The VH-1 documentary - Badfinger: Behind The Music
by Dan Matovina

Since 1991, I had hoped to assist someone in making a high quality documentary covering Badfinger's story and music. The great power of being able to see and hear the group can't be denied. And television is the ideal medium for exposure and promotion, as it gets to so many people.

In England, there is a documentary filmmaker named Bill Cran who has about as renowned a reputation as you could find. He has produced and directed shows on Fidel Castro, the oil industry, Pablo Escobar, and many other subjects, and has won countless major awards. Because of a mutual friend I was able to meet with him in 1994, and, lo-and-behold, he was extremely enthusiastic to do a documentary on Badfinger!

Eventually Cran put out proposals, some footage was shot, a bit of research was done, Apple was contacted, support letters were garnered from the two surviving main Badfinger members and the deceased members' estates, but the project never did get off the ground. This was very disappointing to Mr. Cran and myself.

Eventually, there existed the 1997 Badfinger documentary, now on DVD, directed by Gary Katz, which has six full-length group promotion clip/performances and interview segments from Joey Molland, Kathie Molland, Mike Gibbins, and an Abbey Road Studios engineer, Richard Lush. A previous 1987 Welsh-TV documentary had been done, and small TV segments on facets of the group have run in the U.S. and U.K. over the years, but there hadn't been an overall-scope documentary - with truly high-powered financial backing - until VH-1 set into production to do a Behind The Music program on Badfinger in 1998.

I had seen Behind The Music's first year of shows in 1997 and I knew the band's story was a natural for the format. I contacted Gay Rosenthal, who is one of the program's chief decision-makers at the time, early in 1998. She was aware enough of the band - and intrigued by what I told her by phone - to agree to a meeting in Santa Monica, CA. From the get-go of the meeting she seemed very enthusiastic on the idea, and, shortly after, sold other executive producers involved on putting together the program. Actually, there were also other people at the time, such as Michael McNamara, who were excited. McNamara was hired to direct the show. It began to be put together later that year for the fall 1998 season.

From the day it started, this show was rife with problems and setbacks, and by time it aired in November of 2000, the cycle of different events caused a great distress to many people. A lot of individuals have a bad taste in their mouth regarding this show, not necessarily just the outcome, but the process it took to get it done.

Having said that, when the show aired, it did have a very positive effect on Badfinger's public recognition and CD sales for a few weeks after. It seemed to move most viewers and please Badfinger fans, who were blown away to see a show giving this group some kind of recognition on a national level.

I will now discuss the program and its makings. The actual production of the VH-1 program began in late 1998. Prior to that, the director, Michael McNamara, read my book and did some research on his own. Then the interview process began. VH-1 thought, despite the initial Apple lack of response, things would work out (Apple's main priority is "Beatles," so Badfinger business is almost always at the lower-end of their totem pole and usually takes a lot of time to resolve). I was hired as a Creative Consultant and I had discussions with McNamara. He asked me to give him lists of questions for each verified interviewee. He chose what he liked and added his own. A lot of interviews were done in the U.S. and U.K. Unfortunately, Bill Collins, Anne Herriot, and Marianne Evans were not interviewed when Michael was in the U.K. They were reluctant to do so for various reasons. A delay then came to the program because of Apple Corps. being consistently non-responsive to requests to negotiate for use of music, films, etc., which finally started to worry VH-1.

Once Apple relayed they were likely on board again, in early 1999, I already had a scheduled trip to England for other business. So I called Anne, Marianne, and Bill and convinced each to do interviews while I was there, which McNamara asked me to conduct. All three were done in one day. During this time, Apple still hadn't given a truly definitive response to negotiations. In fact, at one point, while I was in England, an assistant to Neil Aspinall told a VH-1 staffer in California that Neil said "no" to use of films, even though a document had already been sent to VH-1 from Apple verifying an agreed-to price for licensing. And "photo-use" had been verbally approved. This was confusing to everyone. I had already been at Apple that week to select photos for potential use in the show, but had not seen Neil that particular day. After getting the message, I contacted Neil with more info about the show and its intentions. Neil agreed he would okay the films and photos, once the price and the rights legalities had been fully negotiated. Of course, everyone from VH-1 now thought this program would be done in a somewhat timely manner.

The show was next, unexpectedly, put on hold when one of the executive producers at VH-1 decided the show needed a "Beatle" presence to justify its completion. I think there was always some paranoia that Badfinger had so little "name-recognition" to the general public, that the show might not do well in the ratings. George Harrison had turned down different requests to interview and would not agree to license the Bangla Desh movie clips. No explanation was given.

