Pete:
Oh, we started as The Iveys, you know, four - five years ago. And the we had the song
called Maybe Tomorrow. We all liked it at the time, and the people with us all liked and we
felt confident about - and it flopped. So we went through a really negative period after that.
We were with Apple and Paul came along with Come and Get It and said; “There´s a song
company that wanted him to write the whole music for The Magic Christian”? But he just did
that one song and he offered it to us; and we made a disc, we made a record of that and
played it to the song company. They liked it and said we could write a couple of songs for
the film. And that was how we started as Badfinger.

Interviewer:
When you wrote your two other songs, did you see the film first?

Pete:
We saw that

Tom:
We saw the bits that they wanted us to write for

Interviewer:
How has the sound of the band changed since, like when you first started, like when you had
Maybe Tomorrow? Because I feel, as far as we know, you had that one single, which, you know -
you know more about how the sound of the band was back then.

Pete:
I think there´s a lot more drive in us now. Joey came along on guitar.

Interviewer:
Was he on the first album?

Tom:
No. He´s a rusty old guitar-player from Liverpool.

Interviewer:
Because I know on the first album, they just had like the three photos - like the credits.
So that´s what I thought.

Pete:
There were lots of tracks on that first album that were actually Ivey-tracks.

Interviewer:
Yeah, Maybe Tomorrow. Judging from that one hit you might think that the Iveys back then
were something like the Bee Gees.

Tom:
Yeah, but that was just a bit. I wrote that you know. That was, like, my trip then, you know,
and we´ve been driving away from that for a long time. You can say, just get it, you know, so
you can get that sort of content into it, without being too sirupy, you know. I think that´s . . . .

Interviewer:
What made you? If you were more or less like that, you know. It´s kind of a drastic change,
when you think about it. From a really rock act group, you know something like a . . .

Tom:
Oh that´s what happened. We discovered . . .

Pete:
It´s only slight when you look at it, really, because we did rock´n roll then. We were really into
rock´n roll. It´s just that we´re more to rock´n roll now.

Interviewer:
Did Paul produce the Come and Get It single?

Tom:
Yeah.

Interviewer:
How is it working with him?

Pete:
He really showed us a lot, you know. In basics, simplicity. If we´d done Come and Get It like
that, we wouldn´t have been happy with it. There are rough edges that we, you know, say
let´s put something over that and try and cover it up. But he said, “No, that´s it. That´s all it
needs.” Like there´s drums, piano . . and, he was right. you know. That was all it did need.

Tom:
He showed us to believe in simplicity, you know.

Interviewer:
Was that the only one he produced?

Tom:
No, what happened was, we´d done Maybe Tomorrow, you know, and it´d gone to like 50 in the
States, and there was a big gap of year, a year gap, you know, and we were just trying to get
ourselves together in a new direction, just like harden things up, and just getting on looking for
a new single, you know. We had this film thing and he offered us that song, you know, and
offered us opportunity to writing to it. So in Come and Get It he just more or less told us, you
know, just play this just play that, and that would be alright. And the next song . . Pete, what
was the next song?

Pete:
Oh Carry On was it?

Tom:
Oh yeah, Carry On, in the beginning of the film. And he said, you give us this impression of
what you like. And he said, you mentioned Simon and Garfunkel, and you know that sort of
style, and we just went on and wrote the song Carry On Till Tomorrow which he sort of like
. . he liked our song the way we did and he helped us a bit with it. And the we did Crimson Ship
which is just totally ours, you know, and he said, “Yeah, it´s a good song. We don´t need it the
film but we´ll do it anyway”. So he sort of took us to the stages until we were doing it ourselves.

Pete:
And he said, That´s it

Interviewer:
When were you first signed to Apple and how did you come about being connected with them?

Pete:
We had this small studio in our house in London. We used to make demo-tapes on that stereo
machine of our songs. We used to write songs, we´s make sort of one-man demo and then
we´d do the number as a group, you know

Tom:
A long time ago we were believing, you know four years ago , we were believing in the policy of
writing our own songs, and not getting into any of the trends that were going in the times of the
soul and James Brown and all that. We were just trying to say, we might just as well write a
hit, we can make it over there, you know. And we´ve been doing that for a good while. I think
we have about 100 songs on tape. And the big Apple thing began.

