Baby Blue - Badfinger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33oAuvbRg-c

Still a year behind, we once again come to the demise of the last surviving member of the classic line-up of a band, in this case, Badfinger. Famous briefly in the early seventies for a clutch of hit singles and a couple of excellent albums (see post https://www.unclestylus.com/single-post/2018/11/27/walk-out-in-the-rain-badfinger), at the time they were cursed by comparisons with the early Beatles on whose Apple label they were on. And they did sound uncannily similar to to the Fab Four circa 1962-66, as though they'd got caught in a time loop and never developed. Even their name was Beatle orientated, chosen either (stories differ) from the early working title, "Bad Finger Blues", of the song "With a Little Help from my Friends", called so because Lennon had an injured finger when it was recorded, or after the Beatles' nickname for a stripper named Helga Fabdinger who worked at the Kaiserkeller in Hamburg when they were in residency there.

The classic Badfinger line-up was: Pete Ham (rhythm guitar and vocals), Tom Evans (bass and vocals), Joey Molland (lead guitar and vocals) and Mike Gibbins (drums).

One day, someone will make a film about Badfinger. There's a lot of shoulder rubbing with more famous acts in their career: their first hit and first album were produced by Paul McCartney among others, and their third by Todd Rundgren who produced the classic New York Dolls first album (see last two posts) and George Harrison. They wrote and recorded the original version of one of the greatest love songs in pop history, "Without You", and played with Harrison on the classic "Concert for Bangladesh", the original prototype for "Live Aid" style fundraising concerts.

As the years went by the band was riven by squabbles and disputes: they had a a dodgy manager who paid them a pittance and defrauded them, bandmember Pete Ham citing him as the main cause of his suicide in his suicide note in 1975; after that Tom Evans and Joey Molland split, forming rival Badfingers. In 1983, Evans, who along with Ham wrote "Without You", quarrelled with Molland over royalty shares from the song and then went home and hanged himself. It's a sad story enlivened by a series of simple, catchy and often uplifting songs. Maybe they should have called themselves "Goodfinger."

Gibbins died in 2005, and Joey Molland passed on just over a year ago, on March 1st, 2025.

"Baby Blue" is from their third album, "Straight Up"; like "Without You" it's another Pete Ham composition that Molland claimed a songwriting share for, due to his input on the arrangement. I keep wanting to sing, after the recurring "special love I/you have for you/me" line, "it's all over now baby blue", but the music never gives me the room. A bit like Badfinger itself, a Zelig of a band so similar to another group that it almost wasn't there, and whose heart was destroyed by a song that was a number one hit for someone else. Most of the people who purchased Harry Nilsson's "Without You" in 1971 didn't know it was a Badfinger song, and virtually all of those who bought Maria Carey's version, which also was a UK Number One in 1994, had never heard of the band.