“I'd rather be a musician than a rock star.”
- George Harrison
Today was the birthday of Pete Ham (1947), songwriter, singer, guitarist of the Welsh band, Badfinger. Badfinger had an impressive string of hits from 1969-1972. Ham wrote all their great classic songs, No Matter What, Day After Day and Baby Blue. He also co-wrote their song Without You which Harry Nilsson covered and turned into a monster hit in 1971. It has since been covered by dozens of artists.
You'd think with the success that those songs brought, the band would have flown high, but no, not the case. Badfinger, like many bands of the era, were victims of financial shenanigans, much of it due to their skeevy manager, Stan Polley. Through his mismanagement of funds, the band was brought to financial ruin. After several years of legal battles that left band members destitute, Ham committed suicide in 1975, three days short of his 28th birthday. Band member, Tom Evans, committed suicide in 1983 after an argument over royalties from the song Without You.
Not the most uplifting of rock and roll stories. It's been, unfortunately, too common in music history that young, eager bands and musicians have been preyed upon and exploited by unscrupulous managers and record companies. The list is long of those who have battled with one or the other or both: Tom Petty, John Fogerty, Billy Joel, The Rolling Stone, Judy Garland, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Who, Prince and on and on.
Whether he said it exactly this way, the essence of the quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson seems to apply: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.”
Note: Badfinger is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Gene Pitney is.