On September 29, 2013, as fans of Breaking Bad watched the final moments of the TV series and (spoiler alert) death of high school chemistry teacher turned meth king Walter White, they heard a piece of music.
It was a jarring series of guitar chords followed by a plaintive and painful vocal offering the words “Guess I got what I deserved/Kept you waiting there too long, my love.” The song continued as the camera looked down upon White, whose lifeless eyes stared upwards.
Watching along that night was 36-year-old Mark Strothmann. He had never heard the song before but was utterly transfixed by its power and message, even as an excerpt. It was “Baby Blue” by UK rock group Badfinger, released back in 1971. Interest in both the tune and the band would skyrocket, similar to what happened with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” at the climax of The Sopranos years earlier.
“It was so hooky and bad ass. I had to know what this was,” Strothmann says today via Zoom from his home in Milwaukee.
Little did Strothmann—who holds a full-time job in the food industry and also plays in a band—know that his life would in 2026 become inextricably linked with and a crucial part of the music and members of the group in ways no one could have anticipated. And result in a still-ongoing string of new, archival record releases which have surprised and delighted hardcore fans.
But first, a little background…
The roots of Badfinger go back to the early ‘60s when Pete Ham (vocals/guitar) and Ron Griffiths (bass) crossed paths and played together in groups with various lineups and names. By late 1967 they had settled on the name the Iveys, now with Tom Evans (vocals/guitar) and Mike Gibbins (drums).
The group came to the attention of Beatles road manager Mal Evans. He championed them and helped get the group’s demos to the attention of the Fabs and their just-launched record label, Apple. Debut album Maybe Tomorrow appeared in 1969, but confusingly only received limited distribution outside the US and UK while the new company was going through a reorganization.
Most of those songs would appear on the next album, Magic Christian Music, though the band was now called Badfinger (inspired by “Badfinger Boogie,” the working title for the Beatles’ song “With a Little Help From My Friends”). To further the Beatle connection, that title refers to the 1969 film featuring Ringo Starr, with Paul McCartney penning and demoing the soundtrack’s hit, “Come and Get It,” for Badfinger.
Griffiths was out and replaced by singer/guitarist Joey Molland (with Evans switching to bass) for the “classic lineup” that put out albums No Dice and Straight Up producing the hits “Day After Day” and “No Matter What.” And while their “Without You” passed without much notice, the cover version by Harry Nilsson became a huge success (and later also for Mariah Carey).
But the band seemed beset by bad luck, poor and at time nefarious management, missed opportunities, and the ever popular creative and musical differences among the members. Other records and tours followed and Molland left, replaced by Bob Jackson. They also couldn’t seem to shake the conception they were the “Baby Beatles” and not their own entity.
Depressed and broke, Pete Ham committed suicide by hanging in 1975 at the age of 27. In a postscript to a note left for his then-pregnant girlfriend, he specifically called out manager Stan Polley (who had complete control of the band’s finances and had absconded with some advance money) as a “soulless bastard.” His daughter was born a month later.
The ensuing decades would see the band resurface with many different lineups—at one point Evans and Molland each led two different versions of Badfinger on the road—while lawsuits about rights and money continued to fly. Their catalog would remain frustratingly out of print for much of that time, with only the hits surfacing on oldies/classic rock radio.
Shockingly, Evans also committed suicide by hanging in 1983. Gibbins died in 2005 while Molland continued to tour under the band’s name until his death last year.
“The instant nostalgia on the opening chord of ‘No Matter What’ or ‘Day After Day’ or how they feel about ‘Baby Blue’ is a testament to how incredible a songwriter that Pete Ham was,” Strothmann says, adding that all four members both wrote and sang. “And they were different from the Beatles. My favorite response from the group when asked about it was ‘Well, isn’t everybody inspired by the Beatles?’”
After Breaking Bad, Strothmann began to learn all he could about Badfinger, their music, and members, down to even cold calling anyone associated with the group and especially after he discovered that in the early ‘80s the group’s homebase for a short, fraught time was in his own town of Milwaukee. When his band played a Badfinger tribute show in his mother’s hometown of Manawa, Wisconsin—32 years to the day after Badfinger did at the same venue and on the same stage—he reached out to the venue’s original owner and former short-term group members for interviews and photos.
His persistence brought him to the attention of Dan Matovina, a record producer and Iveys/Badfinger expert who not only worked with the Ham and Evans estates but wrote 1997’s Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger. While long out of print, it lives online in a revised version.
Though things didn’t start off copacetic: the sometimes-prickly Matovina wanted to know just who the hell this guy was asking all these questions?
They began to work together, but the relationship wasn’t always smooth. By the time Matovina died in 2023 from cancer, he had transferred most of his duties and work—along with 20 terrabytes with of research, documents, and music—to Strothmann. Strothmann jokes that even after death, his mentor is “probably pissed off” at some of the things happening now.
Together, along with audio engineer/restorer Kevin McElligott and researcher/webmaster Tom Brennan, the trio would succeed in finally bringing together the sometimes-warring factions of the classic members’ estates and interests (along with the still-alive Griffiths) to get on the same page and consolidate business and music interests.
To date, the collective (including some earlier participation from Matovina) has released in both physical format an online five anthologies of Iveys music, as well as solo Pete Ham and Tom Evans records. The latest release is Miniskirts And Rainbows (1966-69). All feature various combinations of demos, live songs, and unreleased material recorded anywhere from studios to living rooms.
The music on the Iveys anthologies come from a variety of people and sources. Strothmann notes they’ve worked with 146 reel-to-reel tapes along with 50 cassettes (much from Matovina’s collection) of material from musicians that, fortunately, well-documented their works in progress. Of course, not all of it has been usable or even accessible, and there’s always the detective work of pegging down personnel, recording location, and other facts.
Strothmann also worked closely with Bob Jackson to rescue and release Head First, the “lost” and never-released 1975 Badfinger album and the last to feature Ham. It finally saw the light of day last year. Perhaps tellingly, two of its ten tracks are sharp and critical barbs from Tom Evans concerning their situation (“Hey Mr. Manager” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Contract”).
As for the future, Strothmann says “it’s amazing how much new stuff is possible” and he, McElligot, and Brennan are working on many possible projects including a Tom Evans solo record, another Pete Ham release, and at least one more Iveys anthology. He’s also constantly adding footage to seven different YouTube channels dedicated to the band and individual members, the most popular of which is Pete Ham’s page. And there’s hope for a new updated/revised Badfinger bio in print.
“We want to earn the trust [of the estates] and show that we want to do everything for everyone. And I want to do things in person. I want to have a conversation to make things fair. Because things weren’t always fully communicated [in the past]. I want as much input as I can get from people who were there,” he says.
“And we’re not building houses in Palm Springs with this money. Nobody’s ever going to do that to Badfinger again. It’s a lot of work. But it’s an honor to be able to do it.”
Visit Tom Brennan’s Badfinger Library at BadfingerLibrary.com
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.