Straight Up

Biography

Recordings for Straight Up began in early 1971 under the direction of producer Geoff Emerick, who produced the bulk of Badfinger's preceding album No Dice. Although these early recordings were completed and both the album and a single, "Name of the Game", were ready to be released, Apple Records co-president George Harrison decided the album could be improved under his personal direction, which led the single to be canceled. Harrison recorded a couple of new tracks with the band in the summer o...

Recordings for Straight Up began in early 1971 under the direction of producer Geoff Emerick, who produced the bulk of Badfinger's preceding album No Dice. Although these early recordings were completed and both the album and a single, "Name of the Game", were ready to be released, Apple Records co-president George Harrison decided the album could be improved under his personal direction, which led the single to be canceled. Harrison recorded a couple of new tracks with the band in the summer of 1971, as well as re-recording a couple of the original tracks. He can be heard playing a slide-guitar duet with Pete Ham on the song "Day After Day", with Leon Russell featured on piano. Additionally, Harrison and Phil Spector planned a different string arrangement for "Name of the Game", but this apparently never came to pass. Due to a hurriedly-assembled benefit concert that summer, The Concert for Bangladesh, at which Badfinger performed, Harrison lost interest in the Straight Up project and did not return to it after the concert. Apple retained Todd Rundgren to finish the album. Rundgren utilised recordings begun by both Emerick and Harrison, re-recorded some of them, and also recorded several new tracks with the band (notably "Baby Blue") in less than a month. Although production credit for individual songs on the album is given to both Rundgren and Harrison, Rundgren did the final mix of the entire album (and was upset that he was given neither a co-production nor a mixing credit for any of the Harrison songs). Consistent with the title of the album, the front cover featured a "straight up" picture of Badfinger, with no credits or titles marring the image. The title was instead shown on the back cover. Despite the album's subsequent popularity with both fans and music critics, the album was viciously panned by critic (and previous Badfinger booster) Mike Saunders in Rolling Stone (calling it "a barely decent album, one which is the poorest of Badfinger's three LPs and by far the least likeable")[1], and Badfinger became vocal in expressing reservations with Rundgren's production technique. Ham complained about the band losing production input, and Joey Molland claimed that the album had lost energy compared to No Dice. Although Apple had chosen Rundgren to return as the original producer of the next Badfinger album, he departed the project after just four days, about the same time as the publication of the Rolling Stone pan of Straight Up. Also, the last thing the band wanted to hear at that time was that the record sounded like The Beatles, which the group had heard ever since Maybe Tomorrow, and the fact that ex-Beatle Harrison and noted Beatles imitator Rundgren had produced it didn't help their ability to deny that charge. Straight Up peaked at number 31 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. The singles "Day After Day" and "Baby Blue" peaked at number 4 and number 14, respectively, on the U.S. Pop Singles chart. However, because of the turmoil within Apple, "Baby Blue" was not released as a single in the U.K. When Straight Up was finally issued on CD in 1993, five of the original Emerick-produced recordings, including the canceled single version of "Name of the Game", were included as bonus tracks. "Baby Blue" was later featured in the soundtrack for the 2006 Martin Scorsese film The Departed. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.