Badfinger Breaking

posted in: Music News • Pop • Rock

There would probably already be a biopic about Badfinger if their story weren’t so irredeemably tragic. The ’70s power pop progenitors started as the first rock band signed to The Beatles‘ Apple Corps. They ended with the hanging suicides of two singer-songwriters, after years of frustrations, betrayals, theft, and stymied potential.

So it was a huge bonus, as the extremely satisfying series’ finale of Breaking Bad drew to a conclusion, to hear Badfinger’s 1971 classic “Baby Blue” take over the soundtrack while Bryan Cranston‘s Walter White…well, no spoilers here. Not only was it the perfect note on which to end the show, with “a lyric about bitter loss and regret against a sweet melody, tied up with the obvious ‘blue’ reference,” but, damn, it also just sounded so good (hat tip to producer Todd Rundgren). Surely, that will sell a serious chunk of downloads, which should benefit each band members’ estates (guitarist Joey Molland survives, and carries on the band’s legacy, performing the band’s music with a very good new band), despite the convoluted financial entanglements and legal maneuvering that drove the band desperately apart.

So, if not redemption, perhaps the heavily watched Breaking Bad finale provides at least some vindication and much deserved exposure for songwriter Pete Ham and a great band, including Tom Evans and Mike Gibbins, who might have given us even more great music. If some teenagers are online right now, searching for Badfinger, and hearing for the first time amazing songs like “No Matter What,” “Come And Get It,” “Day After Day,” and the original recording of “Without You” (later a record-breaking smash hit for Harry Nilsson, Air Supply, and Mariah Carey), well then maybe the Badfinger story will go on.

We’re damn glad it wasn’t Journey.