Interviewer:
So did you like, take that, demo tapes in, or something like that?

Tom:
Yeah we knew their roadie Mal, you know, and Bill knew Paul and his dad, you know. That´s our
manager. So that´s how we got associated with it, you know, first thing.

Interviewer:
Were you playing clubs back then?

Tom:
Yeah

Interviewer:
Right, this is getting into your influences. Being mature like writing your own material back
then, you know, like you said. What were your influences up to that point?

Tom:
Beatles really, I think, you know. To be honest. Everyone was into Beatles then

Pete:
They were the only group, really, that were doing that thing at the time. There weren´t all that
many groups writing themselves. It has become sort of the main thing now.

Interviewer:
Since then and now. Have you gathered any other influences?

Pete:
Yeah, lots of.

Tom:
When Joey joined us it changed an awful lot and gave a new direction.

Interviewer:
Right, getting into Joey; there he´s sitting. When did you ... how did you come to join the group?

Joey:
Their bass-player left

Tom:
I play it now, you know

Interviewer:
Who used to be bass?

Tom:
Ron Griffiths

Interviewer:
He´s the guy who wrote Dear Angie?

Tom:
Yeah

Interviewer:
Well, go on

Joey:
Their manager Bill . . said, “What are you into?” And that´s it. I came down to play, and just stayed on.

Interviewer:
Right, the reason why I ask, among others, about the influence is like. There´s one song called
Knocking Down Our Home, right? That´s kind of 1930´s pop type of thing. Right?

Pete:
I think that´s part of me it would show ( laughs ). I don´t know, it´s just a personal thing that I like,
really a lot of the old things. We don´t do a lot of it, but it creeps in now and then

Tom:
That was recorded at the very beginning when we were sort of like trying everything, and we
really believed in everything we did. You see how varied we were, you know, we were trying
everything.

Pete:
This is something, really, back from my younger years. I´ve always done music, and that was the
style of music I was hearing when I was a kid.

Tom:
That´s amazing how many people have come to us and said, “you wanna try an LP? Let me
hear it? Who wrote it? Let me shake your hand.” You know, amazing!

Pete:
It´s a nice song, but it´s little back, recording and performing it

Interviewer:
The way you did it reminds me of the New Vaudeville Band. That type of thing. But it seems like
that a lot of English performers are kind of linked to like the vaudeville era; the music hall, the
English music hall scene type of thing. like you or like Ray Davies or even some of The Beatles.
You don´t find that among American artists.

Tom:
Americans have got them into the blues, you know.

Joey:
That´s the kind of music besides rock´n roll, you know. I´m just into rock´n roll

Pete:
I think a lot more people are really into that, than actually up to . . .

Interviewer:
You mean here or there?

Pete:
Well, everywhere. They don´t like to say that they like that. It´s a little ditty and old fashioned, you
know, but I dig the fun of it.

Interviewer:
Was there a traditional jazz revival around the early?

Tom:
Yeah

Interviewer:
Getting back to the similarity between like you people and the Beatles. Outside of influence,
I guess you´re pretty much well aware of that aren´t you?

Tom:
We´ve been told, yeah

Pete:
It´s very hard not to be similar, actually, because we like songs, we like simplicity, we like
rock´n roll and we´re basically a three guitar drums like line-up with occasional piano,
so, we haven´t planned it this way. This is the way it´s happened.

Tom:
We were sitting on the bus all playing guitar playing Buddy Holly songs and Lawdy Miss Clawdy
songs, you know that´s what we get the greatest push from. Between ourselves.

Pete:
Beatles are like now, that´s one of many influences. There were a lot of other people´s
influences as well.

Interviewer:
What were some of the other major ones?

Pete:
Well, for me, I have been saying this for about two years now and I still got to say it; The Band,
you know, they´re really together.

Tom:
You know the group who didn´t get into the whole show business thing, you know, and become
part of it and put in by it. They just did their thing and kept away from it

Pete:
Delaney and Bonnie are nice, Rock´n roll music also.

Interviewer:
You could say certain things about them but as far as looking into music and say well there´s
parts of Delaney and Bonnie here, I don´t think you´ll find that, so far. Maybe the next album,
a thing like that?

Pete:
I think the band are really good, and maybe when we´re that good, you´ll notice the influence.
They´re really a great band.

Interviewer:
As far as their styles go, you know it´s gospel, that style could still show up in your stuff?
I don´t think it has.

Tom:
No, that´s ´cause it´s English, we have our own roots

Mike:
It´s not important. It´s not poppy go. It´s not sweatning at the moment, like it seems to be at the
moment in America, there´s another thing happening, you know.

Interviewer:
I´ve noticed there are other songs like Believe Me that sounds really unmistakeably like
something like a slow Oh Darling, like The Beatles. Were you aware of that?

Tom:
No, sometimes you do a song and you really like the song that you´re playing. You´re trying to
write songs and sometimes you can spend days trying to get something that appeals to you
personally, and sometimes you can just pick it up and have a tune from that, you know.
And I did that one day with that song. And recorded it you know, And we recorded it a few
days later and we did it. Until then I hadn´t known.

Pete:
It happens for everybody I think

Tom:
McCartney, because we were in the studio one night and he was coming and he said . .
We were talking about that, you know. And I was saying that we just did a song that was
sounding a bit like his, and he said, “Don´t worry about it.”And he had this song, and he
played it for us, that was Hey Jude and he played it a bit different and it was like Spanish
Harlem; a bit like Spanish Harlem, you know

Interviewer:
Also along the same trail of thought. The stage, you know as far as your stage appearance goes.
You´re using the one microphone instead of two.

Tom:
When it goes through one mike the two voices blend more than when it goes through two mikes.

Interviewer:
I was talking to somebody who was sitting back there and he said that there was these
two 14 years old girls.

Tom:
Yeah, that was the biggest thing . . .

Interviewer:
It seems to me, if you think about like, the whole rock-scene. There´s a void there. All these,
a lot of groups who are on top are slipping now, right? I think you could even say Creedence
Clearwater are slipping a little bit maybe, but they´re still on. But there´s this big void and people
are thinking, because maybe the smilarity of Badfinger to The Beatles or whatever, they´d think
that maybe they could show the void.

Tom:
Well, The Beatles are very talented. It´s very hard to replace those . .

Pete:
It´s nice to think we fill their void, but to think that we´ll take their place, they´re talking rubbish,
because nobody will ever do that. And we don´t believe we can do that.

Interviewer:
Yeah, but as far as you can compare yourselves with The Beatles in 64 or something, you know.
You´re better musically, aside from compositioning, you know the things like that. It´s just that I
think that certain people hope that you can generate that exitement or something like that.

Tom:
Well, maybe we could, if we got it together. A lot of times we gig we . . .

Pete:
We´ve had a lot of better nights than that particular night . .

Tom:
It was a bad night for us, you know

Interviewer:
What was it that night?

Tom:
When we got there, we´d travelled . . Where was it?

Pete:
Wichita ( April 30, 1971 )

Tom:
When we got there,and straight up to the gig

Tom:
We got to the plane at 6 o´clock in the morning and we´ve been on this tour without our P.A.´s,
so we couldn´t use that so the roadies were also late. So when we got to the gig about 5,
there were none of our crew here. And the P.A. that they got us didn´t do us any good, so we
were you know, bad. We knew there were all these people watching us. It was the first time
we´ve been to L.A. after hearing so much about it.

Pete:
The one good thing about Badfinger is, with this group I think, that we´re not very good
actors. And when we get it down, we get it down and it´s real. And everybody knows about it
and they dig us for it. But when it´s bad, everybody knows that as well. We were not very good
at hyping I think.

Tom:
We had an argument on stage in front of the people. And got us sorted out, instead of keeping
cool, the image thing, you know. We don´t feel like “::” together until now on stage, to get the
band across. I know it sounds really lame, but it happens, you know.

Interviewer:
Well it´s like, you know, I wouldn´t have considered the concert you gave or anything.
I thought it was pretty good, but it did seem like, like there was something there was missing.

Pete:
Lack of sparkle?

Interviewer:
Yeah.

Tom:
We have got it, on a good night.

Interviewer:
Did you read the review in this morning´s paper?

Tom:
Which one?

Interviewer:
I didn´t read it. It was in the Times.

Tom:
I read that; that guy likes to bring things down generally, you know. You could see that from the way
he explained things in the paper. From the opening paragraph.

Interviewer:
Have you been happy with the publicity you have received from the record company?

Tom:
Well, it´s not just the record company. It´s just the lack of promotion, you know. There´s a pop
show in England called “Top of The Pops”. And it´s like, fairly straight, and when we did
Come and Get It it was like we were faced with what were a younger, a bit immature, you know.
And this fellow who made it came to take a photograph of us for the Top 20, as the show goes on.
And they´re all made; nice boys. And that fellow has the most fantastic circulation of
photographs. They´re in England, and it just completely knocked us down as far as the industry
concerns, because they´re supposed to be everywhere.

Interviewer:
Like as far as that goes not again to belay at the point with your similarities with The Beatles or
whatever, it would seem like, if the record company wanted to cash in on the similarities of this or
that, you know they could, like really have hyped you a lot more than they did. You know, when the
single came out, the new single came out, there wasn´t any big . . . I don´t know what that was
because you didn´t tour that much or whatever, because you´re doing that now, but it just
seemed like Badfinger has a single and there wasn´t any big promotional power.

Tom:
I think we like it that way, because we hate it to be built up to something like they were expecting
us to be like The Beatles, you know, because we´re not The Beatles. We want to be accepted for
what we are, as they hear us on the record.

Pete:
We really appreciate what it´s like being with Apple and being concerned with The Beatles has done
to us. But it gets a bit of a drag when you go to a job and you´re advertized as Paul McCartney´s
group or Paul McCartney is on stage with us.

Interviewer:
Did they do that in England?

Pete:
Not in England, but here, everywhere.

Tom:
It goes like, “Where´s John, where´s John? I´ve seen John!”, you know, he ain´t here, you know.

Pete:
It´s the local DJ´s who are like that, because thay say on the radio about three days before that
Paul McCartney is going to appear there. That we were a Paul McCartney discovery and
managed by Paul McCartney. It´s like insane.

Interviewer:
This is an interesting question, but who owns Apple now, who is controlling it, you know?
There´s just a point that supposedly The Beatles has owned it, right? And now the´re doing what
they´re doing you wonder who really owns it.

Tom:
I think they´re making more money than they ever did

Interviewer:
How about giving ideas about the new album

Tom:
We´ve only done the general tracks, we´re not finished

Interviewer:
What´s it´s gonna be like? Is it more or less like the first No Dice was similar to the first one?

Pete:
Gradual movement again, it´s not very clear.

Tom:
It´s just more real, you know

Pete:
This is what we´re doing now like, we´re doing all this continuous touring so we can afford to take
the time off to make an album that´s real, that we can be completely satisfied with.

Tom:
It´s just so hard to get that, you know, to be completely satisfied with.

Pete:
That would mean relaxing, stop work for like two months and relaxing and writing nice and easily
and taking a lot of time in the studios to record it.

Interviewer:
You said that you´ve laid down some of the tracks?

Pete:
We´ve laid down about twelve tracks now

Interviewer:
Is this instrumental and vocal?

Pete:
Yeah, we just have to be sort of mixed and polished up

Tom:
We mixed it, you know, in one night really, and we´d go to America the next day. And we heard the
mixes about three days later

Pete:
We tried to get the tour put off for like two weeks and we were advised that if we pulled out of the
dates we´d be bankrupt.

Tom:
So we came to America without the single, you know, and we were still playing the stage-act that we
were playing last fall, and we really wanted to change it, you know

Interviewer:
How would you like change the act, the stage act?

Pete:
New songs in.

Mike:
In other words, a new smile, you know, like a new battery thing. I´d like to go on tomorrow, you know.
After the girst gig I felt that, anyway

Interviewer:
When did you play San José ( May 1, 1971) was it Saturday?

Tom:
Yeah

Interviewer:
How did that compare?

Tom:
Oh, they were a different crowd, they were more like . .

Interviewer:
Was it a college?

Joey:
There was a fight there. That´s the first fight we´ve ever experienced.

( Everybody talks about the rather chaotic gig - very hard to hear what is actually said!)
Pete:
I enjoyed it.

Interviewer:
So then getting back to the album. Is it like, I guess most of the stuff is gonna be like the simple
type love peans, like the last couple of albums. Are you trying anything different lyrically?

Pete:
Different things are happening lyrically

Tom:
There´s a single we´ll probably use that George Harrison will probably produce it with us, you know.
Wed´ve done it, but we´re gonna redo it. It´s called Name of The Game.

