badfinger at 50

Joey Molland looks back on the band’s glories and tragedies

- JOE BOSSO

“There are times when it all feels like a dream,” says guitarist Joey Molland, recalling the glory days a half-century ago when Badfinger ruled the airwaves with a series of exquisitely crafted pop-rock hits like “Come and Get It,” “No Matter What,” “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue.” “Badfinger gave me the opportunity to do everything a musician could want. I got to make records. I heard my music on the radio, and I toured all over. I couldn’t believe the luck we were having. For a time, everything was great.”

The Liverpool-born guitarist joined the Welsh/English group, then called the Iveys (which also featured singer-guitarist Pete Ham, singer-bassist Tom Evans and drummer Mike Gibbins), at a most fortuitous time. It was late 1969, and the band was not only one of the first signings to the Beatles’ Apple Records, but they were about to experience their first blast of fame with the release of Magic Christian Music, the “pseudo-soundtrack” to the film Magic Christian that starred Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. Dropping the Iveys moniker for Badfinger (a reference to “Bad Finger Boogie,” the working title of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends”), the band saw the album’s lead single, “Come and Get It,” a Paul McCartney-penned earcandy gem that could have easily figured on Abbey Road, hit the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring of 1970.