In the midst of a pandemic, a box arrived at the New Jersey home of writer and music historian Kenneth Womack. Inside was a jumble of papers, books, diaries and notes. Nothing was in any particular order. This box of odds and ends was perhaps the most mythologized in the history of music: it contained the Beatles’ view of the 1960s, as told by one of her closest aides, roadie and bodyguard Mal Evans.
“The very first thing I did when the box arrived was open the diaries and I was immediately transported to May 9, 1969,” Womack says now. This date is an important date in the history of The Beatles. That was the day “we broke the Beatles,” Paul McCartney later said. “It was a crack in the Liberty Bell. After that, everything just didn’t come together.”
During mixing at Olympic Studios in Barnes, west London, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr pressured McCartney to accept Allen Klein as his new manager. McCartney resisted, and a huge scandal arose. “I wanted to know what Mel, who loved the Beatles as much or more than anyone else, was doing on the day Allen Klein was dragged into the studio to demand Paul’s signature?”
He found a caricature of an angry McCartney looking at his bandmates with a distorted face. “It’s just amazing, you know? Words would not be enough. “Mal painted a picture that drove Paul crazy.”
Womack, one of the world’s leading Beatles researchers, used this box to piece it together. Meet the Beatles legend, the first biography of Evans based on these articles. Malcolm Evans, known to most as Mel, has evolved over the years into more than just a roadie and bodyguard. He was the driver, confidante, fixer, gopher, expert Beatles autograph forger, housekeeper, occasional creative sounding board and collaborator, and custodian of the band’s weed and pill supplies.
If you’ve seen the Peter Jackson movie Come back You’ve probably seen the documentary about the Beatles’ attempts to record “Let It Be” in January 1969. He was a happy giant, always hovering on the edge of things until someone from somewhere needed a fly or hit an anvil as he walked through Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. He seems to be as excited as anyone if you ask him or her to play with the Beatles.
He became the embodiment of dedication to the group. “He was always ready,” Womack says. “Do you need a message? And here he is. Do you want him to rewrite this? Here he is. Do you need tea? Look, there’s time for tea. There’s a reason the software Peter Jackson developed that helped create his documentary and new single was called Machine Audio Learning – or MAL. “We all love Mel,” Womack says. “He’s a Beatles fan favorite.”
Evans was one of the few allowed into the band’s inner sanctum, where he sang the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” set the alarm on “A Day in the Life” and, according to his diaries, helped McCartney with the song’s lyrics. Sergeant Pepper. The diaries and notebooks he kept throughout the Beatles’ career provide the most complete and comprehensive record of what it was like from the moment of the hurricane, from 1962 to Beatlemania, world tours, returns to the studio, the breakup… Up and the aftermath.
Their survival is “a small miracle,” Womack said. They were kicked out of the motel where he died by publishers who wanted to finish Evans’ autobiography. For twelve years after his death, they languished in the cluttered, overcrowded basement of New York’s Life Building until a Beatles fan assigned to clean up rescued them from a dumpster and returned them to their family.
One of Evans’ self-proclaimed roles was that of an unofficial archivist, collecting discarded lyric sheets and other historical detritus. His notes are about “anything and everything,” Womack says. “He’ll talk about writing his own songs and working on songs with the Beatles – maybe highlighting a line here and there and putting it in his notes.”
Evans was born in Liverpool in 1935 and fell into Beatles history almost by accident in early 1961. He was always a bigger fan of Elvis than of any other band that played the Liverpool clubs. Until one day, as he walked along Matthew Street during his lunch break after work at the nearby General Post Office, “the most incredible music I had ever heard began to sound beneath my feet,” he later wrote. He paid a shilling and walked down the stone steps of the cave, saw the Beatles and “fell in love with them.”
The more he fell in love with the group, the longer Evans’ lunch breaks at the Cavern became. The band liked him too: at 1.80 meters tall, he came in handy as a good-natured bouncer and, over time, as a roadie and driver at gigs across the country.
McCartney called him a “big, sweet bear.” In George Harrison’s memory, Evans was “one of those men who loved what he did and had no problem serving.” Sometime in 1963, Paul, John and George find themselves in the dressing room with their shirts off and their ties untied, analyzing the show that has just ended or discussing the upcoming performance. While they chat animatedly, Evans stands motionless at one end of the room, arms at his sides, looking at the boys. He looks a little tense, as if he’s ready to hear his next request.
His involvement in the group complicated his family life. His wife Lil and children Gary and Julie usually came second in priority to the Beatles. Womack talks about the day while recording revolver Shortly after Julie’s birth, even the group wondered why he didn’t go to Liverpool to meet them instead of hanging out with them. “He lived a very big life, almost in secret,” Womack says.
The former Attorney General’s Office employee gradually changed as he approached that level of fame, Womack said. “He didn’t care how intoxicating it was: The Beatles were better than food and drink,” he said. And he was a man who loved to eat and drink. I mean, he had a big appetite.
Evans’ story did not end happily. “He just leaves the story at the worst possible moment,” Womack says. “It’s part of the ongoing sadness.”
By New Year’s Day 1976, Evans had hit rock bottom and, after separating from his wife, was living in a motel in Los Angeles. On January 5 he became dizzy, could not understand anything and was armed with an air rifle. His girlfriend called the police. As they surrounded the hotel room, Evans appeared to point a gun at one of them. He was shot six times and died at just 40 years old.
None of the Beatles attended his funeral, which was organized by singer Harry Nilsson, although Harrison gave the Evans family £5,000 and appeared at the family home in 1982 to apologize for the way he had treated his friend. The latest scandal saw Evans’ ashes disappear for a month while they were flown back to England before being found in a storage unit at Heathrow. The photo Evans featured on the cover of his memoir—smiling and wearing a cowboy hat—instead found a permanent home on his parents’ mantelpiece.
After the Evans family chose Womack as the person to tell Mel’s story during the pandemic, a box arrived at Womack’s house. Inside was the long-promised mother lode: “Thousands of photographs, many times complete manuscripts, his diaries, his notebooks, a lot of scattered documentation, receipts, etc.”
This was exactly the kind of jumbled, just-in-case archive that Evans might have left behind. “He was a pack rat,” Womack says. “He collected all sorts of things.”
The Evans children were not interested in the darker aspects of their father’s life. “Gary had 40-50 years to think about it. There are no surprises for him. Despite all this, he had to find a way to love his father a long time ago.”
Womack will then publish all of Evans’ material in another book as a resource for fans and researchers. “What excites me most about this book is the next project, the second book, where everyone has everything for themselves and can make a DIY project there, create their own Mal Evans and Beatles mysteries, and find and search their own rabbit holes.” “
Evans’ death and his dedication to the band is especially poignant now as “Now and Then”, the Beatles’ final single, recently became the group’s 18th number one single in the UK. “All I can think about,” Womack says, “is how much he would have liked it.”
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.