Joey:
Itīs what I do - - Itīs what I do best. I could never say that I didnīt want to play music.

If Apple had been just been Apple records and not The Beatlesī record label, then I donīt think
you would have heard of any fucking Apple Records. The staff that they had was mostly old
mates - old friends. There was a couple of professional in there like an accountant, who knew what
he was doing, but he couldnīt stop the money going out. I do think all that had an effect on us.

Question:
Did the ties to The Beatles help or hinder?

Tom:
Well, obviously it was a help, but the thing is people would come up and ask, “Is George here?” or,
”Is Paul here”?, when weīd go out to play. We somestimes got the feeling people had turned
up just to see them.

Question:
Did the band feel ignored?

Tom:
We wasnīt really so much ignored, as it was just people getting all muddled up. Going down to the
offive you could see it, various people being put in charge or sacked every day and leaving. But
there was nothing we could do about it. It was up to them to sort it out

Joey:
It was a big hassle over the Ass album. It was delayed because of internal problems. That was really
a bummer and what actually happened eventually was we signed with Warnerīs, made our first
album and Apple released Ass at the same time as Warners released the other album. So that
fucked us really. I guess we lost sales on both of the albums

By the time we that first Warner album, we were all so pissed with the management and you can
see it in the songs. They are all totally disconnected. It really is just a collection of songs.

On the next one, Wish You Were Here, weīd all solidified our ideas to where we really saw where
the fucking managers were at and we just put it all down on the record. That was a good record. It
came out, and three weeks later was selling like 25.000 copies a week - which was really good at that
time - and it came on the charts right away at 60 and was taking off. It was going to be a hit
album, there wasnīt any doubt about it

But then the head of Warner Publishing woke up one morning with an itch about what had happened
to the advance money that heīd given to Badfinger. It was supposed to be in an escrow account
to be released on a per album basis. He made a phone call to check on the account and he couldnīt
find it. And he kept getting the run around from out managerīs lawyers in New York City.
So he just pulled the album right then - stopped it. And he put a lawsuit out against Badfinger the
group. They couldnīt get to Polley because he wasnīt signed to them. We were signed to them.

We got a very nice letter from Ed Silver at Warner music saying that during their investigation they
found out certain things that pointed out to them that the group had been fucked over. They were
so convinced of that, that they agreed to pay us our royalties for the songs on the Warner albums,
which they didnīt need to īcause theyīd already advanced us a lot of money - we didnīt get the
fucking money, though. Our manager got it.

We were into music and playing, and he was into money and playing around. I left the group right
after that in November 74 because there was no way. Weīd talked and talked and talked
about it. I wanted to get away from the managers and there was no way we could reach an agreement,
especially with Pete. You know Pete actually left the band at one time. We were to do a tour
of England and he came back about a week later. In the interim we got a keyboard-player named
Bob Jackson. We did that tour with Man and at the end of it, I left. The band was sounding good,
probably better than ever before. But the business situation was so intense it was unreal.

We couldnīt record. We didnīt have any money. I mean, we didnīt get paid for like 6 months,
stuff like that. We were earning lots of bread at the time. But we were totally mismanaged. We didnīt
make a shit. Polley made a lot of money, but none of us made any money at all. We
trusted this manager, see, and gave him control of the company and all weīd get was a monthly
advance. But what came down was the advance was all we ever got.

I didnīt wanna play in a fucking group. I was so pissed off. I just wanted to come to America and
not do anything. I was just fed up because Iīd been in this business at that time at least 10 years
and Iīd been coming up against this same thing all the time. Just outright fuckinī corruption.

About Pete Hamīs suicide:

Joey:

It surprised me in one way in that the guy was really a strong person and didnīt really strike me as
the kind of person who would do that. I guess he went through a lot of changes those last six months

Tom:

There was a lot of disagreements going on and Pete was always the stubborn one about the manager
we had. He sai, “I believe him.” He was the kind of guy who would give his trust and then he
wouldnīt want to hurt his own pride to think that trust wasnīt valid.
Peter honed me and said, “ Look, letīs go for a drink. I want to talk about it.” He had a couple of
drinks and he said, “Iīve decided Iīm gonna get away from him.” I said, “Great, now we can move
again. We can go somewhere, function again.” So we went back to my house and had a bottle of wine
. It was like a celebration that weīd decided to do it. Or that he had anyway.
So I dropped him off on my way home around 12.30 or something and I was woken at 5 by a
phone call and it was his girlfriend saying heīs dead. And that was a total surprise to me

Question:

Tom: It was disillusionment with his own belief, I think. He realized that heīd been taken for a fool
all along. After that, I said,”Thatīs it.” I didnīt want to know more about the music business
anymore.

