Badfinger | Ham and Evans' Drawings

Badfinger | Ham and Evans’ Drawings

Pete Ham and Tom Evans liked to capture their musings in both music and on paper in sketches, paintings and lyric notes. Here, three sketches that have survived more than 30 years are tied to specific demos presented for the first time on POBA.

Ham’s pencil sketch, Peace Globe, reflects the mood of his classic composition Perfection, his ode for all of us to try and get along without the wars and killing. “Successful conversations will get you very far,” he sings. You can hear his first demo of Perfection, which was created in late 1970, after Ham first observed the great poverty, social unrest and ongoing turmoil in the United States while his band was travelling on a cross-country tour in a rented Greyhound Bus.

Pete’s pencil sketch, The Sad Clown, ties in well with Clown Of The Party, a demo that was performed by his pre-Badfinger band, The Iveys. This song was key in getting The Beatles to sign his group to Apple Publishing. The lyrics reflect the silly, make-everybody-smile nature of Pete, who would often erupt into a fun-filled jokester to entertain his closest friends. But inside, as he states in the song, he was sometimes a deeply introspective man who hid an often-troubled mind and sensitive heart – “He’s so sad at being treated as a joke, in his heart he wants to cry,” he sings.

We also have Pete’s sketch of a man with a distant look of resolve. When Life Becomes Old ties in with Ham’s soulful home demo of Where Will You Be “When the days are so long, I hear the devil calling me …”

Tom Evans showed his talents on canvas as well as vinyl. Here, we see one of Tom’s skilled and perceptive paintings. It seems to reflect the storyline of "Carry On Till Tomorrow"' - telling us of a lonesome figure reflecting on his life, yet determined to “carry on” through a “stormy day, ” motivated by optimism and the peacefulness of the “rising” and “setting” suns.