Dan Matovina on CD and red vinyl reissues 2018-19 - Wish You Were Here and Badfinger - So Fine vinyl

Badfinger fans: Great news for fans of the band. Released late in 2018 were two Badfinger CD reissues: the Badfinger LP Expanded Edition and Wish You Were Here LP Expanded Edition. These are projects I had been pushing as ideas to various labels to do over the years and Real Gone Music (a reissue company based in the U.S.) finally came through past the hurdles involved, working out a deal for the projects through Rhino Entertainment Company of the Warner Music Group.

These are from a key period of the band’s musical journey and they were to be commended for coming up with so much brilliant music for us to enjoy. Credit goes to the band, producer Chris Thomas and the engineers involved. Now, fans get a fresh perspective and loads of fun, new stuff to listen to.

https://shop.realgonemusic.com/search?q=badfinger

Here's a track to hear from the new Wish You Were Here (Expanded) remastered CD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hOUZ7vfwlE

The details worked out for these reissues were to have new remastered CD reissues of the two Warner Brothers Badfinger albums, with any worthwhile bonus tracks that could be utilized. Since neither album had had any bonus material from the sessions released in the past, that aspect was wide open.

As I have engineering experience and had compiled/published a biography on Badfinger, with enough new info since then for massive additions toward a new book version; plus the fact I also act as agent for the musical copyrights of the Ham and Evans Estates, I was hired to be a consultant and project manager (under label guidance and approval). I proposed use of outtakes for this of “take-home-for-evaluation-works-in-progress” mixes of songs for both records that existed, of course as owned by Rhino / Warner Music Group from the original paid sessions. 

At least one unreleased almost-finished track I knew existed, Tom Evans’  “Love My Lady.” Also, I suggested, that if the original multi-tracks could be utilized by me, new mixes of study of these original sessions could be made.

I was initially told that this was going to be a U.S. manufactured release, with no digital format to start. There was also going to be a modest budget to use to cover the writer of liner notes and the mastering. There would be no extra budget for licensing photos. I was asked to find some for gratis, if I could. 

I offered my services on all of these tasks for one fee: which was to compile with the company approvals of the tracks; to mix anything available that could be utilized; to clean-up technically any issues; to master the tracks; to do the liner note research; write the liner notes; plus find photos that hadn’t been seen or were minimally exposed in past.

Even though many may think that Badfinger is popular enough that there would be big budgets that you see for many releases, and professional agency licensing of extra photos, etc. it just hasn’t been the case that I’ve encountered for them, yet. Even Apple Corps Ltd used all in-house photos. Real Gone Music did pony up though, more for several very important photo licensings – more on that later.

So, in order to help the cause for the Badfinger legacy, I paid out of my own pocket, to pay for a good number of photos from professional photographers, in order to assist these projects, so as to improve the quality of these projects. Some of the other photos used were offered for free, in respect of those parties receiving copies of the releases.

Some of this technical I’ll cover now may be a bit much to read, but I’m gonna run through it this one time. Of course, in prepping for the technical side, I had hoped to be a party to access to original tape transfers of the original audio tapes to digital format – first to do any editing of crackles, pops, distortions, repairs of drop-outs, de-essing … Then to master the resulting digital files sound.

I was only offered digital files to use that had already been made from the original tapes, thus without my supervision. I was not privy to supervising their analog tape to digital sessions, which is a critical step in trying to get the best quality you can towards a final result. I would have liked to have been able to do that, but there are protocols in place with the companies owning these masters for protection of access and damage control. I understood that.

As it turned out, later, I was able to supervise a transfer for the Wish You Were Here bonus multi-track stems (individual recorded tracks), after those digital files were initially given to me of unusable quality. They had originally been recorded in the 70s with a Dolby A process and it can be tricky to deal with. Someone had made digital files of the multi-tracks for me without having the original alignment tones of the 70s, using house tones, and they had not likely listened to their results, because they were unusable. Producer Chris Thomas, himself, said they sounded terrible, before I was able to do them again at Abbey Road Studios in the U.K. after our interviews.

After eventually having Wish You Were Here these multi-tracks sessions, I was able to then do new mixes to expose buried parts and bring forward any individual tracks that had not been used, or could barely be heard, as released in 1974. I was able to recover a great outtake song in “Queen Of Darkness” by Tom Evans. Finished enough to make a solid track addition.

