WITHOUT YOU – The Sad Story Of A Sad Hit

Dan Matovina has made it his mission in life to spread awareness of Badfinger, principal songwriters Pete Ham and Tom Evans in particular, and to do his best to prevent others from taking credit for, or benefit from, their work. 

        In the mid-nineties Dan approached me as editor at Omnibus Press to publish his book Without You: The Tragic Story Of Badfinger but I declined, believing it had insufficient commercial potential. This was probably a mistake but I gave Dan some editorial guidance and agreed that if he self-published the book Omnibus would distribute it in the UK on his behalf. This he did in 1997 and not only did it attract a slew of positive reviews, both in the UK and US, but it sold out its original print run.

Dan produced a revised version in 2000, and a few copies of this can occasionally be found on Amazon for prices in excess of £400. More recently he has authorised a kindle version which is easily obtainable. He has plans to produce a third edition that will include all the information he has gleaned in the meantime, and bring the story up to date with the death of drummer Mike Gibbons in 2005 and attempts by guitarist Joey Molland, who in 1969 took over from original member Ron Griffiths, to recreate Badfinger around himself. 

        I wrote quite a bit about Badfinger for Melody Maker. In 1971 I visited them at their large communal house on Park Avenue, a leafy road between Hampstead and Golders Green, where I also met their UK manager, a slightly creepy figure called Bill Collins who, born in 1913, seemed a bit too old for the job to me. I even saw them perform at Carnegie Hall in New York where I encountered Stan Polley, who looked after their US affairs and in the fullness of time would be exposed as an unrepentant fraudster. 

        Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Mike Gibbon and Joey Molland were nice, friendly guys with a bit of a chip on their shoulders about how the media relentlessly compared them with The Beatles, to whose Apple label they were signed. In fairness, the assessment was to some extent valid from a musical standpoint but it probably didn’t help that their first hit, ‘Come And Get It’ (1969), was written by Paul McCartney. Never intended for The Beatles, Paul’s demo of the song can, however, be heard on their third Anthology set.  

        Badfinger went on to record dozens of great power pop songs across six albums with stunning vocal harmonies but diminishing returns. They had two more big hits, ‘No Matter What’ and ‘Day After Day’, but are probably best known nowadays for ‘Baby Blue’, which in 2012 was used on the soundtrack to the hit TV series Breaking Bad, and – even more so – the timeless ‘Without You’, a massive hit for Harry Nilsson in 1972, and again for Mariah Carey in 1994. 

        Even after the success of Nilsson’s ‘Without You’ something intangible seemed to be holding Badfinger back, and it wasn’t until tragedy struck in the form of Ham and Evans’ suicides – in 1975 and 1983 respectively – that the enigma was solved: they’d been swindled out of millions, and the creeping realisation of this, coupled with dire financial circumstances, had crippled them irrevocably. Had they been managed honourably, the royalties from ‘Without You’ alone would have kept both Ham and Evans in comfort for the remainder of their lives.  

        Dan Matovina and I have remained friends and in his Badfinger mission Dan is now facilitating the release of CDs of demos by Pete Ham and The Iveys on behalf of the estates of Ham and Evans, and also former Iveys member Ron Griffiths. Knowing my ongoing interest in Badfinger, about two months ago Dan sent me his two most recent CDs, a Pete Ham Demos Variety Pack, with 23 tracks, opening with Ham’s original demo for ‘Baby Blue’, and what he calls The Iveys Golden Delicious Demos 1966-69, with 20 tracks, some of which became Badfinger recordings. 

        Of particular interest to anyone who finds the Badfinger story as fascinating as it is tragic, is the closing track on The Iveys’ disc, which Dan has called ‘Without You (Early Demos Evolution Edit)’. It’s five different early attempts by Ham and Evans at their most famous song, strung together to form an intriguing demonstration of how ‘Without You’ grew from an idea into reality. 

        The first attempt finds Pete Ham vamping piano chords as he croons the song’s first two verses, the melody intact, but with ‘party’ instead of ‘story’ on the third line. The chorus, however, with its famous line ‘I can’t live if living is without you’, is unrealised and, instead, Ham sings ‘If it’s love that you need’ to a different tune, then breaks off to de-dum-de-dum the next few unwritten words. It breaks off at 1.29. 

        The second attempt, if it can be called that, finds Tom Evans alone singing a song he’s composed called ‘I Can’t Live’ which at this stage is yet to be married to Ham’s earlier song, and was, indeed, entirely unrelated to it. Evans’ song hovers around a similar (but certainly not identical) melody with the words, ‘And now it’s gone I can’t seem to find happiness and good times that I left them all behind, Or is it just another way to let me know that in this life you only reap after you sow.’ After stretching for a high note on ‘sow’, he leaps confidently into the refrain that will become the chorus to ‘Without You’ with its familiar ‘I can’t live…’ opening. This breaks off at 2.22. 

        The third take finds Ham playing his song idea on acoustic guitar, chopping away at chords in the manner of the Everly Brothers, singing solo on the familiar verses one and two, Evans’ alternative lyrics from take two having evidently – and wisely – been jettisoned. “Around that time chronologically he asked Tom if he could try combining his song’s verses with Tom’s song he’d called ‘I Can’t Live’,” says Dan. “This made a new song, which was demoed by The Iveys and, later, Badfinger.”

        In Ham’s hands, the song has now come together, its plaintive melody ringing free on the rhythmic guitar chords. This peters out at 3.20 and lack the chorus…

        … which is stridently sung by Evans at the start of take four, the acoustic guitar having given way to electric with a hint of percussion deep in the mix. This is very brief, less than 30 seconds before there’s a reprise of take one, with Ham at the piano, singing the first verse again – it might be the same take as the opening – before he roams dreamily into a higher register, la-la-la-ing McCartneyesque, and resolves the now completed song on a final piano chord. The whole thing lasts 4.30.

        Unfortunately, the Ivey’s home demo of what became ‘Without You’ is unusable – “Almost erased,” says Dan – and while the Badfinger home demo is unavailable for release for copyright reasons, I’ve been able to hear it. Joey Molland appears on this, singing in the background and contributing a rather thin guitar solo towards the end. The title ‘Without You’ was suggested by producer Geoff Emerick when his studio recording was completed for its inclusion on Badfingers’ second LP No Dice in 1970. On the EMI tape boxes, it was still titled ‘I Can't Live’ until the very last minute. 

        Badfinger’s released version of the song opens with just lead guitar, bass and drums before Ham sings the opening verse over an acoustic guitar, similar to the third take of the demos, with Evans and Molland joining in on the chorus. Although the guitar solo is improved and there’s a much longer fade, next to Nilsson’s highly produced, highly orchestrated version, Badfinger’s final version of ‘Without You’ still sounds almost like a demo itself, not least because the magnificent Nilsson recording has become as well-known as any standard song you care to name. Mariah Carey, of course, turned it into a power ballad that blew the roofs off all nearby buildings, her extraordinary voice leaping into the stratosphere with all the bells and whistles she could command. 

        In his book Dan Matovina explains how after the deaths of Ham and Evans, others in the Badfinger story benefitted by suing for a share of the songwriting royalties generated by the song’s extraordinary and ongoing success. What Dan has done in arranging Pete Ham and Tom Evans’ demos for what became ‘Without You’ on this CD demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt that it was these two, and these two alone, who composed this song and that only these two, or their heirs, deserve to benefit from it. In a better world that would have been the case.  

        These Badfinger CDs can be obtained at Http://www.badfingerlibrary.com