Transcript
A (0:02)
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B (1:00)
Hi, it's Sam Rinehart from the Florida Panthers. Watch as we take on the New York Rangers in the 2026 Discover NHL Winter Classic in Miami. The NHL Winter Classic is coming to the Sunshine State. Ring in the New Year with me in Miami.
C (1:15)
Catch all the action on January 2nd.
B (1:17)
At 8:00pm Eastern on TNT and HBO Max. That's January 2nd at 8:00pm on TNT and HBO Max. For tickets and more info, visit NHL.com Winter Classic now meet Tom Evans of.
C (1:31)
Badfinger, the group in the top 10 with the soundtrack song Come and Get It. Tom, tell us how your group came to be chosen to do the music for the film the Magic.
D (1:38)
Christian yes, we had a record out a year before Come and Get it called maybe Tomorrow.
C (1:44)
But that was before you were known as Badfinger, wasn't it?
D (1:47)
Yeah, we were called the Ivies then, and everybody said it would be a hit, you know, and it was a commercial sounding thing, but it didn't go, you know, it's all in the States, but not very, you know, to make it a major hit there. But during this time, Paul knew about our sort of, you know, he knew that he could aid us by this film because he was asked to write the music for the film and he got to writing the title song. And I thought maybe if we could do the title song, knowing that we were writers, there was a chance he could get us in the film as songwriters.
C (2:15)
Yeah, did it work? Hello and welcome to this sappy special edition. Sort of an ancillary conversation given that in 2025 the podcast had been bookended by two Badfinger Ivies centric conversations. The first one, earlier in the year was with Bob Jackson, who was the last member of Badfinger, joining in 1974 to record a Badfinger album, intended as the third Warner Brothers album Called Head first with Pete Ham, Tommy Evans and Mike Gibbons. After the departure of Joey MULLEN in late 1974, they got together, recorded an album. It was shelved at the time and then a few months later, Pete Ham committed suicide. But Bob was part of that band that did the last UK tour and then recorded that album at Apple Studios as it happened now there was a version of it that came out on Snapper around 2000, but it was really a dub of a rough mix, so it was not optimum quality and not really showcasing the collection of music in its best light. But Bob Jackson was nothing if not persistent. He tracked down the tapes Long Believe missing the actual studio multi tracks went into the studio. He mixed it, remastered it and released it in late 2024, 50 years after its creation. So now it's out there, it's on Spotify, it's on Vinyl Head first, the last Bad Finger album of the original run of the band. So he was responsible for that and we had a. A really good conversation earlier this year. Later in 2025, I had Ron Griffiths on the show. He was the bassist with the Ivies, who was the forerunner of Bad Finger. He was the guy that was replaced by Joey Mullen just as a segued from the Ivies to Badfinger upon the recording of the Paul McCartney composition come and get it for the Magic Christian film in the summer of 69, released at the end of 1969. The Ivies were sort of a different animal from Badfinger. They were much more pop where Badfinger was a lot more rocking once Joey joined. So the Ivys were this band that were incredibly prolific songwriters living in Golders Green, North London, brought to Apple by Mel Evans, who was friends with Bill Collins, who was sort of their de facto manager at the time. Incredibly prolific songwriters, if you don't know the story of the Ivy's coming to Apple. They were originally signed to a publishing contract because they had with Pete Ham, Tommy Evans and Ron Griffiths, and to a lesser extent Mike Gibbons, although he became more prolific as the years went on. But all of them wrote and in their residence at 7 Park Avenue. They demoed material and kept sending these tapes to Apple for Apple to judge what would be suitable for their first single. So that was how they got rolling and it became a song of Tom's called maybe Tomorrow, issued in late 1968. They appeared on the Lulu show with Jimi Hendrix, as you might recall from the conversation. But the album that then came out was not released in Britain or in the US due to Alan Klein deciding it really wasn't worth it. And eventually, some Ivy's material, plus the three new songs recorded for the Magic Christian film, Come and Get It, Rock of All Ages and Carry On Until Tomorrow, became part of the Badfinger debut, Magic Christian Music, released in early 1970, by which time Ron was no longer in the band and Joey was. In any event, I had those two conversations this past year with guys from Badfinger and Ivy's. So Mark Straussman, who I'm talking with today, is part of the team that's been working on this stream of reissues of material that's just really taken off in recent years. Now, you may be familiar with the collections. There's been a series of Pete Ham demos that have been coming out since 1997. Park Avenue was the first one, Gold Is Green, Gwent Gardens was another, all named after places associated with Pete Ham. And he was, as mentioned, a prolific songwriter who demoed relentlessly. And so a series of demos of his material that was unreleased has been coming out. We just recently saw the release in late 2025 of another one called Acoustic. Now, spearheading the original release of these posthumous collections had been Dan Matovina. He