I was not going to attempt to make competitive new mixes to the classic results of a Chris Thomas production. These would be for study, and a lot of fun for the masses.

The Badfinger self-titled album’s multi-tracks, though, were not available and have been lost, to date. So, I had in-progress rough mixes for the band to study at home. Again, you get different perspectives from these and occasional unused parts to hear.

First off, on the 70s Badfinger self-titled album on Warner Brothers, I had a choice to master that from a digital transfer made in the past of the original album’s EQ’d mastering for vinyl. Also available, was actual tape copies of the original tape mixes by producer Chris Thomas and engineer Phil Chapman. These were the mixes done before any “production master” by Thomas of them (which is compilations he later made creatively himself, as a sort of often pre-mastering with potential added EQ/compression/delay/reverb on to another tape copy, where he also does his own leveling,). Chris Thomas said he could not remember if there was had been a “production master” made for this Badfinger self-titled album, and one was never located.

Dan Interviewing Chris Thomas in London (below) before multi-track transfer:

Chris Thomas on below link regarding Badfinger album mastering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq7uGAjOS9A

It doesn’t seem a production master was done for the Badfinger album and he had explained maybe not, as he had just started to do that process around that time in his career.

Chris Thomas on master tapes potentially provided for remastering on the project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPbCohO4tL4

For my original album Wish You Were Here remastering for the new CD, I was offered a digital transfer of his “production master” for that album. That had been created by Thomas, in the 70s with the now antiquated DOLBY A unit processing. As designed to alleviate potential hiss in the 70s era, it is now an outdated and somewhat poorly conceived process, which is a hassle at times to today’s transfers. It’s become of use as a brightening effect on tracks for some, by being used on non-encoded tracks, because it starts by hyping certain frequencies, and that can be a creative aural tool.

I was also offered a later EQ’d digital file made from a digital file of the 1974 vinyl mastering of the time, which was used for the recent colored vinyl reissue. I decided instead to try to work off the Dolby A encoded “production master” transferred for me. 

Chris Thomas on link below on the potential files to master from for the Wish You Were Here remastering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aDKxxkhn7g

That digital file of Chris Thomas original “production master 2-track,” of Wish You Were Here sounded decent, after someone had put it through it’s Dolby A setting unstretching of the frequencies, that it stretches them initially. But it certainly wasn’t what I would call a great sounding file and I wished I could have supervised that transfer.

If I was able to supervise these transfers from tapes, I would have also had my own ear check of the azimuth, too, that is the angle of the playback tape machine head against the tape passing over it. It has an effect on the sound. 

The digital result of Wish You Were Here production master transfer I received had some comb-filtering, with some bass frequencies gutted out and some aspects of top end missing; plus there was some sibilance to battle of varied vocals. So I’d say it was about a B rating for me, as a source. Good enough and better that the digital EQ’s file, which Chris Thomas also heard and was put off by. But for experimenting early on, I had to try some compressing at times on some, to see if I could rejuvenate some lost energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7qCXiW3zrk

It’s pretty standard that the record companies (master tape owners) provide the digital files for you ahead of time, unless you are a person whose had a long-time working relationship with them and tape vault access, as the companies have tight protocols of protections in place. 

A bonus track was now going to be “Love My Lady” of a 1973 take-home outtakes of the Badfinger self-titled album. That had no alignment tones to use. In fact, all of the bonus tracks had none and were all over the map sound-wise. But there was no previous expectations to hear, as they had been unheard by the public.

So, with the Wish You Were Here multi-tracks being initially an “awful” sounding transfer result, as Chris Thomas put it, so as to be unusable. I could have foregone the idea of these remixes now and just gone with the option of using previous take-home outtakes from Wish You Were Here, but I asked Real Gone Music and Rhino if I could do this transfer of multi’s again, under my supervision, if I were to pay myself for a session in the U.K. Thankfully, the access was approved, as long as I did it in the UK, where they were stored.

Chris Thomas at link below on multi-track files given me for missing bonus tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46b7Sf_6YU

I decided to book a trip to London’s Abbey Road Studios and pay for a session to do this work. I also took the opportunity to do my interviews with producer Chris Thomas in person, for some liner notes and later projects. He lived near London and it was not a problem to meet up. That was an enjoyable time spent with him. 

Dan at Abbey Road Studios gathering new Analog to Digital transfers of multi-track tapes of Wish You Were Here.