It actually took about a year before Paul McCartney became agreeable and potentially available to answer some questions, which he did in New York City on the back end of a promotional interview for his CD Run Devil Run. The morning of the interview, I asked the newly-appointed interviewer (it was originally going to be Michael McNamara) to make sure to ask some questions about Badfinger (he had a strict 20 minute time limit with Paul). The interviewer said his priority was instructed-to-be to promote Paul's new release, and it might be tough to get Badfinger questions in. I pressed on the interviewer that the Badfinger show may not happen if he didn't ask some related questions. Luckily, the interviewer likes Badfinger, and respected my book, which he'd read. He said he'd try. He did get in two questions to Paul regarding Badfinger, and I'm very thankful to him for doing so. It seemed likely Paul may have talked a lot more on Badfinger, if given the opportunity, as he was quite upbeat in answering. The answers satisfied the executive producers to the point the show was re-scheduled.

The Badfinger: Behind The Music show finally began production again in early 2000. More film and photo research were done. More interviews were done. Formation of a show script started, transcribing began of the interviews, and compiling of potential-use interview sound bites was executed. The next snag became the legal approvals from Apple and Warner Brothers. With a projected new Very Best Of Badfinger CD from Capitol/Apple/Warners planned, they each needed their approvals to time their release with VH-1. When these weren't happening in a timely manner, the VH-1 show was halted indefinitely again.

After I waited for many months for these things to be resolved, I received info that Apple's lawyer and Capitol were at a standstill. When I was told, at one point, by Capitol executives, that they very possibly would not put out the new Very Best Of Badfinger unless this show went off, I faxed Neil Aspinall, laying out all the situations and benefits again, and the next day EMI's manager of their reissues department called me and told me Neil had told his lawyer in the U.S. to "get it done," meaning the VH-1/Capitol negotiations. It still took many months more, and it was an extremely frustrating situation. When VH-1 developed the schedule of Behind The Music shows for the fall season of 2000, they did put the Badfinger show on the schedule, but still at risk, because it wasn't fully cleared at that time.

A new "director/producer" had been hired in the meantime (as Michael McNamara had moved on to other work by now) and this new producer also doubled as the script writer, as the previous one had been fired. The new "director/producer" had initially relied on a sketchy first draft script, which had numerous errors and misconceptions, done by a previous writer, to guide him. He had not realized some of the faults inherent at that point. I was brought back into the show about three weeks before it had to air. For various reasons, the show was now behind in development. I worked at VH-1's offices, hand-in-hand, day-to-day, with everyone involved, in finishing the show off, and it was harried, to say the least. My role was not as a decision-maker regarding the editorial decisions or editing choices. I was shown scripts, as they developed and updated, and shown partially edited digital segments, as they were put together, for fact-checking and quick discussion. I was used also for pointing out what other materials or interview bites being overlooked might be useful to their points of focus. I was given major input on the music used, much because I knew the songs and lyrics. I did much of the research in terms of finding what photos were available, films available, and made many of the financial negotiations for these. I arranged for the free use and contribution of the Ham home movies, Beresford-Cooke films, and Japanese documentary footage. It was, overall, a great experience in gaining knowledge of how these programs come together.

At one point, toward the end, an extension for the debut air date was not allowed, mostly because the budget had gone way overboard and the powers-that-be were under serious numbers crunches at that time. It is only a 44 minute show, with a very complicated storyline, and decisions had to be made hard and fast as to "what to include," "what to cut," "budget considerations," etc. It was a very difficult challenge for all of the "producers" (five were involved) and editors (there were five of them, two were fired at different stages), and this many people caused confusion and communication issues at times. Some great clips, that could have been included, fell by the wayside. For example, usually one editor is used for a program. One editor would know what has been already used, would have studied all the materials well, etc. With five editors, all working in a short time frame, it created chaos and some wasted efforts, as segments were put together and dropped, materials were repeated, or crossed over into other areas. Some photos and clips in the show ended up out of context for the era discussed and those problems could've been cleaned up with more time. Some sound glitches also could have been cleaned up.

Personally, I ended up with mixed feelings on the results. But, of course, I had very high expectations. I did end up feeling "okay" with the show, after I was alarmed for weeks that it would end up being very unsatisfactory. One of my chief disappointments was the dropping of Pete's daughter, Petera Ham, who was being shown during the final segment of the show. The ASCAP story segment was edited shorter, at the very last minute, for time considerations. This distressed Anne Herriot greatly. She had agreed to her interview with the expectation Petera would at least be seen and mentioned in the program, as Petera was filmed with her in England, and this ASCAP portion of the story is where Petera was shown and discussed in the show. Marianne Evans was also upset that her comments on the children not ending up enjoying the limelight onstage alone for their fathers, were edited out at the last minute. From her perspective, that is her main issue of the ASCAP ceremony controversy. So, I did feel bad for Anne and Marianne, who I worked hard to convince to both to participate in the show.