was the guy who wrote the Badfinger biography Without you, which came out in the 90s, I believe. He passed away a couple years ago now, and since his death, it's become much more of a team effort to get this material released. To that end, there's been a series of anthology releases that have come out under the Ivy's ban, Volumes one through five. The first two were live sets. The first one from 1966, the second one from 1968, and then following that has been a series of demos, Golden Delicious demos, 1966-1969, How Much is the Sky, Volume 4, and the newest one, which was just released, Miniskirts and Rainbows. Now, we didn't talk about that one because it was unreleased at the time of my conversation with Mark, but it's just come out alongside the Pete Ham acoustic. So there's all this material on the first live one anthology, volume one, the 1966 one. It's Pete Mike, Ron Griffiths on bass, and a guy named Di Jenkins, who never recorded for Apple. He had left the band to be replaced by Tom Evans in 1967. So that's another name you'll hear in this conversation. Die. He's still around. And Ron Griffiths, you know him from my conversation with him. Other names. Rich Uloa, who's part of the reissue team, and then Mark. Tom Brennan is Another guy you should know, you'll hear his name come up. He's been a Badfinger historian for decades now. And if you at all are interested in Badfinger history and Ivy's history, go to badfinger library.com. that is the site that is virtually bottomless, with information about every gig, every recording session, every release, every. Everything you can think of. Badfinger, it's there. It's an unbelievable collation of history. Lots and lots of visuals as well. So do check that out. But one of the other things we talk about in my conversation with Mark now is the YouTube channels. There is a Badfinger channel, but also an Ivy's channel, one for each individual member. Bob Jackson's got a channel, Pete Ham channel, Tom Evans channel, Mike Gibbons channel, and a Joey Mullen channel. So I. All this stuff, promo films, trinitakes, release stuff, live stuff. It's an incredible amount of material now coming out more or less officially. And one of the things we talk about early on in this conversation is how up until recent years there'd been sort of this infighting going on between the various estates and between Badfinger fans that was so much so that going back to the early 2000 thousands, when I did my first Beatles book, you'll hear us talk about this. But Joey Mullen, the late great, was of the opinion that there was too much negative coverage of him out there in the world, that he didn't want to add a forward to my first Beatles book, thinking it would not serve any good purpose with so many people not really being fans of his at that time. But you will hear, as Mark describes, that the families, the heirs of the Badfinger guys, have now all sort of come together. They're behind the reissue of all this great material and it's finally come full circle to where it needs to be. So you've got these people now, in the wake of Dan's passing, that have sort of picked up the mantle to get all this material out there, all this demo material, live material, studio recordings and the videos, all this great stuff. So it really is a golden time to be a Badfinger or Ivy's fan. And so this is kind of a general overview of the work that's been going on. I wanted to talk to Mark. We connected Fest this year and just really sort of describe the ongoing efforts to get all this stuff out there. We'll probably have more conversations down the road. Getting into the minutia. Another name you should know, Jacob Marcus, he's the guy running the Badfinger video cast podcast called Vinyl Verdict. It's all up on YouTube. I had a conversation with him earlier this year and he's just been doing this great work of bringing the history forward. Interviewing absolutely everybody to do with Badfinger that's still around. Everybody from the roadies to Joey's longtime collaborator in the Raz band, Michael Resigno. I hope I'm saying his name right, known as Raz. So he's keeping the history alive that way with a series of great conversations with Bad Finger witnesses that are out there yet. So, as I said, a great time to be a Badfinger fan. So here's my conversation with Mark, an overview of the current state of things in Bad Finger. Once again, Bad Finger, My first Beetle book, I think I did in 2007. And at the time I called up Kathy and I said, hey, do you think Joey would like to do the forward? It'd be really cool to get him involved in this. And she was like, all excited. She said, oh, this is great. It's wonderful. I get an email a few days later from Joey is like, you know, I've been online and I'm of the opinion that a lot of people think I'm an asshole, so I don't think it would help your book. And I remember Kathy was like really kind of angry with him. It's like, are you kidding? You know, this is such a great opportunity and probably a good guy and it just didn't happen, you know, whatever. We connected not that long after. And it was not anything personal to me. He thought he was being helpful, but I just couldn't believe, because I'd known him since the 80s. And I was thinking, I understand there are people out there that are in camps and people like to pick teams and all that stuff, but this is so stupid. This is who we've got left and he's out there keeping this alive. How long you want to carry this around? This is ridiculous.