{"id":16050,"date":"2019-02-05T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16050"},"modified":"2019-02-04T07:02:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T12:02:14","slug":"badfingers-wb-years-revisited-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/05\/badfingers-wb-years-revisited-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Badfinger’s WB Years Revisited, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"As brilliant as the original mixes of Badfinger\u2019s two Warners albums are, the 2018 bonus mixes shed additional light on the process of making those records. Matovina says that Badfinger\u2019s guitar work \u2013 primarily by Ham and Molland, though all four members played guitar \u2013 is underrated. The new mixes highlight some of that work. \u201cThere\u2019s also their background vocals,\u201d Matovina says. \u201cThese albums are deeply layered, which is a Chris Thomas trait. And he might have four, five, six, even eight vocals going on. Now you can break them out, hear who was doing what, and appreciate Badfinger\u2019s amazing chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Badfinger always drew from a wide variety of styles, and nowhere is that variety in as sharp focus as on Badfinger<\/i> and Wish You Were Here<\/i>. \u201cThey were bursting with ideas,\u201d Matovina says. \u201cThey could have gone in almost any direction.\u201d The latter album\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019re So Fine\u201d (misspelled on every release until now) shows Badfinger<\/i>\u2019s country-rock side, while \u201cMatted Spam\u201d has funk and soul textures (\u201cChris brought in saxophone player Jim Horn,\u201d Matovina says). And the pair of medley\/suites on Wish You Were Here<\/i> (\u201cIn the Meantime\/Some Other Time\u201d and \u201cMeanwhile Back at the Ranch\/Should I Smoke\u201d) are ambitiously progressive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came up with the idea of combining songs to actually make one sort of piece of music,\u201d Chris Thomas says. \u201cWhich, to be fair, is an idea I copied from the Beatles, from side two of Abbey Road<\/i>. We had to make an album, and we didn’t really have the material there. And I think the pressure brought something different out of the band.\u201d Thomas says that for Wish You Were Here<\/i>, the four members of Badfinger were \u201csort of building the pieces to the jigsaw at the same time they were trying to fill in the spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each of the two album reissues features a new track. Badfinger<\/i>\u2019s \u201cLove My Lady\u201d and Wish You Were Here<\/i>\u2019s \u201cQueen of Darkness\u201d are both written by Tom Evans. \u201cChris told me that there was never any favoritism shown toward any one member\u2019s material,\u201d Matovina says. The two Evans songs simply didn\u2019t make the cut in an era when an album\u2019s length was typically limited to 44 minutes.<\/p>\n

There would be plenty of creative give-and-take in the making of Badfinger\u2019s two 1974 albums. Thomas witnessed firsthand the inventiveness of the musicians. \u201cPete Ham could play a guitar solo, and then we\u2019d play the tape backwards. And the backward guitar solo would be the notes that he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recorded interviews of Badfinger from the Warner Brothers era are rare, but the documentary nature of the band\u2019s songwriting often gave the clearest picture of its members\u2019 emotional state. \u201cThe song lyrics jump out at you,\u201d Matovina says, citing Molland\u2019s \u201cGot to Get Out of Here\u201d on Wish You Were Here<\/i> as one of many examples.<\/p>\n

Thomas says that the external pressure on the band did have unexpected positive effects. \u201cIt gave me an opportunity to experiment a bit more,\u201d he says. With his trademark modesty, the man who had already worked with the Beatles and produced albums by Roxy Music and Procol Harum (and was mixing Pink Floyd\u2019s landmark The Dark Side of the Moon<\/i>) characterizes his level of experience during the making of Badfinger\u2019s Warner LPs as \u201cearly days. I was sort of growing in all the things that I was learning as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Other than the four band members, producer Thomas and engineers Phil Chapman (on Badfinger<\/i>) and Jeff Guercio (on Wish<\/i>), few others were involved in the primary sessions that yielded the two Warners albums. After Badfinger finished work on Wish You Were Here<\/i>, Thomas and engineer Bill Price continued production at George Martin\u2019s AIR Studios. Working with scores by Anne Odell, a friend he knew from the Royal Academy of Music, Thomas added horn and string arrangements, using the Martyn Ford Orchestra.<\/p>\n

