Peter William Ham was born on 27 April 1947. He was the youngest of three children born to Catherine and William Ham who both hailed from the Mayhill area of Swansea. Peter showed a musical prowess from his earliest days, excelling at the harmonica. In many ways, the instrument was something Peter could hide his intense shyness behind. When there would be visitors to the Ham's Townhill home, Pete would only play the harmonica on the proviso that he did it from the top of the stairs, where nobody could see him!

Pete lived in Gwent Gardens, his close friend Roy Anderson lived in the nearby Gwylfa Road, together they attended Gors School in Townhill.

"Peter would carry that harmonica everywhere with him," remembers Anderson, "when it was playtime, he would give a performance for everyone at the school gates. I'd stand and watch with the others. Peter and myself became good friends."

From harmonica, Peter moved onto the guitar, diligently teaching himself in the back garden shed of his parent's home. His neighbours would listen with fascination.

"You could hear him day and night' remembers David White who still lives in Gwent Gardens, "He'd be there playing chords and trying to write songs". In the early sixties, Ham and Anderson, together with school-friends John Horrell and David Franklin, decided to form their own group, The Panthers. Townhill school teacher Brian Coffey found the lads somewhere to play and rehearse. It was the local Townhill Youth Club.

"We went to see The Searchers play at the Tower Ballroom in Townhill" recalls Anderson, "Myself and Peter were blown away. You could see he wanted a career in music."

By 1964, the band had changed names to The Wild Ones. Franklin, Horrell and Anderson departed, to be replaced by David Jenkins (guitar), Ron Griffiths (bass) and Terry Gleeson (drums). Together with founding member Ham, they gigged around South Wales, cautiously courting with the idea of one day going professional. A group from Reading came down to Swansea for a gig. They were also called The Wild Ones. Pete and his men decided to look for a new name for the band.

Ron Griffiths remembers: "We were driving away from a gig near Swansea Station one night and we saw a street sign for Ivey Place. We liked the sound, so we called ourselves "The Iveys"

Drummer Gleeson left the band in late 1964 because of work commitments, to be replaced by a Penlan boy, Mike Gibbins. By the mid-sixties, The Iveys were gigging around South Wales seven nights a week. Once, after playing The Regal Ballroom in Ammanford, they were approached by Bill Collins, a Liverpudlian who at that stage, was managing one of the city's biggest acts: The Mojos.

"Bill came up to us after the Regal gig," recalls Ron Griffiths, "and said we'd played and sung with a lot of soul. He wanted to be our manager."

Collins moved the band en masse to Golders Green in London and the pangs of professionalism were calling to the band. Pete Ham started to date a girl in the area, Beverley Tucker.

"Pete really wanted to succeed in the business," she remembers, "but not to push himself or step on other people's toes. He wanted to make it because of his talent."

Collins recruited The Iveys as back-up group for current pop idol David Garrick. The Iveys and Garrick toured the UK and then Ireland. To the lads delight, they were getting better reviews and audience than the top-biller they were supposed to be supporting!

London's musical entrepreneurs were not slow in spotting the potential of the band and the songwriting talents of Pete.

David Jenkins left the fold in 1967. His replacement was Tommy Evans, a good-looking Liverpudlian lad with a warm personality and a radiant voice. The Iveys were now firmly ensconced in the London concert scene. At the end of the year there came a lovely surprise - The Beatles Apple label were offering The Iveys a recording contract. They'd made it!

"Maybe Tomorrow" was the band's first single, released on Apple in late 1968 and composed by Tommy Evans. Although plugged incessantly by radio stations throughout Britain and America, it failed to make the top thirty either side of the Atlantic. Pete Ham was desperately disappointed by the single's failure, even more so when Apple - fueled by the 45's lack of success - refused to release The Iveys first album for the UK markets.

Pete and his band were forced to think again. In later years, Pete would admit The Iveys expected things to go too smoothly with Apple and realized that if they wanted success, they would have to work hard for it.

And so they did. Paul McCartney took the band into the studio to record one of his compositions, "Come and Get It". The results were superb. It sounded like a hit record...

Internal problems beset the band. Ron Griffiths and Tommy Evans were having difficulty seeing eye-to-eye. Griffiths left as copies of "Come and Get It" were being pressed. His replacement was another Liverpudlian: Joe Molland.

