Was Badfinger's problem purely managerial?

Historically, Badfinger fans (myself included) have put the blame on the bands' failed "promise" on their sadly misguided management. But is that the whole reason they never truly made it huge? My feeling is that, bad/rip off management aside, they were a band without a time period. While they were much better in terms of song consistency, I feel their very limited success owed much the same as that of a band like The Raspberries....in other words, great music which happened to fall into the wrong time slot. It was too late for the 60's but too early for New Wave during which time it quite possibly would have fared much better, commercially. In the 70's, while "good songs" are always a required given, a band also had to have something "extra"...it was a time of Prog rock, Hard Rock, Glam Rock, singer-songwriter Rock, Latin Rock, Acoustic Rock...whatever...everyone had a label...except for Badfinger who were just a good sounding Pop/Rock band with good songs. But unless you were already pre-established from the previous decade, was that enough for that specific time period?

 

I Read the biography by Dan Matovina
According to this writer the american manager Stan Polley played a decisive part in the decline of the band

 

There was a place for their music at that time. The talent was there, the song writing was there, appeal, etc. Poor management in spades shut it all down and destroyed their momentum, imo. A great band with a tragic story.

 

I would add the dissolution of Apple Records played a role, and Polley signing that onerous contract with Warner in response. It all came back to Polley being a thief and a scumbag, though.

 

Not purely managerial. They had a couple hits so people knew who they were but they just didn't catch on in a big way. It happens to talented bands all the time. The fanbase always wants to blame the manager, lack of tour support, lack of promotion from the label and so on. The fact is that luck and the fickle public always play a part and many quality bands never hit it big. I am a fan and I did read the Matovina book.

 

In life, nothing is ever purely anything. Bad management played a big part though.

 

Bill Collins and Kathie Molland were additional toxic elements to an already nasty Brew

 

I wonder how well they’d’ve been remembered if it hadn’t been for the tragedy that followed. There are a lot of great acts who had some success at the time but who never got their due and it’s possible that if there’d been a happier outcome for Ham, Evans et al., that they’d be regarded these days as the answer to a trivia question about Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey.

 

When the spirit, drive, and fire of a band’s creative core is extinguished, and disgruntled, it causes a domino effect of other issues (such as bitterness, in-fighting, paranoia, false accusations, depression, etc.) that break up a band...and sadly, bleak desperation, and complete loss of any hope.

In the case of Badfinger’s tragic story, their management’s actions were evil minded and criminal, and the main root cause behind most of their problems.

 

As others have mentioned mix Polley, the fall of Apple and the move towards heavier rock .

Shake and watch the results .

 

Almost all bands never have even one top 40 hit, and Badfinger had several, mostly self penned hits. They really should have been set.

All roads lead to this, sadly. It really seems a lot of negative activity, all at once. I'm no Badfinger scholar (I love them and the Iveys though) but if I were Pete Ham starting a family and all of a sudden/little by little all my hard work started going into someone else's pockets, I'm not sure how I'd even handle it, such an emotional issue for a songwriter/musician, especially someone suffering from depression. How would a scenario like this even go down today in the world of the watchdog internet?

Also, even though the corrupt management is largely to blame, the end of Apple records is something I never really think about in the case of Badfinger. I mean -- I know little about the move to WB, but leaving Apple always seemed mutual to me and best summed up in that beautiful song..
I forget that Apple was dissolving at the time, and if they weren't, things may have been different for the band. (don't hurt me, people in the know)

Yeah, unfortunately it seems their popularity was a little on the decline by the mid 70s (despite the music retaining supreme quality & no thanks to the label changing confusion). I think if things took a positive direction and nothing bad ever happened they would have had comebacks and more top 10 Pete Ham hits for sure, but maybe I'm just thinking positively.

I'm not familiar with those names and I've never read a book on Badfinger (did I miss a recommendation? ) and assuming I could handle the drama(if it were largely about the music).. your post gives me an exact idea, having read several Beach Boys etc "autobiogs" how certain insiders, almost always having nothing to do with music, can just tear things apart from the inside, on a day to day basis, over time.

