Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Badfinger…and me
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged here; and, coming here tonight, I’ve reread some of my stuff for the first time in several months. Suffice it to say, my reaction has been somewhat mixed….
Some of it was utter self-indulgent shit; while other entries, on a lenient grading scale were almost passable, if I do say so myself.
Sure, the easy thing to do would be to just delete the shit, work on trying to write in a more self-conscious light as a way of garnering more mid-grade general acceptance and then celebrate by jerking off into a sink and proclaiming myself some sort of misunderstood artiste.
But, there’s no fun in that; just as you, dear and rare reader, are most likely finding no fun in this…
So, instead of groping myself just above a not at all appreciative sink tonight, instead I am writing here. Sure, an orgasm (of any stripe…) might feel good right about now; but, like all orgasms, it’d be just some fleeting moment soon enough washed away by thoughts of the greater issues facing me– and, unfortunately, there are dozens, perhaps scores of those.
So, a sad wank arcing just above the tiles makes absolutely no sense for me right now….
Maybe, as number 46 looms in the shadows a couple of weeks from now, I’ve lost a step; but it isn’t like this was unexpected. Instead, the easy psyche fixes I depended on in my now rapidly fading youth are now more a complication than a solution. No, people, it isn’t that I can’t make it happen so much as I just care far less these days– at least, for me, these days in particular.
Given the psychic overload of miseries I’ve made for myself since my arrest last September, and, (as I have been told, about a million times) that pretty much all of it has been my fault, there just seems no point in fouling a previously clean sink if all it will accomplish is a few seconds of clarity– before descending, as it always will, into the realm of self-hatred, recrimination, and an all-around feeling of dirtiness…
So instead, I chose to reacquaint myself with one of the best, and sadly most forgotten genius bands of all time.
Badfinger.
Possibly THE great Shakespearean rock and roll tragedy of all time.
Great band, brilliant songwriters; and, yet, they are somehow relegated by modern society into some sort of cut out bin/’oldies Mom and Dad loved for awhile’ sub-status, when nothing could ever be further from the truth!!!!
And I fucking hate the revisionist history here.
Absolutely goddamn loathe it; because it just ain’t fair.
There are tons and tons of people that, to this day, hold up certain bands as being somehow shrouded in myth, simply because members of said bands died way too young. You can even extend this out to those viewed as solo artists; and, for the sake of brevity, both solo and band types are included in this list:
Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious; even Bradley Nowell of Sublime, for chrissfuckingsakes!!!!
Etc., etc., etc…..
In the case of Hendrix, Jones and Cobain, I get it– and maybe even Joplin somehow skirts in under the wire; but, as for the rest, WHAT STRAIN OF INFANTILE IDIOCY DOES THIS COME FROM?!!!!
(for the record, John Lennon does NOT count; as the Beatles were simply the greatest band in history; and by the time he was shot dead, Lennon was, sad to say, just another solo guy who erroneously thought his work, post previous group, was just as great as that from which he’d walked away…how cute)
It wasn’t.
But, back to the subject: Let’s just take one of these entities, now held in near narco-hagiographic esteem, and see how they stack up to Badfinger.
Ian Curtis, COME ON DOWN!!!!
For the record, I will not profess to be the biggest Joy Division expert ever; so, if anyone out there is, in fact, the self-proclaimed biggest Joy Division expert ever, I look forward to your take on my blitherings here.
For me, and from where I sit, my view on Joy Division is this: Had Ian Curtis not hung himself, Joy Division would’ve wound up as just another cult-like British band upon which their relatively few fans would’ve hung their hats as their little band to champion.
Period.
Sorry, revisionist history folk; but, they were neither “groundbreaking”, nor very interesting until such time as Mr. Curtis saw fit, for whatever reason, to hang himself in 1980! Their most notable song, here in the U.S., was “Love Will Tear Us Apart”– which, as any elementary music geek can tell you was their self-consciously “dark and dreary” response to a song by, of all people, the Captain and Tenille!!!
Great title, lame emphasis; and an even lamer song– which, oddly enough, was actually better done by a band called The Swans!
Again, had Ian Curtis just jacked off into a sink and then gone to sleep on the night he ultimately killed himself, I can assure you all with a fair amount of certainty that Joy Division would now be thought of in the same fashion we remember Tenpole Tudor, The Toy Dolls or The Slits:
In other words, fashion, not function– and isn’t function (ie: music) why we hail those bands we deem great?!
And so we get to here; and to the point of this stupid blog entry.
Badfinger. The most forgotten greatest band in history; and, if some of you judge historical and musical merit by how many of your favorites either died too early by natural causes, or just outright killed themselves because the agony was just too much, then all I ask is that you take a first, or second, look at Badfinger before you write back knee jerk reactions regarding my take on St. Ian and Joy Division.
Listen first to the hits (Come And Get It, No Matter What, Baby Blue); and try and do so without being prejudiced against the band after reading this. Just listen. After that, listen to some selected album tracks (Rock Of All Ages, Carry On Till Tomorrow, Without You– yeah, they wrote that, but it was Nilsson who had the big international hit with it….).
Then, if you are up for such an exercise, take a bit of a break before hearing the last song, and consider the following: In April of 1975, Peter Ham felt so irredeemably disconsolate by how the band was treated by previously trusted management/record company types, that he went into his garage and hung himself on the 18th of that month.
Eight years later, having cracked from under the same pressure, Tom Evans (the ‘McCartney’ to Ham’s ‘Lennon’ in the group) walked out to his garden, and similarly hung himself from a tree on November 16th.
Are any of you seeing this?
Not one (Ian, Kurt; or, if you are so pretentious, then “Kurdt”…), but two creative forces from one of, to me, the best bands ever, chose to take their own lives because they could not handle the divide and compromise between art and commerce.
Both chose death, in, admittedly, a rather cowardly fashion, over what they knew would be the wailings of friends and family– to say nothings of fans around the globe.
Hey, if my premise is built around the idea that Joy Division is mainly remembered because Ian Curtis killed himself, while TWO members of of an actual, great band (Badfinger) killed themselves; then that should be enough, right?
Well, no.
Instead, for those of you who have been curious enough to follow this blood-riddled trail, I will ask just one more thing:
Seek out, find, and then listen to the Ham-penned classic “Name Of The Game”– and give it two or three listens, as it might be possibly the most heartbreaking song ever written. Yeah, the horns and strings are fucking awesome; but, if you could, for a moment, put aside any prejudice/hate you might feel for this song from hearing about it in this here blog, just somehow give an unjaundiced listen to the lyrics and the vocals, at least two times…..
To me, “Name Of The Game” is THE song that should easily secure Badfinger’s name in history as a band of genius and legendary status; yet, promotion machines, film companies and the like keep touting the stories of entities with less substance and lesser art (Joy Division? harrumph…) merely because people are so shortsighted, stupid and trendy; while, all the while, a truly legendary band like Badfinger continues to be largely ignored.
It’s absolutely goddamn criminal; but, not at all surprising, considering how the majority of this plant has rushed to embrace whatever trendy or nostalgic lowest common denominator entity might sell the most t-shirts or magazines….
Every time I hear someone trilling about Ian Curtis and/or Joy Division, all I can think of is Badfinger. Fucking pisses me off that poof-haired posuers are somehow considered as dark legends, while Badfinger are written off as an “oldies/power pop” act.
There is a fine line between looking like one who suffers, and being one that ACTUALLY suffers for their art. It is sad, of course, that Ian Curtis killed himself; but, come on– his was a simple and one-off act of desperation!
Meanwhile, albeit 8 years apart, the main (re: songwriting) two guys in Badfinger also hung themselves; but, today, nobody says shit about this!
No movies are made, no tribute/cover albums recorded…No nothing.
Which is a fucking shame if you ask me (merely a dumbshit blogger with, tonight, a rather tempestuous stomach and no diarrhea medicine at hand…), as, while people all over are trying to make Ian Curtis and Joy Division into something they never were, the same and said people are also ignoring what Pete Ham, Tom Evans and Badfinger actually became….
Even before those two sad bastards killed themselves.
Again, if you do nothing else off this, at least listen to “Name Of The Game” twice (especially the lyrics), and then write back and tell me what a piece of shit I am…
That’s all I ask.
your pal,
chris
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why does everyone that writes here think that their opinion is the absolute right opinion? joy division wasnt interesting? love will tear us apart is lame? why because you said so? now its set in stone? you think because after your diatribe you say “period” that your the end all be all of whats cool or what sucks?