Tom: With encouragement from The Beatlesī road manager Mal Evans who had seen the band and been
impressed, Badfinger submitted tapes to McCartney. He said,”Yeah, itīs good, but there arenīt
any singles on it.” and then Derek Taylor got both Lennon and Harrison to listen to it, and so they
signed us

Joey:
Liverpool was really a fertile breeding ground for groups. There were maybe 300 or 400 bands there
with a population of slightly over half a million people.

Tom:
I used to watch The Beatles at The Cavern. They were the first rockīn roll band I ever saw and
they knocked me out. I mean, I was 15 and Iīd never seen anything like that. So I was down there
at every lunch time after that. It was really amazing to see.

It was a bit prissy, so every morning we used to write out lists of names. And weīd get it dpwn
to ten and then three and maybe one guy would like it and another wouldnīt, or weīd like it and the
record company wouldnīt, so we just said, “Fuck it, what have you got to offer then?”.

Lennon wanted to call us Prix and McCartney wanted to call us Home, so there youīve got the
difference between the two. But Badfinger was as good as any other name and weīd been at it a
year, so we settled for that.

Joey:
I decided to go me own way. I wanted to make some tapes and see if I could get a record deal, and
thatīs when I ran out of money and had to get a job. I really enjoyed it, just getting out and working
with people and talking to strangers every dayl. It was something I hadnīt done for years.
Music had been my whole life and it was good to get out of that..

I met two fellows from Chicago and was playing with them and thought, “Tommy would really
fit in good here.” So I called up Tommy and asked him if heīd want to come over. We were still compatible
in what we were doing musically, and we liked his so he came over (Jan. 78) and we made some
tapes and got a record deal with Elektra-Asylum..

Nobody really knew what had happened to the band and people we talked to said we should call it
Badfinger. Itīs the same kind of music and two of us were part of the original band. We thought
about it a bit and said okay.

Tom:
I had to be talked into it, but it was ll the same basic idea as before.

Joey:
It opened some doors for us. But we feel a bit weird at times about it, because we donīt want people
to think that weīre just cashing in on an old name.

We had a lot of problems with the drummer īcause he was young and hadnīt recorded before. It was
making everyone uptight and it got to the point where weīd gone three weeks and hadnīt gotten
a track, which is ridiculous. So we sacked him..

He ( Mike ) hadnīt been playing a lot and was really out of shape and it just didnīt work out. We
would have really like to. It would have been great, you know. But he just wasnīt into getting
himself really together to play again..

The two guitar line-up pulled us more towards what we used to be like - backwards. We wanted it
to be harder, more rocky sounding. We always wanted the original Badfinger to move more towards
the rockīn roll thing. We could never get that in the studio and onto a record because the producers
we worked with would have a conception of what Badfinger was. That was really very frustrating
at the time.

Weīd go into the studio with these people and what we found was that most of them had their own
ideas and they didnīt want to hears ours.

We knew what we wanted, but we didnīt know how to get it. I think most that was working with
producers all the time who wonīt allow you to get involved in stuff..

I was too freaked out generally at that time. George is a really great producer - he got a really nice
sound on the record. It was just really nice working with the guy.

Question:
But that sound was virtually identical to his own sound, wasnīt it?.

Joey:
Oh yeah. It was Georgeīs sound.

That ( Bangla Desh ) was a great thing to do, playing with all those guys - all the great players - was
wonderful..

Tom:
Weīre thinking of re-recording some of the stuff from our old albums that people never heard. We
could do them better now, a lot better. Maybe we can give them a bit of that punch that they didnīt
get on the records.

Itīs a good, honest rockīn roll band. Thatīs what I like about it. Itīs fun.

Joey:
Weīve been careful. We didnīt sign anything exept with a record company and we made sure we set
it up the way we like it. And itīs running pretty smooth. The important thing is that this time
we want to stay in control.