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.