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.