But superb and note-perfect as her arrangements are \u2013 qualities that Matovina\u2019s new mixes showcase brilliantly \u2013 Anne Odell wasn\u2019t Chris Thomas\u2019 first choice.<\/p>\n

Thomas had recently produced former Velvet Underground violist John Cale\u2019s Paris 1919<\/i>. \u201cI knew John was a fantastic orchestrator,\u201d Thomas says, \u201cand I knew I could work well with him.\u201d So he invited Cale to meet the band.<\/p>\n

Working in the studio, Thomas says that Badfinger were solidly professional; on their off hours, they did partake of illicit substances. And at the time of the Cale meeting, guitarist Molland wore a file or spoon on a chain around his neck. He had just finished making use of it when Cale arrived, \u201ceyes blazing,\u201d in Thomas\u2019 words.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile he was talking,\u201d Thomas recalls with a hearty laugh, \u201cJohn pulled out an envelope, and shoved a drinking straw \u2013 like you\u2019d get with a McDonald\u2019s milkshake \u2013 into the envelope.\u201d With one big snort, he consumed the entire contents of the envelope, \u201cprobably what Joey would have consumed in an entire week! It was so funny, and the look on Joey’s face was one of pure terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the end, Cale didn\u2019t show up for the brass and string overdub sessions, so Odell got the gig and created masterful arrangements. Thomas is effusive in his praise for Odell\u2019s work on Wish You Were Here<\/i>. \u201cThose fade-in and fade-outs and discordant things that open \u2018In the Meantime\u2019 are completely Anne\u2019s ideas,\u201d he says. While Thomas knew from the start of the sessions that he wanted orchestration on certain tracks, he says that Odell \u201cdid a brilliant, absolutely wonderful job.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the benefit of hindsight, Thomas agrees with the critical consensus that he did a better job on Wish You Were Here<\/i> than on the previous album. For 1974\u2019s Badfinger<\/i>, he says, he was presented with \u201csongs which were sort of pre-written, so it was just a question of recording them.\u201d For Wish You Were Here<\/i>, he took a major role in developing the arrangements (\u201cThat\u2019s the main thing I do,\u201d he says), and played a good bit of (uncredited) keyboards as well.<\/p>\n

And once Wish You Were Here<\/i> was complete, Thomas knew that the band had something special. \u201cThat was definitely the pinnacle of the records that I’d made up to that point,\u201d he says. \u201cEven today, there’s very, very little I would change on it; I loved it. As I say, I was given such free rein that it was really exciting.\u201d Sadly, Warner\u2019s recall of the record from retailers kept the world from hearing Badfinger\u2019s new music.<\/p>\n

Even though all of Badfinger\u2019s Apple era albums has been reissued with bonus tracks, and the band\u2019s post-Warners era record Head First<\/i> finally got official release in 2000 (Matovina was instrumental in that project as well), the vaults haven\u2019t been swept clean of gems. \u201cTo be honest, there\u2019s quite a bit still unreleased,\u201d Matovina teases. \u201cAnd I think in time it will come out. As slow as it\u2019s been, I think Badfinger will get their day and proper due.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… As brilliant as the original mixes of Badfinger\u2019s two Warners albums are, the 2018 bonus mixes shed additional light on the process of making those records. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,55,62,64],"tags":[256,3718,607,1796],"class_list":["post-16050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-powerpop","category-rawk","category-reissue","tag-badfinger","tag-chris-thomas","tag-dan-matovina","tag-real-gone-music","cat-41-id","cat-55-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16050"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16055,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16050\/revisions\/16055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}