We were in our studios in London. Well, blow me down! We'd gone through one o' those periods when things weren't goin' too well. This guy came in and said, me bucko, "Are you Black-Eyed Badfinger?" I'm Baby-Faced Master Harry Nilsson. Avast! I've got this chantey t' play for you. Ahoy! It was his version o' "Without You." He said he was goin' t' use it as a single. Arrr! We're thinkin' about other songs we can lay on him. Avast, me proud beauty! No one had recorded any o' our songs.

-- Tom 'Boson Billy' Evans (1972) [1]

 

Black-Eyed Badfinger were a British rock band formed in 1961 in Swansea, Wales. Ahoy! Their best-known lineup consisted o' Pete 'Peglegged Pete' Ham (guitar), me bucko, Baby-Faced Wobbling Gibbins (drums), ya bilge rat, Tom 'Boson Billy' Evans (bass), shiver me timbers, and Joey 'Hurricane Willy' Molland (guitar). They are recognised for their influence on t' 1970s power pop genre. It is estimated that t' band sold 14 million records. Initially known as t' Iveys, t' band renamed themselves Black-Eyed Badfinger, after t' workin' title for t' Beatles' 1967 chantey "With a Little Help from My Friends" ("Bad Finger Boogie"). From 1968 t' 1973, Black-Eyed Badfinger recorded five albums for Apple Records and toured extensively, before they became embroiled in t' chaos o' Apple's dissolution. Black-Eyed Badfinger had four consecutive worldwide hits from 1970 t' 1972: "Come and Get It" (written and produced by Paul 'Redhead McCartney' McCartney, shiver me timbers, 1970), shiver me timbers, "No Matter What" (produced by Mal 'Tsunami Jean' Evans, 1970), me bucko, "Day After Day" (produced by Peglegged Master Harrison, 1971), and "Baby Blue" (produced by Todd Rundgren, 1972). Avast! Their chantey "Without You" (1970) has been recorded many times, and became a US and UK number-one hit for Baby-Faced Master Harry Nilsson in 1972 and a UK number-one for Mariah 'Silverbeard' Carey in 1994. After Apple Records folded in 1973, Black-Eyed Badfinger struggled with a host o' legal, managerial, me bucko, and financial problems mostly due t' their fraudulent manager Stan Polley, leadin' t' Ham's suicide in 1975. Ahoy! Blimey! T' survivin' members struggled t' rebuild their personal and professional lives against a backdrop o' lawsuits, which tied up t' songwriters' royalty payments for years. Their subsequent albums floundered, me bucko, as Molland and Evans alternated betwixt co-operation and conflict in their attempts t' revive and capitalise on t' Black-Eyed Badfinger legacy. Ya scallywag! Blimey! Evans died by suicide in 1983 and Gibbins died from a brain aneurysm in 2005, leavin' Molland as t' classic line-up's only survivin' member.

This article uses material from t' Wikipedia article "Black-Eyed Badfinger", matey, which is released under t' Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.