 

What exactly did Polley do?

 

As others have mentioned mix Polley, the fall of Apple and the move towards heavier rock .

Shake and watch the results .

 

He put the band on small salaries, then took the rest of the income and embezzled it.

The band did have multiple issues. Some of them:

1) Polley also managed other acts. Most of them dropped him when they became aware of his mob ties. Badfinger was particularly naive in dealing with Polley and being blind to his faults. Going in and recording what became the Head First album after the prior album had been pulled was getting into a Stockholm Syndrome case of willful blindness. A lot of this unfortunately seems to have been headed up by Pete Ham who just didn't want to see the bad in anybody.

2) Their image was too retro. They were basically a 1960s concept band in the 1970s. The audience was starting to move on. You could write the tuneful tunes, have the singles, but being more than just a rock band was usually required to sustain interest. Like America (pop tunes with a folk edge), or Eagles (country edge), or other bands who went in a more hard rock direction. Eventually, the band did make more of a play for FM style tracks. The success was mixed.

3) Bad internal leadership. They tried to emulate the Beatles in having everyone write songs. Of course the Beatles did not really do this to a full extent, since it took a while for George to get going and Ringo's contributions are barely worth mentioning. Well, it turns out one of them, Pete, wrote most all of the best songs. If I was managing the band, I'd give half of every album to Pete, let him do what he wants, and the rest can have the other half. Joey Molland was essential to adding punch to the bands' sound, but he was never going to write a hit single if you gave him 100 years. There wasn't enough range in his songwriting.

 

I would so like to read Dan Matovina's book, but man is it expensive used. Talk about a book that needs a Kindle version. I think everyone here has hit the nail on the head, Polley made the band's world so toxic they thought everything was a lie and everyone was out to get them. Add in the collapse of Apple, which really hit Pete hard and it was a recipe for disaster.

I don't Badfinger would have been a huge band, but they had a lot of music left in them, not counting the tragedy of Pete and Tom not being around to watch their kids grow, to grow older with their spouses.

 

He was born.

Honestly, he ripped the band off. He's no longer living, so I guess there's some justice.

 

Despite the obvious

The band also didn't have that attractiveness and stage prescence

 

Thank you! I kept reading about bad management but never knew what it was. Sounds similar to the Bay City Rollers.

 

Badfinger had a tragic (almost unlikely) run of bad luck from the moment Apple imploded. It was one thing after another, including but not limited to, the curse of bad management.

 

Badfinger had an inappropriate band name for the kind of music they made.

 

Stan Polley was probably the principal factor in the band's collapse - Warner Brothers yanked Wish You Were Here because funds disappeared while under Polley's control, and poor Pete named him in his suicide note. But there were signs of trouble well before that. I think that Apple Records was an interesting idea, poorly executed by four guys who, having succeeded at one thing, assumed they'd be successful at other things. (Always a dangerous assumption to make.) Apple made its famous cattle call announcement soliciting tapes and songs, and (according to company insiders) didn't end up signing anyone on that basis. Everyone who got signed to Apple did so on the basis of some kind of connection. (In the Iveys' case, their manager knew Mal Evans.) Having scored a deal with Apple, the band received minimal promotion at first, and got no apparent attention from the Beatles until Paul read an interview in which the members complained about the neglect.

Then they had problems getting their work approved. Their first album never even came out in the UK or the US. For every subsequent album, they switched producers mid-course for various reasons (such as George Harrison abandoning Straight Up to focus on the Concert for Bangladesh - he invited them to participate as backing musicians but they didn't get a slot to perform their own music). Their albums and singles were repeatedly rejected. I think the Beatles' hearts were in the right place but they didn't know how to run a record company, or, more generally, a business. I believe that Badfinger's early success was in spite of, not because of, their involvement with Apple. (The label wasn't exactly a hit factory after 1969 or so - keep in mind that the Beatles themselves were technically under contract to EMI, not Apple; EMI indulged them by sticking Apple labels to their records.)