When finally starting my mastering work on the Badfinger self-titled album, I had chosen to first prioritize using those copies of the original tape mixes, because there was no “production master” and the EQ’d for vinyl version available was more homogenized. But once I dug-in on these original tapes, I found many had issues like frequency drifting and dropouts (so as much I could repair digitally, some I had to use alternatives of previous digital sources for some of the tracks and to leave a few slight fluffs in on a few difficult-to-address spots, not having endless time to spend). 

My intention with this Badfinger album mastering was to try a fresh approach on each track, and give some a new perspective from any previous reissues. There had been points raised by members in the past, on some aspects as being buried, or maybe the bass being too loud … I tried to work on those certain aspects a bit. I felt I brought some intriguing new emphasis out on a number of others.

On Wish You Were Here, I had tried some different approaches to the sonics, with the intention of studying them and figuring out my tactics to finish. I had to address what were many clicks, pops, fuzzy distortions, besides the drop-outs and a lot of sibilance on the vocals. 

At one point, my main computer got soaked in water and it was ruined. That delayed me a couple months to get money in to replace it, This added some pressure. I had to eventually use a laptop I’d had, with some older software, to help progress the work, under the deadlines given.

I got both album’s mastering to a certain point, and then took a break for a later fresh review and a following completion window. 

I was closing in on the deadlines and I brought my first round draft results into to a studio listen and to evaluate in another environment, with another engineer there, who also had a program that was ultimately going to deliver these results to the manufacturer, via a DDP set (an oft-used record industry delivery system of the audio with metadata folders for manufacturers of the final discs).

I am not a big fan of DDP, which compiles the audio project’s .wav files, converting them into a single running MPEG-1. It’s a high-quality compression, but I can hear a change in the top end, though many engineers say they can not. For me, it makes the sound a bit more clinical on the top end and changes the bass aspects if there is significant bass. Some engineer’s ears just don’t go there to agree and say they don’t hear it’s effect enough to matter. 

So after listening at the studio for review and some feedback from the fellow studio engineer, I finished the two. 

Now, when I had come in initially, the engineer had copied my audio folders to his Google Drive cloud for storage. 

In a very unfortunate circumstance later, this fellow engineer now had my final results of my last work in new folders along with the old ones he stored, and this engineer later got careless in the labeling he did. I did not check that. He sent the manufacturer my earlier draft versions with my experimenting of approaches, as the manufacturer proceeded to make final CDs from those.

So that was stuck out there for the first run, and some consumers did complain to the record company. These complainers were now evaluating off the work I did not even consider my final work so I wasn’t going to address. Typical on these fan boards with people having agendas all over them, there were comments all over the map. The record company was gracious enough to make more CDs with the proper mastering and thus could supply replacements for any people dissatisfied enough by having my draft-work versions and giving them the option to swap out to get my final work I intended.

So, if one has some of the CDs already, you may determine if you have the first run CD’s and can swap out. I will tell you how to determine if you have those early CDs and how to swap them out for ones intended.

You can tell which are which for the Badfinger self-titled CD by the track “Andy Norris” as 3:05 in length on the wrong CD. If it is 3:03 in length, it is the one with mastering I intended . You can see the length by popping the CD in your computer drive and iTunes opens up and will show the times. Or on your car CD player if it shows times. Or strip the file to your computer and play in a program you may have alternatively.

But note that for the Badfinger CD, it is is close to the final one I did, so it is mostly a slightly duller overall sound and not drastically different. But you will receive a major difference with Wish You Were Here replacement that you can get by emailing to Real Gone Music.

For Wish You Were Here determinations of having the CD I intended, you can tell which is which, by listening to the track “Queen Of Darkness.” On the incorrect one, Tom Evans yells “Don’t think” only once, at 2:19. On the “correct one,” Tom Evans yells “Don’t think” at 2:19 AND 2:29.” You just have to note if you hear it twice at the last twenty-five seconds of song.

If you hear Tom say it twice – that is the updated CD.

