Customer Reviews

Wish You Were Here

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Well, I'm sure you all have heard the problems this band went through, so I won't even go into that. I will say this though, this recording seems to be focused on what was going on around the band at the time....tough pill to swallow..... Just over 30 minutes, this album broke new ground, a different approach then previous releases. I won't sit here and insult anyone's intelligence by stating this is their greatest work. Personally, its my favorite. From start to finish, no bad tracks, some medley's (including important contributions from Mike), some excellent choices of intruments never used before on a Badfinger record. This is by all means, the last record of the Classic Badfinger lineup. The comparisons to Abbey Road are prevelent.....but it stands to this day as a Classic Lost Album that will go down in history as just that.....Lost. No hit songs here, no tradmark sounds, just pure brilliance.

If I could possibly improve this great release, I would have included "Timeless" (similar time signature to "I Want You, She's so Heavy") somewhere in between the original's release first side and second. Would have been a nice compliment to the Abbey Road theory?!?

This document should not be overlooked by any casual, hardcore or any Beatle fan!




c_bennett31@yahoo.com

The two albums that Badfinger recorded for Warner Brothers after leaving Apple were among the easiest to find in the days before cd's. They could usually be found languishing in used bins for relatively low prices, and it was this that initially threw me off. Finally, faced with the prospect of little known Badfinger over no Badfinger at all, I went ahead and purchased both albums. Imagine my surprise when I got home and found that both albums were loaded with songs on par with, and at times better than, the songs that the band did while with Apple. The whole album is strong, with leadoff shouldabeenahit "Just A Chance" Pete Ham is in fine voice, and one is left to wonder what could have been. "Know One Knows" and "Dennis" are equally strong, but it's the rather odd cut and paste songs "In The Meantime/Some Other Time" and "Meanwhile Back At The Ranch/Should I Smoke" that show the band's true brilliance. Within months Pete Ham would be dead and with his passing rock and roll lost one of the truly great songwriters as well as a hugely underrated guitarist. This album demands and deserves a listen and it's a risk you won't regret.

I've picked up all of Badfinger's album and this one is the best. My favorite tracks include Got To Get Out of Here, Dennis, In the Meantime, and Meanwhile Back at the Ranch. The Production is fantastic - Big thanks to Chris Thomas - and the band is tight! The guitar ending to Meanwhile Back is thrilling. The songwriting of the group throughout the album stands head and shoulders above any of the other albums. Any potential hit singles to go along with Day After Day or No Matter What? No, but there's not a weak song in the whole album. It flows perfectly, pulling you along with its sound, craftsmanship, and melody. What a crime it was for Warner Brothers to pull it after only 3 weeks! A definite overlooked gem.

This is the last Badfinger album to feature the classic lineup of Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Mike Gibbins, and Joey Molland. The quality of material found in this collection rivals and sometimes surpasses that found on the better-known "No Dice" and "Straight Up." Pete Ham is in fine form on "Know One Knows," "Just A Chance," and "Dennis." The Gibbins-penned "You're So Fine" is a real treat and the rip-roaring "Meanwhile Back At The Ranch/Should I Smoke" is a grand finale to an album that will leave you breathless.

... Has nobody heard this CD? This is a GREAT album. Easily as good, if not better than the classic Straight Up album and leaps and bounds over Magic Christian Music. Always like the songs I knew of Badfinger's. NEVER had I heard this disc. It's such a shame that this band wasn't absolutely huge.

If you like Badfinger at all (if you like Cheap Trick, Beatles, ELO, The Move) BUY THIS DISC. In fact this disc has a very contemporary power pop vibe to it. I can't recommend it enough.

Badfinger's second album for Warner Brothers was recording during two sessions - the first took place at The Caribou Ranch, Colorado in April/May 1974; the second at AIR studios, London in June. Though financial worries had begun to have great influence on the 4 members; they all felt that they had to put everything they had into these recordings. And this really shows on the album - another masterpiece - one of the really great albums of the seventies. It has been called "The Sergent Pepper of the 1970's"; personally I feel that it has more in common with "Abbey Road".

