Tuesday, July 27, 2010

When Pete Rejoined Badfinger in 1974

Now to address a third misrepresentation from Joey on Pete Ham rejoining Badfinger in 1974. The following is from the same Interview Haven interview that is linked in my previous articles. The emphasis is mine.

Joey Molland: "Anyway, we went out right away, this is in 1974, we went out right away and found a keyboard player that could sing and duplicate the parts. Bob Jackson could actually play the synthesizer and bend it, you know, bend the strings so we could play our guitar parts together like Peter and I used to do. Anyway, it felt great and a couple of weeks later, we had the band and the show together for the tour. Pete came to one of the rehearsals and I think he was really surprised and then he came back and he wanted back in the band. And he said, 'I like to be back in the band. I won’t be like I was before. I won’t be stubborn and I’ll just stand at the back of the stage and just sing my songs.'"

The above scenario paints a very different picture from facts that are presented in the Without You book. According to Joey, Pete was impressed with the band's sound after Bob Jackson's joining and wanted to rejoin based on this.
John Ham, Pete's brother who was actually with him during the time he was out of the group, presents information that Joey obviously wasn't privy to.

John Ham: "Pete had found this remote country cottage where he was going to build his own home studio and write songs. He seemed quite pleased. Then one day he told me he's been contacted by someone from Warner Brothers and they said they weren't interested in the Badfinger band if Pete left. They said 'If he goes, or he goes, or he goes, fine. But if you go, no contract.' Pete was really upset. He felt he owed the rest of the band a living. He was afraid that if the whole thing folded, he'd be to blame."

Anne Herriot, who was Pete's girlfriend at the time: "It was Pete who Warner Brothers wanted. Pete told me Warner's wanted him back in the band."
So based on John and Anne's memories of events, Pete didn't want to rejoin Badfinger. He was "quite pleased" at the prospect of a solo career. And when he was told WB would rescind its support of Badfinger without him, he was "really upset." He didn't want to be the cause of sinking the band so he went back - reluctantly. He didn't get goosepimply at listening to a rehearsal of the new Joey-controlled Badfinger, as Joey would like people to believe, but he made a decision that would assist the band and yet would derail his personal ambitions.

As with the two previous articles from Interview Haven, this is all par-for-the-course for Joey. In the first article he intentionally twists the facts, in the second article he intentionally omits facts, and here he simply doesn't know all the facts but acts as though he does. No wonder journalist Bill DeYoung said that following Joey's Badfinger story is like interpreting an "impressionist road map" ... and it is also no wonder that no publisher has ever touched a proposed book by Molland.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

The Marshall Meeting

During Joey Molland’s recent "Interview Haven" article he mangled timelines, made wild declarations, and suggested cause-and-effect results for events that happened in a completely different order. It is such a complete mess that it is nearly impossible to untangle. Please refer to the article for direct quotes.

http://interviewhaven.com/Joey_Molland_Badfinger.html

Joey has claimed in the past that Badfinger’s manager Bill Collins came back from a trip to America around August 1974 reporting some aspect of a Warner Brothers contract was in jeopardy (there were several contracts.) If true, Collins, who probably didn't understand any details, would likely have been referring to the fact that WB's publishing division claimed to have unitlaterally terminated its contract with the band. This was due to missing escrow advance funds originally to be held by Stan Polley as Badfinger's representative. The band members later met in the office of music agent Barry Marshall, who was to be involved in the band's forthcoming British tour. Joey has claimed he asked his wife Kathie to contact WB in America to verify if there was a problem with the contract. He claims Kathie contacted him while he was at the meeting and told him “everything was ‘OK.’” He repeated this to the group. Pete Ham went into a rage about Kathie's involvement regarding her “managing” the group and he quit on the spot.

This Marshall meeting was pivotal in Badfinger's history. It is important to chronicle what actually transpired for any reader to understand where things went wrong. Joey's intentional and unintentional misleading statements are addressed below ...
(1) Joey is claiming the album "Wish You Were Here" came out before this meeting. In fact, the album was not released until months later.
(2) Joey is claiming the WYWH album was "selling like mad." In fact, the album reached #149 on Billboard after six weeks of distribution. It was then pulled from the market.

(3) Joey is implying he had conversations with WB executives near the time of this meeting regarding their future lawsuit. He previously only said he received "a telex" from WB that everything was "OK."
(4) Joey claims WB's publishing didn't know how the escrow money disappeared, which is wrong. WB had given the money to Polley and he was being uncommunicative as to its whereabouts. Their issue was to learn where the money was being held.
(5) Joey claims his announcement to the band involved WB's lawsuit. However, there was no lawsuit at this time. The lawsuit was filed several months later when WB had exhausted all other avenues. At this time, WB had only stated that it was "terminating" its publishing contract with the band (page 248 in the book).
(6) Joey implies this one phone call from Kathie Molland to be Pete's single cause for resigning. Of course, this makes no sense on the face of it. Joey consistently denies the "Kathie issue," although she, herself, admitted to antagonizing Pete and the band on many occasions. It is clear that Pete's outburst was the culmination of years of frustration with Kathie.

As usual, Joey wants to tweak a story in such a manner that everyone else was wrong, Bill Collins was wrong, WB was wrong, Pete Ham was wrong ... everybody except for himself and Kathie.

At any rate, the remainder of the "Interview Haven" article includes Joey misrepresenting Pete rejoining the group. More on this later.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Who Wrote the song "Without You?
Joey is at it again, using his trademark combination of subterfuge and poor memory to muddy Badfinger's history. If you read his interview with "Interview Haven" and were confused by it, allow me to untangle his mess. Please refer to the article for direct quotes.
The song "Without You" was originally sections from two different songs that were written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans. At Pete's suggestion, they combined the sections to create the final song. This has been the official corroborated story of "Without You" for the past 40 years. Now, Joey wants to alter history.
Joey is now asserting that it was manager Bill Collins who suggested putting the two halves of the song together, and that this was done in the studio when the band was recording their album No Dice. This is quite typical of Joey and it is a case where I do not believe his poor memory is the culprit. He is attempting to confuse the songwriting of "Without You" because of the royalties distribution of the song. In the 1970s, Tom Evans said: "My song was OK. The verse was a bit like "Help!" but Pete fell in love with the chorus. He said 'I'd like to try that bit on a song I have and see what you think.'" (Badfinger book page 99) Bill Collins never once made any claim even remotely close to Joey's statement - and Collins would have had good reason to make such a claim if it were true. But he didn't.
Regarding putting the “song together” in the studio, it's possible it took the band two hours to record the song or for other musicians to learn their parts, but they didn't "put that together." The song was already complete. Even the arrangement was complete, as is evidenced by the two early demo versions that subsequently have been released, and Matovina's book also makes mention of a home band version done prior to entering any recording studios.
Again, this is Joey's revisionist history and an attempt to justify the distribution of the song's publishing royalties. You see, although Pete and Tom wrote the song, Joey gets a cut of the royalties because of a suspect verbal agreement the band had in the 1960s to share publishing revenue. The agreement was never committed to paper and the divisions were never clear, but the estates for Pete and Tom decided not to fight the issue in 1985 and divisions for "Without You" have been in force ever since. It is a very lucrative song and it makes sense the other band members fought for a piece of it. Is it fair? Of course not. Pete's and Tom's children are being forced to share revenue generated by their fathers' creativity with people who performed on a single recording of the song 40 years ago.
Because Joey is the last man standing (Badfinger-wise) he believes that anything he says should be accepted without challenge. But his attempt to diminish Pete and Tom for the purpose of justifying his claim to "Without You" is simply shameless.