Music has never been short of injustices, but few are quite as galling as the continued underestimation of Tom Evans. As bassist, vocalist and principal songwriting force alongside Pete Ham in Badfinger, Evans helped furnish the world with melodies of disarming elegance, bruised romanticism and impeccable craftsmanship. Yet history, that notoriously unreliable adjudicator, has tended to remember the band through the tragedy of its members and the colossal success of a song rather than the extraordinary depth of its catalogue. I Believe In You, a splendid new collection of previously unheard demos, makes a persuasive case for putting that right.
Following 2024’s I Am Myself, this 20-track excavation takes us back to the fertile middle years of Evans’s career, spanning 1970–1977, and reveals a songwriter growing increasingly assured in his craft. Compiled after an exhaustive two-year search for unheard material and alternative demo versions, the album is no mere exercise in archival box-ticking. These are working documents from a remarkable musical mind: intimate, unvarnished and often more revealing than the polished studio recordings into which some of the songs would eventually evolve.
The setting is predominantly acoustic guitar, with occasional electric guitar and piano, and contributions from Badfinger and Dodgers associate Bob Jackson on guitar and backing vocals. There is no expensive studio gloss to hide behind, no wall of production lacquer to distract from the essentials. Just Evans, his songs and the occasional rough edge that makes the whole enterprise so compelling. The result is less a collection of curiosities than a privileged seat at the songwriter’s workbench.
The title track, presented in two versions, provides an apt framing device. Hearing both “I Believe In You (version 2)” at the outset and “version 1″ at the close offers a glimpse of the creative process itself, with the song serving as both introduction and final word. It is an elegant structural decision, allowing the listener to absorb the collection as a journey rather than a random rummage through the archives. Evans’s melodic instincts are unmistakable: he had a knack for making a tune sound as though it had always existed, waiting patiently for somebody to discover it.
The real special moments, however, lie in the songs that Badfinger devotees will recognise, even if these versions offer a different perspective. “Money” arrives in its original demo form, a particularly welcome inclusion given Evans’s ability to combine a sharp melodic hook with a harder, more streetwise edge. “When I Say” and “Blind Owl” likewise remind us that his contribution to Badfinger extended well beyond the familiar singles. The latter, represented by a second demo version, is especially significant in illustrating the strength of the material that Evans brought to the group. These are not the scraps left on the cutting-room floor by a songwriter running out of ideas; they are evidence of a man whose reserves of invention were considerably deeper than his public reputation suggests.
“Queen Of Darkness” and “Lost Inside Your Love” add further weight to the argument, while “Sail Away” provides another opportunity to hear a song that would eventually find its way into the Badfinger repertoire. The demos are valuable precisely because they strip away the assumptions created by the finished recordings. Here, the songs exist in a more vulnerable state, their architecture exposed, their melodic contours allowed to speak for themselves.
Elsewhere, “Try To See Eye To Eye”, “Don’t Let It Go”, “Friday Night” and “It’ll Be Alright” broaden the picture, while “So Far”, “I’m Gonna Love You”, “Till You Came Along” and “A Dream Come True” offer further evidence of Evans’s gift for marrying directness with emotional nuance. “Fade Away”, “Twenty-Four Reasons” and “Has Anybody Seen Her” help complete a collection that is notable not merely for its familiar titles but for the consistency of its songwriting. There is a naturalness to these performances, a sense of melodies arriving without being bullied into existence. Even when the arrangements are skeletal, the songs possess an internal momentum that lesser writers spend entire careers trying to manufacture.
The collection is a portrait of an artist moving through different phases of his working life, continuing to write, refine and explore while the machinery of the music business carried on with its usual mixture of opportunity, indifference and missed chances.
Badfinger occupied a fascinating position in the post-Beatles landscape: blessed with the melodic sophistication of their obvious influences but possessed of a personality all their own. They were often described in relation to the Beatles, a comparison that was both a compliment and a commercial straitjacket. Evans’s songs helped ensure they were more than a competent imitation. His writing could be tough, tender, restless or quietly devastating, and his voice brought a distinctive emotional grain to the material. If Pete Ham has often been recognised as the group’s great melodic visionary, Evans deserves equal attention as a songwriter whose instincts were every bit as essential to the band’s identity.
There is, inevitably, a melancholy undertow to listening to these recordings. The distance between the intimate promise of a demo and the complicated realities of a music career can be immense, and Badfinger’s history is hardly an advertisement for the benevolence of the industry. But I Believe In You is not best approached as a monument to lost possibilities. Its real achievement is to make Evans sound present, active and creatively alive. These songs are not important merely because they survived unseen; they matter because they are good.
Tom Evans deserved a more generous verdict from posterity than he has often received. This collection will not rewrite the history of Badfinger overnight, but it adds vital detail to the picture, reminding us that behind the hit records and the familiar mythology stood a serious, prolific and deeply gifted songwriter.
Donnie’s Rating: 8/10
