Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Astronaut History #1:
Joey's last conversation with Tom.

As noted on the sidebar, Joey claims that he is the only person capable of telling the Badfinger story because he is the only "astronaut" who was there. For decades Joey has told his story many times, and he hasn't yet provided a good description of the moon. One result of Joey's stories was the confusion noted by Bill DeYoung of Goldmine Magazine in 1997: "For although the high points of the Badfinger story have long been common knowledge, they've always read like some kind of impressionist road map, open forever to individual interpretation and with lots of blank spaces and grey areas left to be filled in."

DeYoung's confusion was probably due in part to Joey's sloppy details, but also due to some intentional revisions on Joey's part. One recent revision from Joey concerns his comments regarding his last conversation with Tom Evans.

In the following quote, Joey says he and Tom argued about money being held in escrow. Joey blames Tom for the holdup, "your lawyers." Joey also says that "nobody can agree that that's what the deal is." This is in reference to an agreement in splitting publishing royalities:

"Tommy said 'We've got to sort this money thing out.' I said to him, 'We can't sort it out. I've spent every penny I've had, three times in my life, and come back to England to try to sort it out with your lawyers. And we can't do it. Nobody can agree that that's what the deal is.'" (DISCoveries Magazine, 1991)

In 1982 and 1983, Tom clearly stated what was bothering him: "He's suing me for the Apple money from 'Without You.' They're all trying to sue me now, They want the money from 'Without You.'" Despite Tom's misuse of the word "sue," he was obviously upset about the royalty division of the song "Without You," the band's top money earner. Joey, Mike, and Bill Collins were seeking a greater percentage of that song than what Tom considered to be fair. If not for this one song, Tom would have benefitted from the division the others sought. So this first quote from Joey appears to be fairly accurate.

However, in the later quotes, Joey backtracks. He now says he and Tom did not discuss royalty divisions, or even talk about "Without You" at all:

"...For your information, when Tommy and I talked that last night we talked not about the money itself and who should get what but about how we could get the money out of the courts' hands and into ours. We disagreed how we could get it." (8-30-2004, from Randy Justesen's Guestbook)
And this: "I saw an article in something called Red Route, I think, where they used some passages from Matovina's writings about what Tommy and I talked, discussed, argued about on the phone the night of his suicide. I can assure you all that the "Without You" royalties were not." (12-3-2003, from Randy Justesen's Guestbook)

Why is Joey now recanting? Well, perhaps he doesn't want people to know that the night before Tom killed himself that he argued with him about the royalties from "Without You." For Joey to admit they argued about Tom's song would make him look mercenary (if not villainous because of Tom's pending death).

Astronaut or not, Joey can't change his mind about his lunar descriptions and expect to be believed.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you know Joey and Tom
argued that night? Did Dan do
some wire-tapping and get another
phone tape? Joey said things got
heated on the Katz video, but
since you don't consider him
truthful, who else was on the line,
or even in the same room when it
happened? If he wanted to sound
like he was hiding something, he
would have said Tom sounded fine.
Tell us all how you know
the actual truth about what was
said during this conversation.

ßill said...

Joey and Kathie said many times that they argued. That's pretty common knowledge.

From the Gary Katz interview, Kathie said: "But at this point when Tommy called, I think Joey let him have it a little bit. Not just a little bit, he really let him have it." She went on to describe the argument in detail (her spin, anyway).

Next?

ßill said...

Oh, you also asked why I believe Joey has skewed the truth in recent interviews? Because he described the call differently when it happened. I suspect the original version is closer to the truth because Joey didn't realize the backlash that would come later. It's all in the blog article.

Anonymous said...

it is irrevelantly Joey is not to blame. God bless tom.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Ive read the book and gathered info fro other reliable sources. Joey isnn't a nice person. o should know because i recieved a nasty e-mail from him.

Anonymous said...

Why, what did you say Dan?

Giordan said...

So what if Joey isn't a nice person (not that I claim to know personally whether he is or isn't - I've never met him)? Remember that he is one of the four people who got kicked around by the music biz and it would be ridiculous to think that he could have survived all that unscathed. Look what it did to Pete and Tom. Is he supposed to hang himself too before his point of view is accepted as valid?