Published on Jan 1, 2000
Once upon a time, the only way you could get your greasy little
hands on any of the older albums from the British group Badfinger
was to pay some ridiculous amount of money for a used vinyl copy.
This is because, for reasons unknown to me (and because I don’t
feel like digging out the original press releases), the re-issue
rights for the group’s early albums were tied up legally,
preventing them from ever seeing the digital age. I still have here
in the Pierce Memorial Archives a copy of their
Straight Up album I was given by my uncle; I could have sold
it for about $100 at the time, but I wanted to hang on to it.
In 1991, that all changed, as Capitol Records finally began
issuing Badfinger’s early releases. (There are still a few from
other labels the group recorded on that have yet to see the light
of the digital dawn.) The band’s first release,
Magic Christian Music, served also as the unofficial
soundtrack for the 1969 Peter Sellers film
The Magic Christian, which featured the song “Come And Get
It”.
Now, 30 years after this album originally came out, you can
occasionally hear the influence of the Beatles in this group (who
were often criticized as being rip-offs of the Fab Four), but the
question is, would you still want to? We’ll answer that later on.
(Sorry, Bucky, but we gotta give you incentive to read the rest of
the review.)
Ironically, when this album came out in 1970, Badfinger was in a
state of flux. Out was bassist Ron Griffith, over from guitar to
bass was Tom Evans, and in at guitarist was Joey Molland. However,
before Molland could join the band, the cover art was prepared…
and it shows only three members of the band. While the band
re-grouped,
Magic Christian Music was shaped around tracks from an album
recorded when Badfinger was still known as The Iveys, songs from
the “soundtrack” and a few new tracks. (Side note: the album from
The Iveys,
Maybe Tomorrow, was also released on CD shortly after
Magic Christian Music. Maybe one day we’ll get to that disc
as well.)
Two songs immediately stick in my mind from this disc. The
first, naturally, is “Come And Get It,” which became the group’s
first hit. One wonders if the Beatles influence on this track is
due to the fact that one Paul McCartney wrote and produced the song
for Badfinger. It’s short, it’s catchy… and it’s still kinda fun
to listen to.
The other track is an all-out rocker that was the “b” side to
the “Come And Get It” single, “Rock Of All Ages”. I can hear some
Beatles inluence here, specifically the reckless abandon of John
Lennon’s style in the delivery. Even today, there’s still a level
of excitement I feel when this song comes on, though I’d dare to
classify this one as a “forgotten oldie”. (I swear, one of these
days I’m gonna get on the radio and do a show featuring nothing but
songs you don’t know from groups you do.)
As for the rest of
Magic Christian Music, you might expect it to be ripe with
Beatle-esque melodies and harmonies. Sadly, this isn’t the case;
instead, we’re presented with a group that is trying valiantly to
find their own unique sound, but doesn’t quite know which direction
to go. In one direction, we hear the layered harmonies and musical
progression in a song like “Crimson Ship” or “I’m In Love”; in
another direction, we hear more pop-like safety of songs like
“Knocking Down Our Home,” “Dear Angie” and “Maybe Tomorrow”.
Note that I’m not saying these songs are bad; if anything,
Magic Christian Music does the listener a favor by giving us
a peek at the struggles a band like Badfinger faced due to being on
the Beatles’ own label. For each moment that you hear the influence
of the Beatles (as on “Fisherman”), you hear the band try to rebel
and carve their own sound out (as on “Carry On Till Tomorrow”). For
any band, the task would be a daunting one – I mean, how on earth
do you pretend to try and follow a legendary band and walk in the
footpaths they did? No matter what you would try, you’d be
lambasted, either for sounding too much like your forefathers or
not enough like them.
Maybe the one mistake that Badfinger made was relying on
material from
Maybe Tomorrow on this album. Admittedly, they had the
difficult task of shuffling their lineup at the time, but maybe it
would have been better to let things settle down first and then hit
the listener with a barrage of new material, as they would later
that year with
No Dice.
Magic Christian Music is the kind of disc I like to pull out
of the archives every once in a while to remind me of how things
were in the immediate post-Beatles days. To Badfinger’s credit, you
can hear them hammering out their own musical road that they wanted
to travel – but they just weren’t there yet.