Interviewer:
You did that on stage.

Tom:
Yeah

Interviewer:
Have you ever thought of doing a conceptual type of album?

Tom:
Yeah

Interviewer:
But what will you do?

Tom:
Well, you think of doing conceptual albums and you think of the groups who have done it, you know,
and where they had to get to before they could do that. The Who now are so experienced. Now
The Who have been doing like so much “iron blues” before for about four years or so before they
thought of that. And then they got Summertime Blues down, you know. And I get when you
get that stage you can . .You´re big enough to do it.

Pete:
It´s a lot to do with finance again, you know. You have to be in a position to stop working to take the
time off and do these things. To really get it together.

Interviewer:
Well I mean, not all that much like recording a rock opera or something like that.
But there are other, I mean . .

Tom:
There´s nothing in doing it, unless you think you´re doing something better than other . .

Pete:
That would be the next stage from the album that I was talking about earlier, you know the album that
we´d be satisfied with.

Interviewer:
Something like, like I guess the last few Kinks albums, you know they weren´t big opera type of
scale, but you know they were thematic; or like like I guess The Bonzo Dog Band, you know.

Tom:
Well, I think this last one we´ve done could be sort of themed by, you know, the first American tour
and the things we experienced.

Mike:
I think the answer to that one is . .In most groups that do that there´s only one or two writers, you
know, and then the concept is easier to get to.

Tom:
These songs were coming . . We didn´t know what was happening ourselves at the time, because
there´s so much to belayed on each other, you know. So it´s like a stage . . .

Pete:
I think you could say there´s a lot more reality in this new album. A lot more actual life.

Interviewer:
The one that you´ve just recorded?

Mike:
Like the concept albums are just an idea, really, like they´re just an idea. But as like this, a lot we
don´t know yet, of our own stuff, really, you know. There´s more of a . . yeah, you understand it but yo
u don´t know why, you know.

Tom:
What we´re trying to do is just basically trying appreciate it to the styles, you know. And once you´ve
got that down, if you could, go as far as blend it as a total unity and direction, you know ..

Interviewer:
Were some of these songs written when you were on tour back east?

Tom:
Yeah, the ones on the new album?

Interviewer:
Yeah, have you toured all that much in England?

Tom:
Not since we our new manager

Pete:
Not since last September.

Interviewer:
How come?

Tom:
Ask our managers. You get so involved in business and they tell you, you know. And what they say,
you just can´t compete with that sort of business, they´re telling you, do this and do that and you
can´t pull out because you´re gonna lose all that you ever did, you know, so you do it. What we´re
trying to do now is, this tour, we hope, will pay for our five months off in England where we can
play in England and in Europe as we want to, you know. And get ourselves our stage act
together. Do it so it´s satisfying us.

Interviewer:
Are you better in the States than you are in England?

Tom:
I think were more accepted here.´People are more like . . That´s a good thing about American
people, they´re generally open to anything. And in England they tend to, you know, if you do
a pop record like Come and Get It , you´re a pop record with your album. That´s because of the
radio system, we´ve only got one station that just plays the top 40 songs, you know, and
they don´t play our music . .

Interviewer:
If a group hasn´t got like a Top 40 song, and they come out with an album; would that hurt the
album sales a lot?

Tom:
Yes, because the Americans may not hear it . .

Interviewer:
How do you explain something like Deep Purple in Rock , that had a single off of it?

Tom:
No

Joey:
Deep Purple were really in the papers up to that. They´re the big thing in the musical papers.
They´re really selling. They have a different kind of audience.

Pete:
The thing is with our group is we´re sort of being steady all the way along. And all these other things
around us is going to these different extremes. A lot of it . . , the pop music papers over there,
they´re underground now.

Interviewer:
Like Melody Maker?

Pete:
Melody Maker has always been a bit like, jazzy, and all that, but I mean . . .They´re trying to be heavy,
you know, with the paper., They sort of cashes in on what is selling now

Tom:
Because it´s funny after we came back to England last time, No Matter What was a hit in
America, and barely even got played in England anymore

Interviewer:
But it happens so with some hits that are you know big hits in England, they don´t get played here.

Tom:
Yeah, but there´s just a general feeling in England towards us, you know, The Beatles did that, and
they don´t play us.That´s the feeling you get.