We were in our studios in London. We'd gone through one of those periods when things weren't going too well. This guy came in and said, "Are you Badfinger?" I'm Harry Nilsson. I've got this song to play for you. It was his version of "Without You." He said he was going to use it as a single. We're thinking about other songs we can lay on him. No one had recorded any of our songs.

-- Tom Evans (1972) [1]

 

Badfinger were a Welsh rock band formed in Swansea in 1961. Their best-known lineup consisted of Pete Ham (guitar), Mike Gibbins (drums), Tom Evans (bass), and Joey Molland (guitar). Initially known as the Iveys, the band renamed themselves Badfinger, after the working title for the Beatles' 1967 song "With a Little Help from My Friends" ("Bad Finger Boogie"). From 1968 to 1973, Badfinger recorded five albums for Apple Records and toured extensively, before they became embroiled in the chaos of Apple's dissolution. They are recognised for their influence on the 1970s power pop genre and are estimated to have sold 14 million records. Badfinger had four consecutive worldwide hits from 1970 to 1972: "Come and Get It" (written and produced by Paul McCartney, 1970), "No Matter What" (produced by Mal Evans, 1970), "Day After Day" (produced by George Harrison, 1971), and "Baby Blue" (produced by Todd Rundgren, 1972). Their song "Without You" (1970) has been recorded many times, and became a UK and US number-one hit for Harry Nilsson in 1972 and a UK number-one for Mariah Carey in 1994. In 1972, "Without You" saw co-writers Ham and Evans receive the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically from the Songwriters Guild of Great Britain. After Apple Records folded in 1973, Badfinger struggled with a host of legal, managerial, and financial problems mostly due to their fraudulent manager Stan Polley, leading to Ham's suicide in 1975. The surviving members struggled to rebuild their personal and professional lives against a backdrop of lawsuits which tied up the songwriters' royalty payments for years. Their subsequent albums floundered, as Molland and Evans alternated between co-operation and conflict in their attempts to revive and capitalise on the Badfinger legacy. Evans died by suicide in 1983, Gibbins died from a brain aneurysm in 2005, and Molland died from complications of diabetes in 2025. At the time of his death, Molland was the last surviving member of the group’s classic lineup. "Baby Blue" was featured in the finale of the American television series Breaking Bad, reviving its popularity amongst a new generation of listeners.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Badfinger", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.