Badfinger and bad luck were made for each other. After scoring four consecutive hits in the early '70s, things were looking up for the Beatle-endorsed British band. But what followed was years of diminishing returns and tragic loss, as record deals with Apple Records and Warner Bros. fell apart due to mishandling by the band's management. At one point, WB refused to release Badfinger's next album and sued to recover missing escrow money, basically bankrupting the band.
The members of Badfinger fell into a deep despair, and April 1975, singer-guitarist Pete Ham hanged himself in the garage of his Surrey home. He was 27. Badfinger broke up after that, struggled to reform over the next few years, and once again found themselves at the center of even more legal nightmares. Several years later, in November 1983, another tragedy occurred when bassist Tom Evans also his own life, also by hanging.