“I always thought that both Tommy and Pete wrote great songs and were way ahead of me in terms of technique and style”
Randy Justesen´s guestbook Aug 14 - 2004
Badfinger was pretty good. It was a very sad story, though, because the guy, he ended up killing himself, Pete Ham, who was a lovely fellow, he was a good guitar player and a great singer, he wrote, the most famous tune I would imagine is "Without You", you know the Harry Nilsson record.
My first memory if playing with them was they were coming to Cleveland to play this club called The Plato. We went over and begged the owner of the club to put us on the bill. This was before we got signed to a record deal and we were as excited as can be. We played our little set and I remember Badfinger came on and they had little Vox amps that they sat on chairs. They sounded phenominal. They were absolutely picture perfect. I was knocked out by them. We were in awe of them at the time because they had an association with The Beatles. We first played with them before their second album came out. "Come and Get it" was out and maybe "No Matter What". We played with them a number of times in other cities after we had some hit records. The Raspberries identified with their music and I was certainly a huge fan of their style. When I heard Tom Evans and Pete Ham singing together for the first time I thought, "Wow, this is great!" It was pretty obvious as time went on that we were both doing sort of the same thing. We were both bands that wouldn't have existed without The Beatles. We both obviously admired their sound and their recording techniques and aspired to do something as good.
We opened for Badfinger once. They were a good live band.
We were all Badfinger and Raspberries fans.
Badfinger I loved. Those guys were just so incredible. It's so tragic what happened to them. If you listened to Pete Ham?s song "Without You" he wasn't kidding.
I love Badfinger. In fact they're my favorite next to The Beatles and Elton John. In 1975 after Pete Ham hanged himself I wrote this song called 'Pete Ham'. It was a ballad that I wrote because I thought he was wonderful.
I think Badfinger was the epitome of that type of music before the power pop term was coined. 'No Matter What" is always gonna be a great song on the radio. There?s probably two or three others off their records that are as cool like 'Day After Day'.
'Badfingers "Baby Blue" is amazing.
I was a big fan of Badfinger.
We both had an affinity for stuff by Badfinger and The Raspberries.
Badfinger were a great band
I really liked Badfinger and had a few of their albums.
"Pete Ham in the group was a very good writer. He wrote the Nilsson song "Without You", which is a seriously good song. But the poor fellow topped himself. He was a lovely bloke, I can still see him now. It was a terrible loss."
I really liked The Raspberries and Badfinger.
Badfinger I dug, what I?d heard.
The book also contains interviews with other great Power Pop groups like: Small Faces, The Move, The Raspberries, Big Star,Todd Rundgren(Nazz),Marshall Crenshaw, the Bangles etc. It's really a "must" for all Power Pop fans!
Link here to order.