Badfinger had grown into an albums-band, and this album really works as a whole, especially the original side 2 which features two very succesful medleys. The album opens with Pete's very powerful Just A Chance and with Mike's light and catchy You're So Fine song by Joey and Pete - once again Mike proves himself as a competent songwriter. Know One Knows is another powerful melodic rocker by Pete - I love the Japanese voice that meddles with leadguitar part. The first side closes with another grand production which characterizes most of the album; Pete's Dennis written to his step-son. Besides the two medleys side two features Tom Evans' King Of The Load ( one of my favourite Tom Evans songs) and Joey's quiet Love Time. No singles were released from the album; this was a period when hit-singles didn't matter much to the progressive/ambitious bands. Just a Chance or Know One Knows might have been able to make the charts with the right promotion, though none of them have obvious hit-potentials.

that chose to sue the band rather than understand what Pete, Joey, Tom and Mike were going through. The shame of it all is while rock was going into that transitory phase from British Rock and Roll and California Country Rock to Disco, Punk and whatever Springsteen calls his music??? Badfinger in 1974 had recorded an album that not only sounded like "Abbey Road" or even elements of the Beatles' "White Album", but evoke that same magical lyrical imagery so prevalent in the latter Lennon-McCartney era.

Peter Ham, disillusioned and broke, would take his life less than a year after recording this album, but some of his finest songs - maybe not hit tunes like "Day After Day", "No Matter What" or "Baby Blue" - were recorded here. Songs like "Just A Chance", "In the Meantime", and "Meanwhile Back at the Ranch". Tommy Evans contributed the cute and very Lennonsque "King of the Load" with a sweeping guitar solo (Ham? or Molland) that rivals George Harrison's best Beatle solos. Mike Gibbins stepped from behind the drums to sing "You're So Fine" with the three main singer Badfinger boys. The epic, chugging, masterpiece "Meanwhile Back at the Ranch-"Shall I Smoke" with an opening lead vocal by Ham and ending vocal by Joey Molland and with dual lead guitars by Ham and Molland is a breathtaking finish to a wonderous work. A work that sadly enough ended up in the bargain bins - and left the band in desperate debt because a label chose to punish an act over the misdeeds of its mismanagement.

Joey Molland once told me that yep, "Gotta Get Out of Here" was a blunt reference to what the band was experiencing due to lousy management and a label that really didn't care. A band that came directly out of being the Beatles' proteges, being outstanding musicians and composers in their own right and keeping the tradition of the Fab Four did not deserve such a terrible fate. Both Ham and Evans died needless, tragic, early deaths that shouldn't have been, and Molland deserves much more acclaim - at least Badfinger has been acknowledged as a major influence by bands like Cheap Trick, the Records, the Bangles and others.

Make no mistake, this is a fine album; it captures well the emotional intensity that was burning in this band at the time. Along with Straight Up, it stands as Badfinger's finest hour.

This import, the only way it is available on CD, is very poorly remastered. Possibly they did not have the 1st generation master tapes, but the sound is very thin. Rhino, who also did not have the 1st generation masters, did a much better job on the remaster of this material that is included on their Best of Vol. 2.

Wish You Were Here is certainly a lost classic of the mid-70s, which was a dire period for pop music. Warner Brothers should certainly give this album its due, with a deluxe domestic release and a 24-bit remaster from the 1st generation masters (or, even better, how about a much-needed remix from the original multitracks?).

Much less worthy material has received much more attention. So, how about it, Warner Brothers?

