Saturday, October 22, 2011

Strong Evidence of Quote Tampering in Joey's "Badfinger and Beyond"

Joey's book had another recent review on Amazon, where Morten Vindberg details his disappointment with it. A portion of Cimino's response is below:

"... As for the stir about questions and answers there were many interviews used to create this book and subject matter was discussed many times over. The passage that Bill/Jace/whatever his/her real name is refers to is taken from two interviews on the same subject."

Apparently Cimino thinks he’s being clever by inferring "Jace Lee Dakota" and I are the same person. We are not and I have no clue who Dakota is. I have no qualms about criticizing his book in my own name. Now, regarding his response - the evidence I see of manipulation is clearly not the result of “many interviews”, as I laid out the evidence in my previous blog titled "Badfinger and Beyond Credibility."

In the first case, from Cimino’s raw interview first published on his website in 2002, Joey's answer and Cimino's questions were split in two sections. 

In the book that came out in 2011, under the topic of Pete Ham's song "Take It All", Cimino's questions are condensed and take on a different meaning.


Joey’s response to Cimino is basically the same quote, with rough language edited away. Cimino has changed the frame of reference now for Joey's earlier answer. In "Badfinger And Beyond", Cimino queried for clarification with his question whether Pete and Joey had argued over Pete being asked to duet with George Harrison at the Concert for Bangla Desh. The general topic Cimino is deriving this from is in the "Without You" book, where Pete's girlfriend is quoted regarding Pete's sensitivity to jealous taunting by Joey and Kathie. Pete responded to the taunts by writing "Take It All." The lyrics seem to bear this out.

Yet, Cimino, armed with Joey's frenzied defense of his character, decides he just can't help but take advantage of Joey's raw emotional outburst. Cimino makes a fateful decision. He alters his question for the new book. Is this really such a big deal? Of course it is. This evidence shows Cimino trying to improve our impressions of Joey through alterations.

Instead of giving a reasonable response on Amazon, Cimino defends himself by making a bogus claim, that Joey supposedly happened to respond the same for two different interviews. This is baloney. If Cimino isn't going to be honest in defending his book, does this mean he wasn't honest when he was writing his book? I agree with Morton Vindberg’s comment on Amazon: "I'm afraid I can't be sure of what to believe."

13 comments:

ßill said...

Oh, I guess Cimino wants to fire an obscure shot at me. He changed his "narcissism" quote to "Strong evidence of asshole-ism" on his website (in reference to this last blog title). Thanks for the humor, Cimino. I have no problem reproducing that here for my readers.

ßill said...

Geez! Talk about a guy trying to cover his tracks! I originally linked to Cimino's raw interview in this above article but he has quickly deleted it (removing the evidence). However, the relevant section is now provided in the article.

For those of you who might be a little lost here, Cimino was caught manipulating quoted material for his book and he's now trying to erase the evidence of it. Until this week, it could be found at http://www.cottageviews.com/book_interview.htm

Anonymous said...

I think you missed something. Michael Cimino says he used two quotes for Joey's answer, not "several". He said he conducted several INTERVIEWS TOTAL. So Michael's question in the book might be the question he asked Joey in that other interview. You are implying he completely made up the question afterwards. I don't believe you have enough information to run with your conclusion.

ßill said...

Granted, I missed that. OK, so "two" interviews. I think you're still missing the point: Supposing Joey answered to two different questions, his answers were still combined as a singular sequenced quote to only one question from one interview - and with a lot of heavy editing.

Suppose I ask you this, "Did you ever step on a nail?" You answer "I may have but I don't remember." Then I say "Rumor has it you stepped on a lot of nails and cried every time it happened." Then you get angry and say "That's absolute bull!" It's a lie and that never happened!" Now, if I mix and match the questions and answers you see how you can be portrayed. On top of this, there was never any "rumor" about crying anyway so your answer is based on a false premise.

Anonymous said...

Yawn.

ßill said...

The "Yawn" comes to you courtesy of Puerto Rico.

Anonymous said...

Still Yawn.

ßill said...

Jose, seeing as you advocate people signing their names to posts and engaging in "point/counterpoint" instead of hit-and-run snipes, you certainly don't practice what you preach.

ßill said...

Nieves, you're nothing but a troll. Don't expect me to publish any further dribble from you.

For everyone else, Nieves keeps sending stupid remarks like the ones above. He will now be ignored.

nikola said...

Should I buy the book for tomorrow? There on amazon and tower.

ßill said...

Nikola, I'm not sure what you're asking. Should you buy the book? If you're a diehard Joey fan you'd probably find it interesting. But if you want an accurate telling of Badfinger's history, I'd strongly suggest you avoid it.

Anonymous said...

who all has read this book? what are your imrpessions?

ßill said...

I doubt anyone is going to answer besides me. This is my blog, you know.

As I've said already, I found the book to be inaccurate on subjects that were already covered extensively in "Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger." And on the subjects that weren't covered (which is barely anything) the information is unreliable because of the tampering and Joey Molland's desire to rearrange history to his own benefit.