Obviously, I really like this band. When I was a newbie Beatles fan I thought Come and Get It was a Beatles song and then I found out it was this band with a funny name called Badfinger . As a teenager I had this album and I bought their 1979 Airwaves album (without Pete Ham) in the early eighties. in the cutout bin. It was a nice album but without Pete Ham it wasn’t up to their standards.
Badfinger was known as a singles band but they did have one great album along with very good ones…and Straight Up was the great one.
I bought two of Pete Ham “solo” albums named Golders Green and 7 Park Avenue in the 1990s. The albums were made of Pete’s demos from the 60s and 70s. The pop world really missed out when Pete decided to leave the earth. His songs were very McCartney like…good McCartney like.
Badfinger had undoubtedly one of the saddest stories in a business that is full of them. Two members committed suicide and the band was ripped off beyond belief by a manager. The band was left virtually penniless after making millions.
Straight Up has two of their big hits…the beautiful Day After Day and what I consider the best power-pop song of all time…Baby Blue. It’s not just the hits though that are good….the band had three songwriters with Pete Ham, Tom and Joey Molland. Tom and Joey were not in their bandmate’s writing level but they were very good. There is not a bad song on the album.
Take It All is a song written by Pete and the song is about the Bangladesh concert when Pete got to play with George Harrison up front and his bandmates were in the background. Joey Molland the other guitarist was upset at this so Pete wrote this song.
Suitcase was a rocking song that Joey Molland wrote and was a great live song. It was a departure from the power pop they played…they were expanding their repertoire. Pete Ham plays some great slide guitar in this.
Sweet Tuesday Morning is one of those seventies songs that is beautifully written and performed by Joey.
Of course the hits…Day After Day and Baby Blue…this is Day After Day it peaked at #4 in the Billboard 100, #2 in Canada and #10 in the UK in 1971.
Badfinger along with Big Star and the Raspberries gave us great power pop and helped create the genre. If you have a greatest hits…this would be a good companion album to go with it.
Take It All
Baby Blue
Money
Flying
I’d Die, Babe
Name Of The Game
Suitcase
Sweet Tuesday Morning
Day After Day
Sometimes
Perfection
It’s Over
Baby Blue peaked at #14 in the Billboard 100, #7 in Canada, and #73 in the UK.
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PowerPop... An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture 
“Straight Up” a great album indeed. I listened to it recently. And about Badfinger’s story – my goodness, what a tragedy!
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There is a book and documentary out about them…GOOD LUCK in finding them. The book now will cost over 100 bucks because it’s out of print.
Yes really sad…just tragic.
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This was a nice way to start off my day, such great music from a group that had nothing but tragedy.
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Thanks Jim. It was left over from the Island reviews…I just ran out of picks.
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“Day after Day” has always been a big fave of mine, but I don’t know majority of the rest on the album…just listening to the first video up there (Take it All) right now, it sounds good too. I guess in a black-humor kind of way, good thing about Badfinger is it wouldn’t be hard to buy their whole discography.
Imagine a fantasy sort of world where Ham had lived, they carried on and brought Gerry Rafferty into the mix later on…
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All together they had 9 studio albums…two without Pete Ham…but the two without Pete Ham do have some good songs.
This one is an excellent album. This is the one I would tell anyone to start with.
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I fondly remember Badfinger’s music, but never really knew about their personal struggles. Their story is such a terrible tragedy, and there has to be a special compartment in hell for corrupt managers who stole from their clients.
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Stan Polley…yes there has to be. He did a number on them. I regret not using this one on the island but I ran out of picks. Thanks for reading.
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Surprisingly I dont have this album, though I do have the one with Without You and No Matter What on, vinyl. Great band, tragic backstory. Baby Blue I’d never heard until it featured as the close to the TV series Breaking Bad – it wasn’t a UK hit and got zero airplay, but it belatedly charted 40-odd years late and gives them chart hits in 2 centuries, a small compensation at least!
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When I saw the UK chart position of Baby Blue…I was flabbergasted. Day After Day had just hit a short time before in the UK so that really shocked me.
Pete Ham knew how to write really good pop/rock songs with great melodies.
You have the No Dice album…very good album…Midnight Caller is on that one also. It’s sad that their tragic story is known more than their songs.
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This sounds good – don’t really know them beyond the hits, keep forgetting to at least check out a hits.
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Pete wrote some really good songs. Midnight Caller, Apple Of My Eye, and others. Molland and Evans weren’t bad either.
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Great band, love those albums from the early 70s. Still play them.
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They were such an awesome band. There’s only one left, now. Such a shame. Have you seen this:
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I know Vic…Pete Ham…was such a great human being. No one says a bad word about him…that is part of the reason though why it happened
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He was a sweet soul and was devastated by a thieving bastard. Then, Tom did the same thing.
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