One Summer Touring with BADFINGER

Back in the early seventies, when the British band Badfinger was beginning to get famous under Apple Records, Steve Pavey was a young teen rock drummer with the band Images. They were the warm up act for groups like Grand Funk. Then one summer when Steve was about sixteen, Images and the British foursome began to do a Midwestern tour together.

It was a time when Badfinger was in the midst of their financial throes despite their early hits like Come and Get it, No Matter What, Without You and around the time of Day After Day. The infamous and initially avuncular Stan Polley had signed them in 1970 to a management contract. What followed was a U.S. tour with day to day existence playing venues in the Midwest that was nightmarish. Steve Pavey comments: "[Stan Polley gets] a really nice deal for Badfinger they signed with Warner Brothers. He'd become their manager by that point, and [that] he negotiated. Well, it was like four or five albums that they were going to [do]...Warner Brothers were going to pay like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was a pretty big deal for records back then. And then they were going to make commissions and royalties on top of that, and it was put into an escrow account. And unfortunately, Stan Polley controlled ...the escrow account, and he didn't let any money just flow to Badfinger. That's why they were sleeping in their vehicles because they couldn't afford motel rooms. They were washing their clothes in gas station men's room and the sink in the men's room, in the gas station"

The miserly cash flow was squeezed down to a trickle despite a deal that was equivalent in today's money to approximately $5 million dollars. Pavey remarks: "I mean, they were making like thirty dollars a day per diem. And that was for...all members total thirty bucks."

When asked how they could survive on a such a paltry sum split 4 ways Steve mentioned that he shared a secret-Listen to the whole interview for more on this amazing encounter with Badfinger on ths US tour here by clicking on the graphic: