The entire planet seemed like it was in a state of rapid metamorphosis. The once docile Flower Children had dropped their love beads and picked up arms. The disillusioned counterculture was awash in a haze of drugs and self indulgence.

Reflecting the times, popular music changed as well. In vogue Protest Rock from Creedence Clearwater Revival and Buffalo Springfield hit the airwaves with authoritative power. The often timid Motown label uncharacteristically chimed in with the Temptations' hit "Ball of Confusion (That's what the world is Today)."

“At that point in the late sixties London was more fun than America was,” recalls Apple’s former house hippie Richard DiLello, a native New Yorker who had recently immigrated to the UK to work for The Beatles. “The political atmosphere was very different. Even though the war was going on, and even though there were demonstrations, things weren’t quite as serious. It was more of a looney situation as the war was escallating.”

Joey recalls that work was scarce when he returned home. "After Gary Walker & the Rain broke up I went back to Liverpool and stayed with my brother Chris and his wife," he confesses. "I must have been there six months or so, not doing much of anything. Just seeing pals, and playing at rehearsal places - not doing jobs."

Joey’s bleak outlook on the music business wouldn't hold him down for long, though, as an old friend now living in London had been looking out for him.

"One day in November Billy Kinsley said he had a phone call from Bob Adcock in London,” he recalls. “I had met Bob when I was with the Masterminds. I had suggested he come down to London when Cream were looking for a roadie, and he got the job. Bob said there was a group on Apple Records looking for a guitar player. He said they were the Iveys and they'd like me to go down and audition for them.

"As it happens, I'd seen the Iveys on the Lulu Show. It was the night that Jimi Hendrix was on. That day Cream had broken up and Hendrix stopped right in the middle of "Purple Haze" and went into Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" on live TV."

*  *  *  *  *

Joey recalls the contrast between the two groups being monumental. Jimi Hendrix was the darling of psychedelic society, wearing colorful and flamboyant clothes that matched his extravagant style of guitar playing. The Iveys, on the other hand, were a throwback to the British Invasion wearing matching suits and performing tight harmony-layered Pop.

"The Iveys were doing ‘Maybe Tomorrow,’" Joey remembers. "They wore these high collared suits with shirts and ties, and their hair was perfect. I wasn't into that whole image thing. I'd been awfully close to being in one of those [kind of] bands with Gary Walker & the Rain and the Merseys. There was something about them that really wasn't for me.”

“I was going to go for it [myself],” admits Kinsley, “because I knew the Iveys from Apple. I had been working at Apple with Jackie Lomax and doing a lot of recording for Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Peter Asher.

“I thought they were a suberb band, and when the call came through that the bass player was leaving I went, ‘eh, that might be a good job.’ Then I heard that Tommy was going on to bass so that was out for me. I said to Joey, ‘Look, there’s a band called the Iveys that really rate. They’re nice guys and they want a guitarist. Go for it, Joey!’”

“My initial feeling was that I shouldn't go,” explains Joey. “I was interested in Rock 'n' Roll music. I did not want to stand around like that - pose and smile. I said to Billy, ‘I'm not going to do that!’

“Billy said, ‘But they're on Apple Records, Joe! They're working with The Beatles!,'’ and I was going, ‘It's not my scene!’”

“Joey and I, by that time, when we were getting our band together were very much into Free,” says Kinsley. “I think Joey had heard “Maybe Tomorrow” and thought it was a bit Poppy.”

Continuing, Joey relates, "One of my mates, Robbie Ulitz, was there and I said I'd go to see these guys if he'd come with me. Robbie said, ‘okay,’ and we phoned up. A couple of days later we took the train to London and went to the house on Park Avenue.”

“They told me that they had originally started out as a Rock band playing punchy music down in Swansea, much the same as the bands I'd been in in Liverpool. They slowly turned into a Pop band through the decisions and advise of their manager, Bill Collins, and now they wanted to get back to Rock.

"I sang a couple of Rock songs for them just so they would know where I was at. I did the Righteous Brothers’ song "My Babe." It was a popular song around Liverpool in those days.

"They acted kind of cool. I don't think Peter was particularly impressed, but he didn't dislike me or say that I wouldn't be good for the band. I was completely different from him. Tommy really never said anything, but Mike was real positive about the whole thing. I think Mike wanted me in the band, and I think Tommy did, too. Peter, I believe, saw the flaws in my playing and singing abilities. I was never a confident singer.”

Once incorporated into the group there was no looking back for Joey Molland, or the Iveys. Unbeknownst to them all, their future had been predetermined. Much in the same way as when Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best in The Beatles, Joey Molland possessed the magic that would transform four gifted musicians into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Richard DiLello comments, “Badfinger didn’t become Badfinger until Joey Molland joined the band. Prior to his arrival they were a Pop group in search of a voice and an identity. Joey was the perfect Ying to Pete Ham and Tom Evans’ Yang. Or vice a versa.

“He was dynamic, outgoing, irrepressible and energetic. He was a great guitar player. He also had a great look, great hair, an in-your-face stage presence that was unavoidable and very likeable.

“Whereas Pete and Tommy were dark and brooding, Joey was the balls-to-the-wall Liverpudlian Rocker who never seemed to have a bad day.”

The first chore at hand was their name, which had to be changed. Their identity lay at stake. The way the group would be identified by the public was of great concern. In the great think-pool of the Apple offices ideas were bandied daily. McCartney suggested the comfortableness of ‘Home,’ vetoed as too soft. They were determined to taken as a serious Rock band. Typically, Lennon sarcastically offered ‘Prix.’ Eventually, it was Apple’s managing director, Neil Aspinall, who would come up with ‘Badfinger,’ lifted from “Badfinger Boogie,” the working title of John Lennon’s song “With A Little Help From My Friends.”

“When I joined them in November of ’69 they were actually in the mode of changing the name,” recalls Joey. “Ron Griffiths had already gone and there was only Pete and Mike left from the original Iveys. I was told that the name came a day or two before they had the deadline for printing the album cover.”

Logically, the next step would have been to put Badfinger in the studio to record more songs which would make up their debut album, and have Joey lay down some rhythm overdubs to the songs already recorded under McCartney’s supervision. Unfortunately, time had run out. Apple had already determined that Magic Christian Music by Badfinger would go out in conjunction with the movie in order to capitalize on sales.

Hastily assembled, the five newly recorded tracks were accompanied by a selection of remixed songs from the Iveys’ Maybe Tomorrow LP and one other, “Walk Out In The Rain,” a leftover Pete Ham song from a recording session the Iveys’ had laid down with Mal Evans.

Isolating the newly recorded tracks on Magic Christian Music shows the vibrant direction the band had moved into, blanching the others in comparison. To unsuspecting listeners, unaware of the Iveys’ previous release, Magic Christian Music was an uneven, yet thoroughly enjoyable, album. Lack of information on the jacket also left interpretation open to intrigue.

* * * * *

While Magic Christian Music climbed the charts, Badfinger entered the studio as a foursome for the first time. The faithful Mal Evans was to produce, with the capable Geoff Emerick at the control board, engineering.

Pete Ham had been toying with a tune that he had recorded on his acoustic guitar back at the house and this new composition, entitled “No Matter What,” was the first song to be recorded.

“It was very exciting,” laughs Joey. “I enjoyed it so much that I was almost unconscious! I don’t remember rehearsing, and we did it really quick in a little studio, IBC.”

Pete strummed the chords of the song, while he sang a guide vocal for the group to follow, as the arrangement was worked out. Naturally, Joey fell in as the lead and then Pete let loose the guitar riff that would later become the songs’ intro.

It was a watershed. “I can remember the sound,” remarks Joey of the reverberation coming off the walls of the studio. “I played the Firebird and Pete played the guitar that was given to him by George Harrison, a Gibson SG Standard. It was the same guitar that George played on the “Paperback Writer/Rain” sessions. We both plugged into Vox AC30 [amplifiers] and I made up the solo.”

Immediately, it was apparent that the two very different styles of the guitarists would compliment each other.

“It was easy for me to come up with a part that would work with Pete’s basic rhythm. The original guitar solo I made up on my Firebird was a slurred technique, playing a note on one string and then bending the next string up to match that note. Then I went back and did the slide solo. I used a Gibson Lap Steel. The Lap Steel was laying about there at the studio and I said, ‘Maybe I’ll try it on this,’ and everybody said, ‘Yeah, let’s use that!’ I didn’t really play lap steel at the time, so I wouldn’t say it was great technique, but none of us were afraid to try something. It worked with the song and everybody was happy.”

“It’s funny how things happen like that,” he adds. “Very shortly after I started to hear slide guitar on a lot of records.”

On the mix-down of the track Mal suggested that they send the guitar parts through a Leslie speaker cabinet to create a swirling, staccato sound – something he observed George Harrison was fond of doing at Beatles’ sessions – and a false ending, a la The Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye,” was added.

“It’s obvious The Beatles were a big influence on us,” admits Joey. “They inspired a lot of the things we did. They were the reference point for that kind of music, and those kind of songs.”

“Mal took it to Apple right away and I believe they said, ‘Nah, they’ll have to do some more songs. This isn’t the one.’”

* * * * *

In need of guidance, Al Steckler, who had worked with Allen Klein and the Rolling Stones, was appointed to head up the record division for Apple. He recalls, “The first meeting I had was with George. Basically, he said, ‘Look, we have a lot of artists we’ve signed to the label. We haven’t done much with them, and we probably shouldn’t have done what we’ve done. Why don’t you talk to them and see if they are happy. If any of them are not happy and they want to go, let them go. If they are happy and they want to stay, that’s fine.’

“And that’s what I did. James Taylor had left already by that time. Mary Hopkin was still there. Badfinger was one of the acts that was still there.”

* * * * *

Al Steckler, himself an accomplished producer, recalls visiting Badfinger for the first time during those sessions.

“I went into the studio and Peter was in the midst of doing some solo. He laid down the first take, which was fabulous, and Geoff Emerick said, ‘that was great, but it just didn’t sound right. Peter, do another one.’

“He did another one, and another one, and another one. They worked on this for hours and Pete was getting more and more frustrated, and the band was getting frustrated. The solos went from incredible to not so incredible, to ordinary, to boring. Finally, they said, ‘that’s it,’ for the night and I introduced myself.

“I said, ‘If you have time one of these days we should get together and talk,’ which in reception we did, and I said, ‘by the way, Peter, when you get a chance listen to the first solo.’ Ultimately, they did and that’s what they used.

“We got together later in the week and they brought some of the tapes that Emerick was working on. I just wasn’t impressed. They were good but I was really looking for something I could use as a single. Something that was catchy.

“The guys were very disheartened by that. I said, ‘Do you have any stuff in the can?’ and they said, ‘Yeah, we have some stuff but nobody really liked it.’ I said, ‘Let me listen to it,’ and they got me the tapes – the stuff Mal Evans had produced with them. I listened to them and said, ‘This is fabulous! These are your singles. This is what we’re going to release.’ “No Matter What” was one of them."

COPYRIGHT PROTECTED.  NOT TO BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION.

EVERY QUOTE IN BADFINGER AND BEYOND IS FROM INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED BY MICHAEL A. CIMINO

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Following are links to Badfinger, Joey Molland, and Michael A. Cimino.

Joey Molland's Website            Michael Cimino bio     

Mike Gibbins Website              Badfinger by Justesen

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