The band had long been unhappy with their name. The Iveys sounded insipid, just too "nice' for the music business. The band asked Apple for their suggestions on a new name for the band. McCartney came up with Home and Mother's Children, Lennon suggested Prix (pronounced Pricks!) but it was Beatles Road Manager Neil Aspinall who came up with the goods: Badfinger, based, apparently on an alternate title for "With A Little Help From My Friends."

"Deejays seem to enjoy saying the name Badfinger." Pete would later reflect. "Come and Get It" was a gigantic hit, going Top Five both sides of the Atlantic, but the first Badfinger album - a hotch-potch of The Iveys material and abortive attempts at softrock singles didn't do as well in the charts. Popular music had become more progressive and rock-based and groups like Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd held sway. Most of the album sounded dated.

The band had an objective: to regain control of the singles and album charts with the best maternal they could offer The band had tired of people telling them they had potential - they knew that. What they needed now was to produce the fruit of this talent.

'No Dice" was recorded in 1970. Molland's vocals and raw guitar-work gave the band a harder drive. The results were incredible. Some reviewers called the band "The New Beatles", a tag Badfinger wore with reluctance. Pete Ham was writing his finest material and composed the band's biggest selling single to date: the rocking "No Matter What."

American crooner Harry Nilsson heard the album and promptly covered the Ham/Evans composition "Without You". It would go onto be a worldwide number one - a standard.

On the strength of the album, Badfinger toured The States - to more good reviews.

With the demise of The Beatles, the Apple label was beginning to fall apart. Apple should have followed-up the success of "No Matter What" with another single. The band voted "Believe Me", a Tommy Evans composition, as a contender; but it would be a full year before the fans would see another Badfinger 45. "Day After Day" - a Pete Ham composition released in late 1971-was another worldwide hit, briefly topping the Cashbox charts in the USA and going top ten in Britain. The album from which it was culled "Straight Up" was Badfinger's best to date. It was a spectacular effort without a weak track on it. The follow-up single, Pete Ham's "Baby Blue" was another hit, going to number 14 in the American charts where it had an exclusive release. The year was a hugely successful one, it included their performance at Madison Square Gardens in a concert to aid Refugees of Bangladesh. Badfinger rubbed shoulders with George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Leon Russell. The group signed with an American management company in 1972. There were promises of rich pickings for the group. Their contract with Apple now completed, Badfinger moved to Warner Brother Records for a reputed $3 million.

The group's first single "Love Is Easy" (composed by Molland) bombed in the charts and the album from which it was taken "For Love or Money", enjoyed a similar fate, despite containing a truly brilliant Pete Ham track "Lonely You". There were more interpersonal problems within the band, principally over the material the band were producing and the increasingly anonymous American management company. Badfinger may have been stars in name, but in actuality they remained financially destitute. The band had certainly made a lot of money, but nobody knew where the money was going. Pete was doubly worried, his girlfriend Anne was expecting their first child.

Badfinger recorded "Wish You Were Here" in late 1974, the final offering from the band and it was a masterpiece, probably their finest piece of work. But few got to hear it ...

In 1975, a Warner Executive found that all the money from their joint account with Badfinger had disappeared and pulled "Wish You Were Here" off the shelves, threatening their group with breach of contract. Nobody in the band knew where the money had gone; it had been filtered from the account by the American management company.

For Pete Ham this was too much to take. He had written three million-selling singles, had toured America six times, had songs covered by innumerable artists and had co-written a song generally considered a standard. Yet he was penniless. On the evening of 23 April 1975, he walked into his garage, put a rope around a joist and hung himself. He was 27 years old.

That was truly the end of Badfinger, who called it a day shortly after Pete's death. In the following years various versions of the band would come and go, but they could never recapture the glory days of the late sixties and early seventies..

Pete was survived by his girlfriend Anne and daughter Petera, who was born shortly after his death.

It there's ever a tale that rips-to-shreds the "No business like show business" cliché and acts as a grisly deterrent to other groups seeking fame, it's the tale of Pete Ham and Badfinger.

"Comfort me, dear Brother,
Won't you tell me what you know,
For somewhere in this painful world
Is a place where I can go."