To get replacement CDs, if you have the earlier versions and want the later versions, just send your proof of purchases to email address – you can even take screen shots – send to:  orders@realgonemusic.com  

and you’ll be sent replacement CDs free of charge, without sending anything back. So you’ll have extra CDs, if you are a collector.

orders@realgonemusic.com

As far as the photos in the CD booklets, there was none of the original album artwork sessions available. Pretty much all had been lost by the original photographers and designers to date. I wanted a decent representation in there, so without a budget, I paid for two “professional photographer” photo licenses of the band from the era out of my pocket, for the Badfinger self-titled package, and an additional license for the Wish You Were Here package. Others used were either stills from videos or contributions by an American roadie, who was at Caribou in the earliest stages (Joey Molland was not in these roadie’s photos, because he was not around when the roadie took his photos – as some people had surmised I intentionally cut him out of photos that show the other three members – too funny) and Marianne Evans (the widow of Tom Evans) also contributed some photos. I paid for professional photos to make “sure” Joey got proper representation.

Marianne had a large amount of photos taken at Caribou Ranch grounds, on rolls of film to be developed, but they were sadly stolen, along with her carrying bag from a pub before she had them developed. Heart-breaking. But she had some Polaroids. Thanks also to Kunihiko Kikuchi and Kiyoyuki Kohsaka on supplying information and access of rare picture sleeves reproduced.

One of Marianne Evans surviving photos taken at time of the album cover photo shoot - which was later rejected. Chris Thomas at right:

I cleaned up the promotional Sunn Amp poster done at the Wish You Were Here sessions, as best I could, as the original poster is very raw-looking. 

I did interviews for the liner notes of the Badfinger self-titled with Chris Thomas and the designer of the album artwork, John Kosh. The main recording engineer, Phil Chapman, gave me a few little bits that he could remember. The second engineer for that album, Andy Morris, passed on an interview, but I used a bit of info from one he did with another party.

For Wish You Were Here liner notes, I also interviewed Thomas, along with the American roadie Brian Gary Varga, who was there early on and the Caribou Studio manager, John Carsello. Plus, I did one with an early-stage engineer on the album, Wayne Tarnowski. I had some info from before from my book research and I had Joey Molland’s comments from the past to review; plus public interviews he’d done.

Tom Brennan of Badfinger Library helped me get the lyrics down, as accurately as we could, though a word or two, to this day, is still hard to be 100% sure of. 

To my delight, the record company, Real Gone Music, has now put together the bonus tracks as a double-LP release titled “So Fine” for today, for Record Store day release, April 13, 2019.

The bonus tracks on the double vinyl are pretty much what was on the CDs, but a refreshed sound being of some vinyl prep I did, and I did a few noticeable sonic tweaks of parts for Wish You Were Here bonus vinyl disc, on about four of the tracks I think, but nothing notable. The mastering engineer for the vinyl told me I had done a flawless preparation for the “vinyl” prep and he had to do almost no added technical work to it. 

This So Fine double LP cover photo was a real find, as I had been given a film negative in the past from ex-manager Bill Collins. It turned out it was from a professional photographer. So rare are color Badfinger photos and this was a good one related close enough to the era. Others from the session had been used to promote the Badfinger album release to magazines of the time, though this session was taken in the Ass recording era of later 1972 at the Clearwell Castle grounds. Around the time they had already signed to Warner Brothers Records.

As it is, professional reviews have since come out off the earlier versions released and they are all positive, because those early CD versions, despite being just my sound drafts before completion, are far from any disaster to hear; that’s just wildly exaggerated rhetoric out there. One working engineer, who works professionally in the business it seems, was informed that corrected ones were on the way, but still decided to post an “F-rating” review somewhere, before he heard the replacements which he knew were coming. Stupid to damage hurt the legacy of this great band, by discouraging people, illogically to me, to purchase. None of these complainers seemed to care about the new material to hear. 

I doubt any of these complaining stragglers would put their own money into getting these studio sessions and for licensing of photos, as I did for these projects. I love this band’s legacy and the band members and Thomas are deserving of the accolades for them. I’m glad for anyone to do any work that gets good results, at any time, in fact.

Interesting info on “Meanwhile Back At The Ranch” – the solos by Pete with Production genius by Chris Thomas..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh6pw8UegA0

I want to commend Gordon Anderson of Real Gone Music. He went above and beyond to handle all the aspects of these to help satisfy the public on these projects. The staff at Rhino were fantastic, too. 

A lot of other companies were interested over the years, as it is always a risk to do any projects, especially with Badfinger. So, one should give great thanks to Gordon Anderson of Real Gone Music for taking on these projects. These  will be rare to collect soon enough. Grab up. They may not be offered digitally in the future. So even more reason to get them soon. 

Dan Matovina