He’d taken over the reins of parent album Straight Up from George Harrison, who himself had replaced Geoff Emerick behind the desk but was now engaged in his Concert For Bangladesh project. In the producer’s chair was Todd Rundgren. Then we did a couple of overdubs to fatten it up.”

So I took over that job, we all ran through it a few times, and recorded it. “Pete had written it on acoustic guitar and had some ideas for the linking licks. Molland remembers recording the song on the same day that Ham brought it in. ‘ Guess I got what I deserved/Kept you waiting there too long, my love,’ he sings in the kind of plangent tones echoed in Without You, the monster hit for Harry Nilsson that Ham co-wrote with bandmate Tom Evans. Ham seems trapped by the life of a travelling musician unable, or unwilling, to sustain his newfound love. We were just a bunch of guys, and didn’t sit around talking about romantic relationships.” And then Pete wouldn’t call her when he was away, though I don’t know why. But we were working in the studio a lot and doing gigs, and I don’t think she was really into that side of it. “I don’t know whether they fell in love straight away, but he invited her on the road with us and she came along. “She came to one of the shows, they got talking and Pete really liked her,” Molland recalls.

Ham had written it for southern singer Dixie Armstrong, whom he’d met during the band’s US tour of 1971. Songwriter Pete Ham’s uncanny gift for a pop melody was fully to the fore, as were Badfinger’s trademark harmonies, which heightened the inherent melodrama of the subject matter. As with prior successes like _Come And Get It and Day After Day_, the song was a yearning rock ballad that provided a bridge between The Beatles and Big Star. The mix was different, as was the way they edited the whole thing, but I thought it was great.”īaby Blue was the last major hit of Badfinger’s career. “So while I was surprised, I wasn’t stunned. “I only found out that day that they were going to use the song on Breaking Bad,” he says.

Breaking bad baby blue song