It was also in 1970 that the group first hooked up with agent Stan Polley, who ultimately became their manager. He seemed at the time to offer the kind of shrewd, ambitious management that they felt they needed, as all of these events and opportunities were breaking around them. The group liked Bill Collins well enough and owed their original intro to Apple to him; they kept him in charge of their English affairs, but Collins wasn't up to handling the kinds of six-figure deals and international commitments associated with a world-class music act, and Polley seemed to offer that expertise.

Polley reorganized the group's finances, supposedly to secure their futures, though ultimately they saw virtually none of the money they were earning. The band toured America and saw the No Dice album get rave reviews. They also found some less than pleasing elements to their success once they realized precisely how fixated American audiences were on their connection to the Beatles. They came to despise having to play "Come and Get It," and also resented being asked more about their relationship to the Beatles than about their own music.

At the end of 1971, the group released Straight Up, which today is generally regarded as their best album. Straight Up produced two huge singles, "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue," plus an FM hit in the form of "Name of the Game." To the outside observer, the group's future, like its present, looked ideal. They were all over the radio, touring the United States, and the release of the movie The Concert for Bangladesh, in which George Harrison introduced the band during the concert, was only icing on the cake that year.

In point of fact, Straight Up had been a very difficult album to record, going through two producers, George Harrison and Todd Rundgren, in the course of getting something usable. It sold well and might have even sold better had Apple promoted it more actively but, in a sign of the company's internal problems, the group was largely left to fend for itself when pushing the album on tour. Additionally, although the album was popular and Ham enjoyed working with and learning from Harrison, the other bandmembers, especially Molland, felt that Straight Up didn't sound very much like Badfinger. Certainly the two singles had textures and sounds that one easily associated with latter-day Beatles' records and Harrison's solo material.

Moreover, the connection with Harrison did nothing to relieve them of the Beatles connection. Furthermore, even at that point, there were problems developing collecting the money they were making — Apple was in a state of chaos, with Badfinger and the individual Beatles the only artists who were making any money for the company. Additionally, their new manager, Polley, was making all kinds of moves involving their finances, supposedly looking after their interests, but effectively keeping their money from them. And they were still playing a brutal schedule of tours and recording sessions.

The year 1972 was one of constant touring and very little recording. A new album was needed, which the group proposed to produce themselves. Their attempt late in 1972 at cutting a fifth Apple LP failed to yield anything usable. In early 1973, producer Chris Thomas was brought in to help them complete the album, a process that delayed its completion until the spring of 1973.

By that time, the band was in an awkward, almost impossible situation with their record company. Polley, knowing that their Apple contract was ending in the summer of 1973, negotiated a multi-million dollar contract with Warner Bros., a fact that upset the people in charge at Apple, most notably George Harrison. Continuing at Apple was impossible, however: The record label was in the midst of a state of rapid decline and Allen Klein, still in charge, was insisting on a less favorable contract for the group.

In the meantime, the group kept touring and writing. Their final Apple album, entitled Ass, was released late in 1973 just as the record label was nearing the end of its existence as a viable company. The subsequent Apple bankruptcy (which would also tie up the group members' publishing royalties) and the settling of accounts would take many years, and in the meantime cost the group hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just weeks after finishing work on Ass, which they genuinely wanted to support with a tour, they commenced work on a hastily conceived album, Badfinger, for which they had little enthusiasm. Ass, which appeared in November of 1973, had been a departure for the group in terms of its sound, and Badfinger, coming so close on its heels, had given audiences too much to absorb, even though it was a better album.

The group returned to the studio early 1974, just as the first Warner Bros. album was dying in the marketplace and the reviews, to cut Wish You Were Here. Meticulously recorded and produced, the album should have been a triumphant comeback for the group. It was at this time, however, that the financial machinations involving the group's accounts broke to the surface. Millions of dollars were gone from an escrow account set up to protect both the group and the record label and Wish You Were Here, which had gotten the group's best reviews in two years, was withdrawn weeks after its release in the fall of 1974, apparently on advice from the company's lawyers.

Previously, Gibbins had left the band for a time in late 1972; now it was Ham's turn to exit the group, or at least try to. The mix of personalities and legal entanglements had grown impossible, with Polley controlling all of their income and huge amounts of money seemingly vanished.

The year 1974 was, for the band, the culmination of a series of events that would keep lawyers and accountants busy for years. The individual group members found themselves impoverished and in debt despite their years of work and with little prospect of seeing any of their money at any time soon. A third Warner album, entitled Head First, was hastily recorded by the group late in 1974, but was never released. By that time, the situation between the record label and the group had deteriorated, leading to the canceling of their contract in early 1975.

On April 23, 1975, a year into these financial and professional crises, Ham — critically short of money, with no prospect of seeing any that was owed to him, and with a daughter on the way — hung himself in his garage. The group's affairs, already a shambles, had turned into a nightmare. The surviving group members tried to put their personal and professional lives back together over the next few years while the overlapping suits and counter suits wound their way through the system on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1978, Evans and Molland tried reviving the Badfinger name with the album Airwaves, with ex-Stealers Wheel drummer Peter Clarke and former Yes keyboard man Tony Kaye. This group later toured America and a second album, Say No More, followed in 1981, but there was little stability to any of these latter-day versions of the band. Evans, Molland, and Gibbins had an on-again/off-again relationship, and at different times were fronting rival groups exploiting the Badfinger legacy; the legal conflicts proved almost insoluble, as the members themselves disagreed with each other. Sometime early in the morning of November 19, 1983, after a loud argument with Molland over the telephone, Evans hanged himself.

The irony was that there was sufficient demand for Badfinger material, that their albums were widely pirated on CD in the late '90s. Among the non-Beatles Apple CD reissues, the Badfinger albums (apart from Ass) are the only group of recordings that have sold well enough to justify remaining in print into the 21st century. Molland managed to entice and then alienate fans in the '90s with the release of a live Badfinger album from tapes dating from the early '70s on which the drums and other instruments had very obviously been re-dubbed. Various radio performances and concert recordings have since surfaced, along with the documentary film Badfinger (1997), which recounts much of their story. — Bruce Eder AGM