Also, another nitpick, VH-1 had knowledge of some great footage of the band live, etc, for potential use, and they balked at it. Partly for budget reasons. Personally, I felt the program's direction didn't "showcase" the band enough for their musical abilities, and didn't address personal character quite enough. There were some great interview bites available which weren't used. The show did state some of the band's virtues, but, in my opinion, didn't provide enough commentary, visual, or sonic proof that Badfinger were a great band, so that the public could more fully appreciate why the loss of the music was also such a tragedy, beyond just the obvious sorrowful deaths of two men much-loved by friends and family.

My last nitpick, there were some factual errors in the program, and some misleading sections in the show, such as this one - that the band and Stan Poses knew about Polley's Mafia connections in 1972. That has never been stated by a group member or Stan Poses.

I will say that the producers always listened to everything I brought up, and addressed it, and explained their final decisions to me. So even if I disagreed on any choices they made, for a fact-based reason, it was a fair process, in my opinion.

Any person getting involved in a documentary, would have had their different slants and opinions on what gets used, focused-on, etc. That's human nature.

For your info, producer Chris Thomas was not used, as his interview, unfortunately, had an audio problem. Al Steckler of Apple was in the show's intro, but not credited. About four or five other people who were interviewed, were not included in the show. It would've been hard to fit everyone in. Al Wodtke had a great story on Tom singing "Maybe Tomorrow" in 1983, that almost got in, but it was dropped for time's sake. Believe me, it is a challenge for the filmmaker's to make these decisions, and they would have liked to include a lot more, if they could. Most of the VH-1 people involved were very much into the program and did appreciate the band a lot.

I would expect that I would have the highest expectations of anyone for this program, as I was fortunate enough to see and hear all the raw materials VH-1 had to work with, which colors my opinion.

I do fully commend the efforts by the people at VH-1 and thank them for putting the show out. The staff were very respectful and enjoyable to work with. I especially want to commend a real gentleman, David Story, a talented producer/writer who did some excellent work on the show, and Paul Barrosse (for his role as the show's Supervising Producer). It is very difficult to deliver these Behind The Music shows on a weekly basis and Barrosse has to pull all of the logistics together, balance the egos involved, and get the program ready for airing, often with minutes to spare before the show must fly off to New York. The highly-regarded reputation of this Behind The Music series backs up the great work he and the other Supervising Producer, Paul Gallagher, do.

Bottom-line, the final Badfinger program does promote the band favorably, and it had a huge positive impact on sales for all the Badfinger-related CD's the week it was shown. Basically, there was a six to nine-fold increase on most from the previous three week's numbers.

Now, five months removed from the debut week, the Badfinger show has not been picked up for U.K. broadcast, nor has it been re-run in the U.S. I was planning to do some book promotion now, so I called up the head of the programming department at VH-1 (it is not Laura Zalaznick, as reported) and we had a discussion about the show. He brought up that he liked the band and the show very much, but it had one of their lowest ratings ever. We talked about the potential reasons why. I mentioned the possible issue of the quality of the promo run, what the show was up against on the premier day, that maybe it needed time for word-of-mouth, as it is an obscure band but great story, that my research showed the impact of the show on CD sales (percentage-wise) was higher than most of other acts shown. He brought up that baby-boomer, 70's era shows haven't done as well as 80's and 90's bands in general. He said it was a great topic for a PBS-type documentary and he really wished it had done better. He had to acknowledge to me that it was hard to justify, business-wise, running the show again in a prime time slot, but he probably would be game for a late night airing, and see how that did with the possibility of running it more in the future. He, soon after, had it arranged for a April 26, 2001 showing at 1 a.m. (east and west coast time). It will be part of a "classic rock" block of shows. If the rating is good for that time period, it may run again in the future. So, if you have any way of influencing a Nielsen-ratings box, do so.

Most of you reading this believe strongly in the power of Badfinger's music, and my hope is VH-1 running the show will build new fans, not to mention open the door for other projects, such as reissue CD's and Joey, Mike, Bob Jackson's solo careers. Obviously, some new fans came in, off of the five showings.

Hopefully, more documentaries and films will get done on the group, as their story is an impacting one. It is a struggle to promote Badfinger effectively, but I feel it is worth it. Thanks again to everyone who helps and continues to support this cause.