 

yeah the 'BAD' in their name might well have put some people off !

I think besides signing with Polley there were several things that in retrospect went against them

1. They got caught in the 'shadow' of The Beatles - a 'double edged sword' as while Paul and George helped them, and they were on Apple they were so often seen as a Beatles offspring type of band and NOT given enough credit for what they were - it hit them even in Iveys days as that album never got a UK or USA release at the time and later the demise of Apple and The Beatles break up saw them rather like being glowingly promoted to chief...on the Titanic !

playing acoustics 'in the wings' at the Bangla Desh concert said it all (who besides us remembers Pete played lead guitar on George's solo 'Here Comes The Sun' performance ?)

2. Bill Collins lacked Brian Epstein's contacts and really got out of his depth...hence he introduced them to Polley - and apparently poor Bill blamed himself thereafter...

3. A key problem - too much of a democracy - they had a natural leader of course but elected to be 'all equals' ....and while honourable it only lead them into being a little directionless when a STRONG leadership direction would have boosted them

4. Realated to 3 above - and a rather sad indictment re humanity - Pete Ham was 'too nice and modest a guy' ! - absurd but it did poor Pete and his band few favours being trusting, decent, hardworking, and in the end too sensitive in a shark infested waters entertainment industry world

Had Pete been of bigger ego and 'full of himself' (think a young Lennon) more and led his band as HE wanted them to go...it might have strengthened them more and that was so vital for 'survival' purposes - literally

Pete had the talent, the others had talent too and together they gelled so well and if they had played fully to their strengths by having Pete as natural leader and CHIEF songwriter ....with the others supporting his leadership more I think they would have been better balanced overall and in better shape to prosper

a top Pete song...gave way to a 'lesser' song in commercial terms by another member for a single (that surprise surprise flopped !) after Pete had penned successive UK and USA chart hit singles and certainly was well capable of giving them more chart hits ('Lonely You', 'Know One Knows', 'Lay Me Down' etc - IF only the wider public had the chance to hear and buy them as singles with some promotion) , thus as a hit making band they lost momentum, while by 1975 Pete only had two songs on 'Ass' when he was clearly THE songwriter of the band - can you ever 'imagine' Lennon or McCartney settling for just two songs (as the younger George had to) on a Beatles album ?

also re business having two albums out by differing companies almost together didn't help either, or their effectively vanishing from their homeland the UK as all out American tour success was their best hope - that cost them at home while it exhausted them in the USA too

Polley was of course THE nail that crucified them...but they were at best so unlucky and otherwise unwise re natural group 'pecking order' as apparently Joey's wife caused additional friction (I have read that at one point she kept Pete out of the studio !)

the band's natural quartet seemed to come under strain from certain outside influences (think 'Let it Be' !) which caused additional 'issues' and it led to a dispirited Pete quitting briefly (shades of 'White Album' strain) before returning - then Joey quit (hence Pete's song 'Keep Believing') as the surrogate Beatles began to repeat history but minus the cash !

'will you walk away from a fool and his money ?'

never seemed so apt

the biggest irony was that other record companies WERE interested provided they could free themselves from the mess they had naively signed themselves into...

what they should have done was the oddest thing...but the solution - stage a big artistic argument and (by agreement with each other) BREAK UP on "musical differences" terms - managers can't prevent that happening

then done other projects and started again - but then later reforming the band as soon as Polley's grip on and interest in them ceased...

it's SO easy to have hindsight of course

 

The fact that they re-upped with him after having gotten the short end of the stick for all those years still boggles my mind. If they hadn't, they probably could have rebuilt their fortunes with WYWH, and gone on from there.

Polley must have been one hell of a salesman.

 

Assuming that Badfinger’s Top 40 hit years were all in the past, it doesn’t take much imagination to invision that they still could have had a robust active career ahead of them, in the decades to come.

The CD reissue campaign in the Eighties brought them (and The Iveys) back into the spotlight, after many years of their catalog collecting dust, out of print, leaving their bin slots empty in record stores.

 

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