Pete Ham (Part 1)

Preludes to Nothing 

Put it this way. Right now, are you in any sort of relationship with someone who is wired so fundamentally differently from you that you sometimes think that it would be easier to get a camel to agree with a penguin on whether it's a warm day today in Swansea today or not?

***

This is a biography about the guitarist-singer-songwriter Pete Ham of the band Badfinger (1968-1975), formerly known as The Iveys (1961-1968).

Time is a funny thing …

Once upon a time in the seventies, Badfinger was a well-known band. But in the same way that soon enough, probably, most kids on Earth will have never heard of Ariana Grande, Katy Perry or Taylor Swift, plenty of kids nowadays have never heard of Little Richard or Buddy Holly. Or maybe even Elvis or The Beatles.

So, for anyone under about fifty today (and plenty of people over fifty too, I suppose, because although most older people would know four or five of Badfinger's songs when they hear them, most of those wouldn't remember who sang them), the band name The Iveys is now just as famous as the band name Badfinger.

In other words, not at all.

In fact, I strongly suspect that even Mariah Carey, whose bestselling hit in Europe ("Without You") was written in two halves by Pete Ham and fellow-Ivey Tom Evans, would know much about the songwriters? Or what the song is about? (Hint: the verses are classic, reflective Pete and the soaring chorus in a high, high register is Tom all over). Certainly Harry Nillson, who defined the Carey version, originally thought it was a Beatles song.

But then, getting back to the fact that the band name Badfinger is not much better known nowadays than the band name The Iveys, on one level I think this is nice. Because it's my bet that Pete considered the band to be the same band before and after the name change, which had been pushed on the band by The Beatles / Apple. Whereas, by way of contrast, Pete's bandmate Joey Molland, who was commissioned into the band along with the name change to give the band a kick in the direction of something with more grunt (something Joey did give the band, and I'm glad about that, because I happen to like grunt), reckons the band really got started once he got there. Which is fine. Because from Joey's perspective, it did.

But still, from Pete's perspective, and the title of this biography is, after all, "Pete Ham", the fact that for most people who might read this biography, the band name "The Iveys" has just as significant a ring to it as "Badfinger" seems, as I say, nice to me at least.

***

I actually wanted to name drop Joey pretty early on in Pete's biography, as I have. Because the relationship between Joey and Pete (along with the dynamics within the band as a whole) is fascinating far beyond the fact that they happened to have ended up in a rock band together. Because they seem to be such different personality types that I would almost go so far as to say they might as well be two different species of human.

And in my opinion as very much an outsider (who nevertheless has heard Pete's opinion in, for example, the song Take It All, and Joey's opinion in a phone recording I have of him), whoever it was that pushed for Joey to be in the band had the right idea in terms of what he could offer the band in terms of a tougher edge, but no idea whatsoever in terms of team harmony. And for what the band was about to be put through, well, even a team as on the same page as whatever team in history was ever most on the same page would have been tested sorely, let alone the now suddenly dysfunctional set of personalities that was Badfinger?

And because of this-the combination of a mismatched set of personalities in the band and a series of crises the band was about to be put through that would be so deliciously cruel that even Shakespeare would have been proud to have cooked it up-the story of Badfinger becomes for me at least just as interesting as Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet.

And because of this in turn, I think, the Badfinger story transcends the fact that I happen to be writing about a rock star and a rock band.

***

All right then. That said, let's have a song about a camel trying to convince a penguin that it's a bit nippy in Swansea today.

The song Take It All (mentioned earlier) is Pete reaching out to Joey, who had got his nose badly out of joint during George Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh. George had asked Pete to join George for a duet on Here Comes the Sun.

(Pete got only a day's notice, I think I heard somewhere, probably from Dan Matovina, who is an authoritative source on all matters Pete Ham. And had to figure out how to play it by listening to it off an Abbey Road record back in his hotel room the night before).

Oddly enough, Joey introduces the song in the clip that comes up on You Tube. I'm not sure he was aware that it was addressed to him.

Not that it matters. I'm sure Pete was singing to the wall either way. 

And to that song I might as well add the moment that caused Joey's jealousy, too. That duet between George and Pete.

Joey, I think, thought that Pete and he were competing with each other for reflected Beatles glory. But if you listened to the song "Take It All", Pete is clearly saying that what he is on about is not a fame grab or anything like that. His thing is a deeper thing. And having studied Pete for years now, I'm convinced he would have been even happier to see Joey up there than himself, if that's what Joey really wanted. Hence the title "Take It All".

(And yes, I know, benefit concerts are supposed to be about the victims. But have you ever watched Live Aid?)

A book of biographies

Preludes to Nothing 

This is a book of biographies.

I decided I wanted one of those after having recently written a eulogy for someone. It was an unofficial eulogy (the real ones were given at his funeral by his family and his best friends), but he and I had had quite a few long chats over the years and I felt that I needed to have one more right now.

And once I got into it (and by the way this was in no small part down to who it was that I was chatting to) I found myself expressing my feelings with sincerity. This was a departure from my normal writing style, which tends to be pretty abstract and non-committal. This, I think, is because I usually write to get my thoughts in order, not to express my feelings.

Which brings me back to this book. Into which I have brought that eulogy as a prologue from where it can serve as something of a launchpad for other biographies and such like that I might feel like writing from time to time.

And that will do for this introduction, I think. Except to just flag that while I am planning to keep the sincerity going at least most of the time, I'm sure I won't always be in a reflective mood or even sad if, for example, a person has died. If I ever write a biography on someone like Hitler, for example, I'm sure it won't be quite the panegyric that eulogy for my friend was.