Badfinger are perhaps best remembered (when remembered at all) for their Apple release Straight Up, with its stately though ultimately timid retread of late BEATLES territory. Their subsequent releases for Warner Brothers never received the attention they deserved, yet is was here, at Warner, that BADFINGER finally emerged as legitimate heirs to the Fab Four's throne, rather than shirk as obvious pretenders.
Their Apple years brought BADFINGER a few mild brushes with fame. Their three core albums (Magic Christian Music, No Dice, and Straight Up) produced a stateside hit each. The McCARTNEY-penned "Come and Get It," from Magic Christian Music, is a note-for-note cover of the unreleased BEATLES original, bringing nothing new to the song ("Carry On Til Tomorrow," a hit in Asia, would have been a far finer introduction to the band). No Dice's "No Matter What" was a straight-ahead and unspectacular pop-rocker. The classic GEORGE HARRISON-produced "Day After Day," from Straight Up, finally brought melody to the fore. As their later work would reveal, melody was surely BADFINGER's strongest suit. (The band's final Apple release, Ass, is an easily-forgotten pastiche.) Their self-titled 1974 Warner debut was surely flawed, but nonetheless possessed some truly gorgeous pop songs, "Lonely You" being the obvious standout. But it was on their second Warner release, that same year's Wish You Were Here, when BADFINGER finally hit their stride, truly picking up where Abbey Road left off.
Just like the Abbey Road medley, Wish You Were Here overloads the listener with energy, melody, intricate harmonies, and screaming electric guitars fighting it out with strings and brass. The album begins with a jolt. In "Just a Chance" electric guitars leap from the speakers, chugging along with Pete Ham's impassioned vocal. It becomes immediately clear that Ham had now unleashed the true depths of his vocal abilities, as he effortlessly wraps his vocal cords around the soaring melody. His new-found vocal prowess is perhaps most fully displayed on Side One's final cut, "Dennis," a sort of JEFF LYNNE-meets-JOHN LENNON explosion of melody, which amalgamates no fewer than three distinct concepts into one overwhelming package. Side One also features Joey Molland's "Got to Get Out of Here," a harrowing tale of alienation with a sustained church organ drone, that suffers only in comparison to the previous album's "Give it Up," on which the former is too obviously based.
The pace hardly slackens on Side Two, opening as it does with the Mike Gibbins/Joey Molland medley "In the Meantime/Some Other Time." Again, melody and energy combine in an overwhelming assault. After the GILBERT O'SULLIVAN and PAUL McCARTNEY soundalikes (respectively) of Joey's "Love Time" and Tommy Evans' "King of the Load (T)," the album moves into medley territory once again: Pete and Joey's "Meanwhile Back at the Ranch/Should I Smoke" end the album with a climax every bit as dramatic as Abbey Road's "The End".
Chris Thomas is credited with album production, but surely, George Martin deserves special mention for inspiring the sonic treatment. Crystal clear electric guitars, Ann Odell's characteristically richly textured string arrangements, Average White's punchy brass, and inventive choral backing lay the rock-solid foundation for the vibrant, live-in-the-studio-sounding lead vocal. The album's aural constancy and short playing time (about thirty-six minutes) combine to make it one of the few LPs which actually improves upon translation to the CD format. Just like Abbey Road's Side Two, the few between-song breaks seem merely a bow to convention. Wish You Were Here, like few rock albums before or since, is truly of a piece.
The album was pulled out the shops only a month after its release, due to a legal dispute. It has languished unreleased in the states since that time. Within the year, Pete Ham was dead by his own hand. In 1983, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get the band going again, Tommy Evans also committed suicide. While the lion's share of tracks is in fact available on Rhino's Best of Badfinger, volume II--an excellent introduction to the band's Warner period--the CD version of the record, released only overseas, is the only way the songs achieve their full impact.

Those who describe this album as one of the great lost pop albums of the 1970s are wrong. This is the GREATEST lost pop album of the 1970s. This is Badfinger at its very best and those responsible for burying this jewel should be shot. Had this album seen the light of day when originally released, it would be listed among the classic rock albums of all time. If you like the deep cuts on Straight Up and other Badfinger albums, you must have this album. Everything hinted at in earlier Badfinger albums -the harmonies, texture, layering and lyrics - are at their very best...simultaneously. A fantastic album.