The Best Of Badfinger’ should be the first new Apple album in 20 years.
If such things can ever be divided into left and right, black and white, fast and slow, there were two sides to Badfinger. One captures Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Joey Molland and drummer Mike Gibbins as an upbeat, rocking quartet, responsible not only for the pounding treatment of McCartney’s Come And Get it, and riff-rich belters like No Matter What and Baby Blue, but also no-nonsense, out-and-out rockers like Better Days, Evan’s Rock Of All Ages and Molland’s anthem to life on the road, Suitcase. The other side of Badfinger is the reflective one – evident on the wistful Dear Angie (recorded as the Iveys and penned by Ron Griffiths, who left to be replaced Joey Molland); the plaintive lullaby, Carry On Till Tomorrow, the seductive When I Say, punchy ballads like Maybe Tomorrow, Day After Day and the ascending majesty of Pete Ham’s Name Of The Game. The quieter side of Joey Molland, a man usually cast as Badfinger’s rock ‘n’ roller, is also represented here, with two of this collections most poignant songs, Icicles and I Can Love You. Then, of course, there’s Without You. Harry Nilsson, and more recently Mariah Carey, my have both taken this song to new heights, investing it with an emotional response and commercial success only previously hinted at, but Badfinger’s original, with its melancholic verse and soaring chorus, contains all the elements of a power ballad to beat all power ballads.
Badfinger’s legacy is a songbook of a quality and consistency which, unfortunately, wasn’t reflected in their personal lives. Despite their run of hits, and the recognition of Without You as a world-class standard, the band experienced many difficulties in later years. These culminated in the desperate and lonely acts of suicide of Pete Ham in April 1975, and of Tom Evans in November 1983. Like many great things, Badfinger’s true worth was perhaps only realized after its demise. As an Apple press release had said in 1972, “You are born and you die, it’s the bit in between which takes the effort. The better the effort the better it is”. During that ‘bit in between’, the band put in more than their share of effort, and poured their lives into their music – and, tragically, suffered the ultimate sacrifice for their art. Badfinger should not be forgotten, and this album – a collection of their finest works – can only help to preserve their memory.
Andy Davis, Record Collector magazine
