An Interview with Badfinger's Joey Molland
by Kyf Brewer

Joey Molland is alive and well-versed and living in Minneapolis. He has a great new pop album out that he's put together with some chums, and it sounds amazingly like his early stuff with a band called Badfinger.

In the early seventies, Badfinger made music-world headlines by being the biggest hit-making group signed to the Beatles new label, Apple. Both band and label delivered a string of pop hits to this side of the pond, including "Come & Get It," "Without You," "No Matter What," "Baby Blue" and "Day After Day." Mayhem ensued for Apple, and most of their artists fell by the wayside. Though tragedy-stricken early on with the suicide of songwriter Pete Ham, Badfinger continued on to make albums for Warner Bros. and Elektra Records through the seventies, enjoying some success with the song "Love Is Gonna Come at Last" in 1978. Bassist/songwriter Tom Evans followed Pete's sad demise in the early eighties, after which drummer Mike Gibbins and Molland collaborated before parting ways in the nineties. Since then, it would appear that Joey has single-handedly carried the torch to keep the name and legend alive.

This Way Up is brimming with authentic seventies rock/pop melody and energy, and that's not a bad thing. Considering how prevalent that era's sounds are in today's music, these songs resemble the original bits behind more recent samples.

"Angels Like Us," "A Way To Be," and "This Must Be Love" are personal favorites, but this is a collection that finds you humming melody lines from other selections later on that you didn't even realize affected you on the first listen. The subject matter is simple and applies to most everyone. There's rock ("Three Minute Warning"), roll ("Mirrors, Happy") and the occasional beautiful oddity ("Another Honeymoon") to assure you that Molland's never stopped exploring.

The one criticism here is that I would like to have heard the vocals a bit more in the mix, or perhaps brighter, seeing as how all the instrument tones were so enjoyable, and Joe's voice seems to have become nicely seasoned from the years. So tweak your EQs if you agree, sit back and enjoy.

When I was approached to do an interview with Joe I was honored. We talked a lot about this record, but I couldn't resist bringing my shovel as well, and within minutes was digging into the legend. I found him very open, humble and clear-minded about his journey, discussing everything from amps to haircuts. Here's some of the earth we uncovered.

KB: So who are you these days... Joe or Joey?

JM: It doesn't matter to me really. I just put Joe on there cuz I felt like it that day.. yeah, I'm Joe, formerly Joey...!

KB: I want to talk about your new album, This Way Up. My take on this new material is that it's really very authentic compared with what I grew up listening to of yours - if you don't mind me saying so, I think your song style has remained very much the same. The lyrics are a bit more mature, but I've always thought you were a great songwriter, so...

JM: Well thank you very much.

KB: So what would you like to tell me about the album?

JM: Well, I had a lot of fun doing it..

KB: You did it out there in Minneapolis?

JM: Yeh! With four of five of my friends who live here, including the Badfinger bass player. The guitar player, Randy Anderson, has played with Badfinger, back in the early and mid eighties and the guys were just fans of that kind of music. The bass player Tom Lecher - I think he did a great job for me. You know, a lot of those back tracks were recorded live...

KB: Really?

JM: Yeh. What we'd do is, Tom has a studio in town here he's a partner in, a place called Echo Boys. He and Randy came around and saw me and said, 'look, if you got some songs you'd like to record why don't you bring them down to the studio and we'll record it for free, and we'll play on it for you if you want.' So I said okay and I took the song, "Isn't It A Dream" down there and we did it...and it sounded nice to me. So I went down the next week and we did another song. Well a little while went by and the guys kept saying look everybody's up for doing more songs, - do you wanna do some more? So I said.. well, yeah, okay! Anyway, I'd end up going down there on Tuesday nights because nothing's happening on Tuesdays but the NBA, you know, and I'd bring a new song. And it was kind of exciting that during the course of the evening we'd learn the song, lay the backing track and a rough vocal, maybe a bit of lead guitar on it. So the album is what came out of it. And the guys, thank God, were all intuitive enough and they'd heard enough of that kind of music where the parts they were coming up with just worked perfect! Randy playing the guitar worked right on the money for me, and the keyboard player, Harry Pulver, was doing much the same on the keyboard. So it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. We're gonna do it again probably this year a little bit later on.

KB: That's great. So I need to ask, how much guitar on here is actually you?

JM: Oh, don't get me wrong, I played guitar on every song..

KB: ..cuz I always liked your tones in the old days and I wondered if you're using much of the same equipment today..

JM: I'm using the same style of equipment and guitar - still using Les Pauls and I've still got my Firebird from the old days, so I use that a little bit, but it's got a tuning problem now that I can't get rid of - the neck got broke a while ago so it's never been right since then. I still use basically the same stuff - Marshall amps, Fender amps, Gibson guitars, Martin acoustics, y'know...

KB: Yeah, real nice thick sounds. What was the amp and setup that you used for, say, "Suitcase"?

JM: "Suitcase" was probably a Champ.. the original version I used a HiWatt..

KB: the Geoff Emerick version..

JM: Yeh. With Geoff I used a HiWatt, but by the time we tracked the George Harrison version we were all using Champs.

KB: with a Les Paul..

JM: right.

KB: Tell me about "Angels Like Us," because I hear Nashville in there.. any of those artists could cover that tune...such a great song.

JM: I'm glad you like it. I've had "Angels" for a while, even did a demo of it once with Mike Gibbins. I've had it since about '87. We recorded a version back then but then we just put it away...yeah, I guess it is kinda country.

KB: Been to Nashville lately?

JM: Yeah, Billy Davis from the Badfinger band lives in Nashville, so I'm there every so often.

KB: "Tell Me" was the other one that sounds really crossover country to me.

JM: Yeh, I think "Tell Me" is really country. But I've always recorded songs the way they are rather than say, you know, we can't do this one because it doesn't sound like the rest. When I first played that song to meself I kinda cried a little bit at the end of it cuz it made me real sad.

KB: I can see that. So what about "Mirrors" and "Happy" - how old are those songs?

JM: "Mirrors" was one of the first we recorded, so '95, and 'Happy" was about '98.

KB: ..and "A Way To Be"?

JM: "A Way to Be" is brand new - I just wrote it last year. I was thinking about me pal Randy playin' on it, and you know like, "once again we start the search.." and the "Way To Be" chorus just came out and then that created the direction of the song. And I liked the fact that the words apply to anybody who'll have a listen..

KB: After all these years of writing, what inspires you to write these days?

JM: Ah, it just sort of comes.. it's kinda weird, really, I never think about it.. ha!

KB: Just wondering, in the early days when you first started writing, did you have any idea or were you just trying to write pop songs? Cuz, you know, that's what I was doing!

JM: Yeh, y'know you're just trying to write songs, yeh. You're doing what you do. How it came about for me was I was in a band, Gary Walker and the Rain in 1968, and we needed songs so I started writing songs! Gary asked if I could write something so I gave it a go, he liked it, and I've been writing ever since. (note - Joe penned two hits for Gary Walker: "The View" and "Francis" in 1967/8).

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