"Baby Blue" by Badfinger (1972) with Todd Rundgren as producer

Todd Rundgren Creator Series

Today is the seventh post in our series about music-maker Todd Rundgren, and we’re continuing our focus on his career as a producer.

We’ve already reviewed his early years, up to and including The Nazz.

We’ve listened to his pop hits — “We Gotta Get You a Woman” (here), “Hello It’s Me,” (here), and “I Saw the Light” (here).

We’ve covered his first major gig as a producer, The Band’s Stage Fright album (here), as well as a record that appeared to cement Todd’s reputation as a hit-maker, We’re an American Band by Grand Funk (Railroad) (here).

Today we hear one of Badfinger’s hit singles off their Straight Up album, “Baby Blue.”

Song of the day

Todd Rundgren was not the first producer to take on the making of what would become Badfinger’s studio album Straight Up. Todd was, in fact, the third.

“Though I knew of Badfinger like everyone did from their hits Come and Get It and No Matter What,” Todd wrote in his autobiography The Individualist, “I was mystified at the opportunity because I thought they were already making progress radio-wise and why did they need me?

“As it turned out I was the third producer to take on what had been a series of detours and false starts. An entire album had already been recorded and rejected by Apple and a second pass had been stalled when producer George Harrison became engrossed in the Bangladesh project.”

The first pass rejected by Apple had been produced by the highly regarded recording engineer Geoff Emerick, who’d worked with Badfinger on their previous album, No Dice, as well as with George Martin and the Beatles on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road. Geoff had laid down 12 tracks with the band as they rushed to complete the album before going on a US tour.

Allan Steckler, the head of Apple in the U.S., refused to accept the rush job as well as a later version of “Name of the Game,” due to be released as a single, despite remixing by Phil Spector and George Harrison and overdubbing of piano and organ by the adept hands of Al Kooper.

George Harrison had then taken over the project at Steckler’s request, and in one month succeeded in completing the recording of four of the songs, including playing guitar on some tracks and getting Leon Russell and Klaus Voorman involved. He paused recording to help Ravi Shankar with a film soundtrack and this segued into staging the emergency relief effort called the Concert for Bangladesh (at which Badfinger played). Occupied with supervising the preparation of the live album and concert film from that benefit concert, George was unable to continue working with the band.

Todd was offered and accepted the challenge to complete production, and his approach reportedly caused some friction with the band, who’d enjoyed George’s more cooperative approach and felt that with Todd they’d lost their creative vision and control.

Todd, for his part, felt the pressure to produce. “I certainly did not want to be the third producer to go down so I pretty much just took over the process, dictating what new material would be recorded, what would be salvaged and reworked and what would be tossed. There was not much objection from the band since the label had foisted me on them, likely with an ultimatum that something better come of it.

“The whole process was less than 2 weeks, whence I took the tapes back to Bearsville and mixed the result without input from anyone, label or band. Fortunately for all involved the label did accept the album and managed to break two top ten hits, so I figured the gamble had paid off and now I had a new reputation — The Fixer.”

Those two top ten hits were “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue.” “Day After Day” was a re-recording, and we’ll hear that in an upcoming post, whereas “Baby Blue” was a new song by rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist Pete Hamm about a woman named Dixie Armstrong he fell for on their latest U.S. tour and invited on the road. Obviously, it hadn’t quite worked out — maybe because he kept her waiting there just a tad too long?

Allan Steckler with engineer Eddie Kramer would go on to do a small (and uncredited) remix of the track, adding a stronger hook at the beginning, before releasing it as a single in the U.S. in March 1972. That version would go to #14 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart.

But in a twist of fate, the song would never be released in the UK in the midst of chaos enveloping the Apple operation in London. The uplifting news about this wonderful song is that it would hit the charts again in 2013 when it appeared in the final episode of Breaking Bad, reaching #32 on the Billboard Digital Songs chart and becoming a top seller on iTunes.

Let’s hear the “Baby Blue” hit single from this very talented Welsh band:

Song credits

Songwriter - Pete Ham

Producer - Todd Rundgren

Badfinger:

• Pete Ham – lead vocals, rhythm guitar

• Tom Evans – backing vocals, bass guitar

• Joey Molland – lead guitar

• Mike Gibbins – drums, percussion