Living the Beatles Legend: On the Road With the Fab Four: The Mal Evans Story
Book Review and Interview
OK, let’s say we really have shifted into a post-Beatles universe…a grim place where we can expect no “new” music from those beloved mop tops. That means that from here on out, everything else may just amount to legacy shaping. Whether it’s unearthed, demixed or “underdubbed,” whatever might be coming just serves to tint the image of a band we already have deeply wedged into our psyches. Which is maybe why there seems to be so much mileage to be gained these days from those who held supporting roles in their universe.
Road manager Mal Evans nabbed a considerable amount of screen time during Peter Jackson’s passable “Get Back” documentary, and his importance inside the band’s day to day operations has never been clearer. So now seems like a reasonable time to get the first of two…that’s right, two volumes about the group’s faithful soldier. The first book, Kenneth Womack’s “Living the Beatles’ Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans,” is built off the back of an extensive collection of Mal’s diaries and memorabilia and is a full narrative look at Evans’ life and adventures as he goes from mild-mannered postal employee to a key cog inside the maelstrom that swallowed his fellow Liverpudlians.
Once fame lifted them out of their noisy cellar dwellings and onto the world’s front pages, Mal was tasked with keeping them alive, fed and taken care of in every way possible. From girls to guitar strings, the six-foot-six minder handled it all. As a result, he was witness to most every aspect of what it was to be Fab. And while there were certainly major perks to being so close to the white-hot center of the Pop world, the costs were heavy. Firstly, Mal was often the first and last line of defense while the band were on the road – his mighty frame being the only thing that spared his charges from being crushed as they traveled those perilous 20 feet or so from stage door to the waiting car or limousine. The primitive sound systems that Evans found himself connecting The Beatles gear to, were a regular menace - like the one on a wet stage in Cincinnati that gave him a huge electrical shock and knocked him flat on his back. Then of course there was the rapier-like tongue of John Lennon that could raze Mal in an instant when things went sideways.
But the clear through line of Mal’s story, from the first time he descends into the Cavern to the period when he’s witness to Lennon’s debauched L.A. sabbatical in the seventies, is how completely besotted he was with employers and how he would practically do anything to further their lives and careers. The contact high he got from being that close to The Beatles was beyond intoxicating and he regularly opted to choose the band over time with his wife and young children. Add drugs, and all the other heady diversions to the mix and he became a truly bifurcated soul – barely able to put together any semblance of a reasonable work/life balance.
Without giving anything away to those who are coming in cold to the story of this gentle giant, there’s tons of new information here for those who might cry (again): “Do we really need another Beatles book.” It’s in face another key text for those who want to get further insight into how insane it was to be living and simultaneously creating the Rock and Roll lifestyle that would become de rigueur for the next two of three decades. Plus, there are plenty of little known to untold nuggets of info from behind the curtain to entertain even the hardcore “socks and sandals brigade” as producer Giles Martin refers to them. For everyone else, “Living the Beatles’ Legend” is the look behind the curtain that many fans had been waiting for.
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Interview With Author Kenneth Womack
Tracking Angle: It’s interesting that once we get to around 1967, Mal suddenly starts to become aware in his diary entries that what he’s jotting down might be of some historical value.
Kenneth Womack: Yeah, and I think folks will see that next year when book two is published (how) Mal has a real sense that he's writing for posterity. I kind of jokingly call him a packrat but in all seriousness, he is kind of a Beatles historian. He's preserving artifacts when not very many folks are thinking that seriously about their legacy.
TA: The big takeaway from the book seems to be just how devoted he was to them, and how he was just someone who was clearly being pulled in a couple of distinct directions between family and the love for what he did for a living.
KW: It'd be easy to say that he's the man divided because of the nature of working for the Beatles, but it's also because of the nature of how he chose to live. He went above and beyond the call of duty. And I'm sure you noticed this too when you start to look at his schedule and the way he's using his time. There were plenty of moments where he could have gone home and nobody would have said anything. I mean there's 1966 when his daughter's born and they pretty much have to push him back toward Liverpool. So a lot of those choices are being made by Mal. Certainly during the touring years when the Beatles were in demand and on the road he was wholeheartedly at their disposal. What's interesting is the way that when they shift in the post-touring years into the studio, you almost have this sense that maybe Mal won't be needed as much. But it's the opposite. He actually works longer hours because they're doing the thing they really believe they were meant to do, which was to make those great records.
TA: Was there anyone you wanted to speak to for this project, apart from the Beatles themselves, and couldn’t get to?
KW: At the end of the day I wanted to talk to a few more people on the road like (opening act) Sounds Incorporated. Those guys and some others and you know, they politely declined. But I kind of had an interesting approach (with) all this material which I usually don't have. You usually don't have a pile of contemporaneous material that you know you're going to use that has so much authority. So to counteract that and to try to get other viewpoints I did about 200 interviews…so several hundred hours with folks. And I caught several people right before they died…(like Apple Records manager) Ken Mansfield about a year before he passed. I got Allan White five or six days before he died which was very fortunate. But I tried to use the material as a means for jogging a person's memory. So they might say ‘Well I loved Mal and always thought of him a great friend (but) I'm surprised you thought of me to talk to.’ And I'll say ‘Well look, here you are in January ‘69 and he's talking about you!’ And then I could use that material as means for jogging their memory and putting them back in that certain place and time. I found that really helped to create more veracity than I might usually have.
TA: Mal did get to produce Badfinger and some other artists, but do you think he had a good ear for that kind of work?
KW: Oh I do! I had Joey Molland walk me through all of the the raw tracking for “No Matter What,” and Mal really knew how to shape of song. But he should right? I mean he worked for the greatest show on Earth and he watched the finest music in history of human beings being made so he should know how to do that.
TA: Do you think if we’re now firmly into the era where almost all of The Beatles’ music is out there that’s it’s all about legacy building from here on out?
KW: I do. I mean if they ask me, I would say that they need to think about how each new generation discovers their sound. There aren't really more surprises out there, although in theory you could have a box set about Rubber Soul that could be quite revealing about different tracking and that sort of thing. I mean Abbey Road is missing a lot of key tracking I wanted to hear in terms of how a song might have evolved in the studio. We know that exists. The guitar solos from “The End”…I'd love to hear that session in particular and there are many many others. So there are plenty of places they could go. They'd be very smart to start releasing more stem-oriented material. I teach 18-year-olds and they would love to have that and I too would pay a really nice tidy sum every month just to have access to that.
