Late Badfinger Rocker Joey Molland Had Special Connection to ‘Breaking Bad’

Joey Molland, who played guitar in the legendary rock band Badfinger and was the last surviving member, died on Saturday. His cause of death is not known, but he had faced numerous health issues in the last month.

The band was known for classic hits like Come and Get It, No Matter What, and Without You—the latter of which was covered multiple times by several even more famous artists, including Mariah Carey. But to younger generations, they’re best known for Baby Blue, the song that plays in the final moments of iconic TV drama Breaking Bad.

The show’s music supervisor, Thomas Golubić, initially didn’t think the song was a good fit. He told Rolling Stone in 2013 that he kept suggesting other “blue” songs to series creator Vince Gilligan.

“When he said, ‘I think this is the right song for the closing of the finale,’ I didn’t really hear it. I thought it was an odd little love song. But in came the dailies, with that wonderful crane shot moving over Walter White, and once we played the song, [we thought], ‘Oh, I get it now,’” Golubić said. “This is a love-affair story of Walt and his love of science, and this was his greatest product – his greatest triumph as a chemist…it was him ending on his own terms. It felt creatively right.”

When the finale of Breaking Bad aired, Molland expressed his shock and elation on a now-archived tweet. “Thank you #BreakingBad for choosing Badfinger’s original recording of BABY BLUE for the final song. First, the Departed film…now THIS!” he tweeted. A fan asked him if he knew about it beforehand in the replies, and he said it was a “big surprise.”

Nowadays, “Baby Blue” is Badfinger’s most-played song on Apple Music. “There are times when it all feels like a dream,” Molland said in a Guitar World interview in 2020, per Variety. “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.”