Beatles Impact on Badfinger

05/31/2012
. (Gibson) Joey Molland, who along with Ham powered the band's distinctive dual-guitar sound, continues to keep the Badfinger flame alive. Gibson.com spoke with Molland about Badfinger's legacy, the band's twin-guitar approach and what it was like to work so closely with The Beatles.

Badfinger self-produced the first version of Straight Up, but then Apple Records insisted the album be re-made. What was the biggest change that occurred, when George Harrison came in as producer? The idea was to smooth things out, to make it more of an Abbey Road-style album. Apple thought our recordings were a bit crude, so we went in with George and did something more sophisticated. George took our original version of Straight Up, went through the songs and the lyrics, and arranged them very much as he did with his own music. And then he had us play those arrangements. That was the biggest difference. It turned out great, although to this day I think some of those original versions are closer to what the band was about.

Was Harrison pleasant to work with? Oh, yes. George didn't behave like a rock star, or like a "Beatle." It was very comfortable working with him. He also had no qualms about strapping on his guitar and playing a bit of guitar with us. I think he enjoyed doing that, as much as he enjoyed everything else. He worked on lyrics with us, and he got excited about the songs as they went down. He started sensing that this could be a hit record. He completely changed "Suitcase," for instance, and you can hear that on the record. He even changed the lyrics. I didn't play guitar on the "George" version of "Suitcase," whereas on the original version I played all the guitar. more on this story

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