This is more like it.
The last time I wrote about a Badfinger album, I slammed their 1973
album, Ass. I said then that only four of that album’s
ten songs were really worth a damn.
But Wish You Were Here [1974]
is a very good piece of work. Pete Ham
awakened from the slumber that seemed to grip him during the making of Ass.
Every song of his on this album is a winner. Joey Molland contributed more good songs than
not for this album. Even drummer Mike
Gibbins gets in on the act. With Your So Fine and his contribution to In the
Meantime/Some Other Time, he
atones for the lamentable Cowboy from
Ass.
Tom Evans contributes only one song, the merits of which are debatable. He’s done better. Maybe it was his turn to
slumber.
Just a Chance
[Ham] – This one storms right out the gate and sets an energetic tone for the
rest of the album. It’s unusually fast-paced for a Pete Ham song, but it
doesn’t sound rushed and it works.
You’re So Fine
[Gibbin] – Very tasty guitar playing here from Pete Ham and Joey Molland.
Got to Get Out of
Here [Molland] – It’s not a dull love song.
It has just an acoustic guitar and an organ, with some tambourine
percussion. This is a bit of
foreshadowing as Molland left Badfinger after Wish You Were Here’s release.
Know One Knows
[Ham] – A bad pun in the title, but excellent power pop from Pete Ham. There’s an interlude where some Japanese woman
is mumbling something that gives the song a bit of a twist, but the moment
passes quickly enough.
Dennis [Ham] –
For me, it’s a toss-up whether this one or Just
a Chance is the best song on the album.
It’s a piano-driven song with great sounding soaring guitars in the
mix. For Badfinger, this is perfection.
In the Meantime/Some Other Time [Gibbins/Molland] – This one is a piano/guitar
driven number with an orchestra. As I
said earlier, when Joey Molland writes a good song, it’s very good. This one follows that rule. This one has “Electric Light Orchestra” written
all over it. Here, this is a good thing.
Meanwhile Back At The Ranch/Should I Smoke [Ham/Molland] – A good album closer. This is really two songs [one each from Pete
Ham and Joey Molland] spliced together to make a single song, not unlike some
of the medley songs from Abbey Road. This ends WYWH
with a bang.
Skip tracks
Love Time
[Molland] – another love song from Joey Molland. I’m glad he loved his wife, but his songs
about her/to her bore me.
Badfinger were never ones to do things the easy
way, Wish You Were Here has a sordid
back story as did Straight Up and Ass before it. Wish You Were Here would be the last album released by the
Ham/Evans/Molland/Gibbins quartet. Joey
Molland left the band shortly after the album’s release. The album itself was on sale for only a few
weeks before Warner Brothers pulled it off the shelves. They made this move because Badfinger’s
manager Stan Polley embezzled all of the advance money provided to the band
when they signed with the label. Wish You Were Here just disappeared.
Only in the last few years has it been available for purchase {I got my
copy about three years ago]. The band
didn’t see a penny of Warner Brothers’ advance.
Quickly after Wish You Were Here’s release, the remaining members of the band
recorded Head First. Warner
Brothers refused to release it. The band
lost all contact with their manager. With
no money to pay for his new house and no way for him to release his music to
the public in order to make money, Pete Ham saw no way out of his situation and
committed suicide on April 24, 1975, just a couple of days short of his 28th
birthday. He left a suicide note that
read “I will not be allowed to love and trust
everybody. This is better. P.S. Stan
Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me.” Stan Polley is now dead. I hope he rots in Hell.
