For as long as there have been bands, managers and record labels, there have been bands getting screwed by their managers and/or record labels.
In fact, before we can even get through the "B" section of our local record store, we've managed to stumble across two of the most criminally neglected bands in all of rock & roll: Badfinger and Big Star.
While Badfinger were the more commercially successful of the two, enjoying an enviable stroke of luck right off the bat by wandering into the orbit of Apple Records and having none other than Paul McCartney pen their first hit ("Come And Get It"), the band's luck would soon run out thanks to a number of absolutely horrible deals made by then manager Stan Polley.
As a result of Polley's criminal neglect and outright embezzling, an otherwise successful band soon found themselves not only destitute, but contractually prevented from recording or touring under the name "Badfinger". It was this ineptitude and deception on the part of Polley that directly led to to the suicide of two members, Pete Ham and Tom Evans.
There have been some shitty managers, but how many can say they've left their clients so broken and hopeless that the only conceivable way out is to take one's own life?
"Ah, but both of those guys were mental," say the naysayers.
Wouldn't you be just a wee bit mental too if, between 1970 and 1972, your band had racked up three more smash hits ("No Matter What", "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue"), yet you found yourself penniless? Contractually hogtied? Chum in shark infested waters?
Then, of course, there is the story of an American band that came into being not long after Badfinger had formed in England who, despite having "the whole package", remained as obscure to the rock & roll-loving kids of the '70s as if they'd never formed at all.
That band was Big Star, whose debut album, playfully titled #1 Record, received glowing reviews in just about every major music publication in the country, yet the label they'd chosen to sign to (Ardent Records, with distribution through Stax Records) was ultimately incapable of getting enough copies of their album into stores.
In true Spinal Tap fashion, Stax's attempt to rectify their manufacturing woes by signing a deal with Columbia Records served only to backfire spectacularly as Columbia began inexplicably removing existing copies of #1 Record from stores even as the band's own attempts to garner radio airplay were paying dividends.
One would have surmised that such a deal with Columbia might open the gates to any number of
opening act slots and promotional opportunities (American Bandstand, anyone?!), but, for some inexplicable reason, no such opportunities materialized. By the end of 1972 - mere months after the release of their first album - the band had broken up. Acrimoniously.
Cooler heads eventually prevailed, leading Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens, and Andy Hummel to put the band back together minus Chris Bell. While Bell's role in making #1 Record an absolute non-stop pop tour de force with nary a clunker in the bunch cast doubt on the band's ability to match that excellence without him, the resulting second album, Radio City, was better than it had any right to be.
Unfortunately, despite another round of glowing reviews from Billboard, Cashbox, and so on, the album had the unfortunate luck of being released during a protracted dispute between Stax and Columbia wherein Columbia ceased distribution of all Stax titles. While doubling the sales of #1 Record, for the second time, an album that could and should have sold 2 million, wound up selling only a fraction of that amount.
As one can imagine, these events left the band completely devastated and Hummel wisely chose college over rock & roll obscurity and heartbreak.
Amazingly, Chilton and Stephens managed to keep it together long enough to cut a third album with Jim Dickinson. They were free agents, able to sign with any big-time record label that wanted them, but, on the other, the pair seemed morbidly aware that some unforeseen obstacle lurked just around the corner intent on soullessly cratering the album's fate.
Years prior to getting my hands on a copy of the album, I had already read a lifetime's worth of positive posthumous salutations concerning this "ragged masterpiece". Upon finally hearing it for myself, I was left wondering where anyone has the audacity to call this "ragged" or "unfinished".
I am also left slack-jawed and bewildered by the indisputable fact that, after Stephens and producer Dickinson hand-delivered test pressings of 3rd to labels on both coasts, the band found not a single taker.
What tin-eared miscreant heard the same bluesified, ramshackle genius the rest of us heard on first listen and had the fucking coke nuts to mutter "Pass"??
I want names, bitches.
Tags:
we wuz robbed