In April 1970, Mr. McCartney announced that he was leaving the Beatles, initiating a famously nasty split. Still, Badfinger remained in their orbit. The band played on Mr. Harrison’s triple album “All Things Must Pass” (1970), for example, and Mr. Molland and Mr. Evans backed John Lennon on some tracks of his watershed 1971 album, “Imagine.”
Badfinger eventually signed with Warner Bros., although their affairs had turned nearly as nasty as the Beatles’. The band became enmeshed in fierce battles over money with their manager, Stan Polley, who was embroiled in a messy legal tangle with Warners. At one point, the label halted distribution of the band’s 1974 album, “Wish You Were Here,” despite a strong critical response.
With tensions rising within the band and anger mounting over Mr. Polley’s stewardship, Badfinger began to fray. Mr. Ham killed himself in 1975, leaving a note that read: “Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me.”
Mr. Molland spearheaded various incarnations of Badfinger over the years, including collaborations with Mr. Evans on the albums “Airwaves” (1979) and “Say No More” (1981). Still, disputes about royalties festered, and in 1983 Mr. Evans, too, died by suicide. Mr. Gibbins died of a brain aneurysm in 2005.
Mr. Molland continued to tour with a band called Joey Molland’s Badfinger into his later years. Badfinger itself was lifted back into the public consciousness in 2013, when it’s 1972 hit “Baby Blue” was heard closing the final episode of the popular television series “Breaking Bad.”
In addition to his partner, Mr. Molland is survived by two sons, Joseph and Shaun, from his marriage to Katherine Wiggins, who died in 2009, and a brother, Douglas.
“People say things like ‘the saddest story in rock,’ and I guess they always will,” Mr. Molland said of Badfinger to Guitar World. “We had two people in the band take their own lives,” he added. “That’s a tragedy on a human level. Who knows what drives people to do such a thing? But I can’t think about ‘what might have been.’ You go crazy if you live your life like that.”
