Badfinger was a
rock band formed in
Swansea, Wales in the early 1960s and was one of the earliest representatives of the
power pop genre. During the early 1970s the band was tagged as the
heir apparent to
The Beatles, partly because of their close working relationship with the 'Fab Four' and partly because of their similar sound. However, Badfinger's two principal singers and
songwriters committed
suicide in 1975 and 1983.
Biography
The Iveys
Badfinger originated in 1961 as a band out of
Swansea, South
Wales called The Panthers. The Panthers' lineup contained
Pete Ham (
lead guitar), Ron Griffiths (
bass guitar), Roy Anderson (
drums), and David 'Dai' Jenkins (
guitar). After a handful of moniker changes, by 1964 they settled on
The Iveys, named after a street in Swansea called Ivey Place.
In March 1965, Mike Gibbins joined as the
drummer and the band graduated by also playing gigs around Swansea area opening for UK prominent groups such as the
Spencer Davis Group,
The Who,
The Moody Blues and
The Yardbirds.
[ Matovina, Dan. Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger, Google Books, 2000. Retrieved 25 March 2008] By June 1966, they had been taken on by a manager named Bill Collins, who was renting a home at 7 Park Avenue,
Golders Green, London, where the whole band moved in with another UK act called The Mojos.
The group performed a few gigs as a backing band for David Garrick ("Dear Mrs. Applebee") and continued to perform as themselves across the UK throughout the rest of the decade. In 1967, Jenkins was asked to leave the group because of a lack of seriousness. He was replaced by a Liverpudlian guitarist
Tom Evans of Them Calderstones.
