Badfinger Radleys

This 16-track Badfinger compilation is mostly concerned with the band's Apple years, although a couple of later period tracks are thrown in for good measure. All digitally remastered, classic singles like "Come and Get It," "No Matter What," and "Day After Day" are all here along with songs like the early single "Maybe Tomorrow," from the group's pre-Badfinger days as the Iveys, and the 1979 post-Pete Ham reunion track "Love Is Gonna Come at Last." Their 1974 Warner Bros. albums are all but ignored except for the Ham-penned track "Dennis" from their final opus Wish You Were Here. Other compilations go into greater depth, but in terms of a good-sounding highlight reel from the legendary British rockers, Timeless is a great place to start.

Most folks point to Badfinger as the greatest power pop band of all time. But, with four accomplished songwriters in Tom Evans, Mike Gibbins, Pete Ham, and Joey Molland, and the creative assistance and imprimatur of The Beatles, Badfinger should have been bigger stars than they were. Their four albums for The Beatles’ Apple label get most of the attention, and understandably so, with hits like “Come and Get It,” “No Matter What,” “Day by Day,” and “Baby Blue.”

Released in 1989 when the post-Apple albums were hard to come by, Rhino's The Best of Badfinger, Vol. 2 does an excellent job of summarizing the last three Pete Ham albums (Badfinger, Wish You Were Here, and the unreleased [until 2000] Head First), adding a couple of selections from Airwaves for good measure. Fanatics can complain about missing tracks (and, at a certain stage, most Badfinger fans were fanatics by their very nature), yet this hits most of the high points, offering proof that the group remained viable – in some ways getting better – until the end. Wish You Were Here remains essential, and Capitol's 2000 The Very Best of Badfinger is the best overall compilation, yet as a sampler of the group's latter days, this is hard to beat.

Badfinger completed their best album in 1975, then had it pulled from the shelves in a haze of managerial misdeals and contractual screw-ups. They were good soldiers, at least for a while, heading into the studio (without Joey Molland, who bailed at the last minute) to bash out another album for Warner, completing it in two weeks. Warner rejected the effort, lead songwriter Pete Ham committed suicide not long afterward, and the album sat in the vaults until late 2000, when Artisan/Snapper released Head First as a double-disc set (the second disc consisting of demos and outtakes). Head First confirms that Badfinger had settled into a groove with Wish You Were Here, finding an effective middle ground between their pop gifts and hard rock inclinations, with both Ham and Tom Evans contributing equally strong works.

Wish You Were Here is a glistening, powerful rock record that stays true to power pop while sounding as contemporary as any mainstream rock band of the mid-'70s. It was the kind of record that could have been a hit, but due to a series of legal and managerial entanglements, it was pulled from stores before it had a chance to find its audience. Despite its relative obscurity, most die-hard Badfinger fans maintain that the group shines brilliantly on Wish You Were Here and they're correct. For one, it's easily the most cohesive album the group ever recorded – a nice by-product of working with one talented producer (in this case, Chris Thomas) for an entire album instead of piecing a record together. Also, the showcases each band member at a peak of songwriting.

In many ways, Badfinger is a continuation of Straight Up – an unabashed, concise pop album – but there's one important difference: Todd Rundgren was a taskmaster on Straight Up. He may have not jelled with the band, but he brought out their best. Chris Thomas didn't work the same way, although he's equally skilled in the studio, and he made a state-of-the-art pop record, which meant that they didn't necessarily play to the band's strengths. Instead, they tried a little bit of everything, with everybody throwing in a song or two, all in hopes that something would click on the radio. As a result, Badfinger is a bit of a mess.