What question do I get asked most? When are you going to pay your bar tab.
What question do I get asked second most often? What music do you like. There must be something. A band or a group, just one piece.
Well I don’t like any music. But I do hava soft spot for one band. There were thought of as the next big thing, the saviour of post Beatles rock. None of which are the reasons why I like them. No I like them because they were stupendously unsuccessful, signed a contract which to all intents and purposes robbed them of money, and then topped themself. If only all bands could have a trajectory like that, I would be clapping until Kingdom Come.
The band? Badfinger.
The tragedy of Badfinger is made all the more juicy in that it was pretty much all the Beatles fault. Obviously the tragedy that anyone knew them in the first place was Paul McCartney’s, and George Harrison produced their second album. But when Apple was disolved over Macca and Lennon trying to decided which country in the Union they wanted to own (Macca certain that he wanted to give Ireland to the Irish) they were left floundering, in penury, to sign a sort of reverse loalties deal. All bands should obviously be fined for selling more records in my book. Bands who have ever met, or listened to a Beatles record double.
Why did the members of Badfinger top themselves though? Surely not just over money. Or even the realisation that they were rubbish. No, it was probably due to the realisation that they had written ‘Without You’ one of the most melodramatic, overblown and – this is the key point – covered songs in history. Perhaps the members obtained a crystal ball and realised that in 1997 Mariah Carey was going to crap her larynx all over it. In order to have completed rotted by this terrible juncture they stopped breating forthwith. And therefore stand as a shining example to all other bands.