Standing there in the background in scenes from Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary Get Back, is a tall man with thick black rimmed glasses who did whatever needed to be done to keep the Beatles machine running.
For seven years, from the early days in the Cavern Club, to that last recording session, Mal Evans was the road manager, bodyguard and personal assistant to the Fab Four.
He kept notes and diaries during those pivotal years and was working on a book before he was shot and killed by Los Angeles Police in 1976.
Now, nearly 50 years after his death, the Evans family is entrusting Kenneth Womack, a world renowned authority on the Beatles, to bring the archives of Mal to the world.
English drummer Ringo Starr of The Beatles talks with Beatles assistant and roadie Mal Evans (1935-1976) during a rehearsal at the Royal Albert Hall in London in February 1971. Ringo Starr is rehearsing with American group Mothers of Invention ahead of their planned performance of music from the film '200 Motels' at the Hall on 9th February. Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A fellow Liverpudlian, Evans had trained as a telephone engineer but instead made more use of his 6 foot 3 frame, Womack tells Afternoons.
“He really was a teddy bear of a person, but he could be intimidating when he needed to.
“He was originally hired as a bouncer outside the Cavern [Club] by [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein who wanted somebody to look after the boys as they became more and more famous.”
Evans' devotion to the boys was the icing on the cake, he says.
“What became apparent to them was just the fact that Mal would do anything to help them out, I mean carting huge amplifiers which he could seemingly do by himself.
“When we look back on those days, it was a very small entourage, now Paul McCartney on tour probably has 600 people in his organisation … whereas the Beatles had a couple, they had Mal, they had their long-term roadie Neil Aspinall, and maybe another guy or two, but that was about it, they really relied on a small group of highly trusted people.”
The large written archive of manuscripts, books, documents and diaries from Evans gives readers insight into some of the major Beatles’ stories and connections between them, he says.
“For decades, people have wondered who played on what songs, we’ve been able to cobble together some answers, even George Harrison had forgotten at times who performed on what track and suddenly there it all is.
“The Beatles had a pretty closed shop most of the time … for the most part they didn’t have photographers around or videographers and so Mal is giving us windows into the making of these albums, painstakingly recording detail and the way he felt.”
Photo: public domain
What makes his the story compelling is it shows the the genius and tragedy of the Beatles, Womack says.
“You’ve got a guy who’s murdered, you have another guy who dies young, you have a manager who leaves very early on, and Mal of course is one of the causalities too.
“It’s a heart-breaking story and some of the best moments in Mal’s diaries are those where he shares his feelings about John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and what they meant to him and the touching moments they would have together amidst all of this chaos.”
The tour Down Under in 1964 was particularly difficult as Evans dealt with some of the biggest crowds he would ever see, he says.
“The Beatles [were] in some sort of armoured car of sorts, and they’re trying to go 20 feet from the driveway into the basement of a hotel and it takes Mal like an hour to move all of the people out of the way as the van inches forward until it can go into the underground garage.
“It’s just staggering, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, what it takes to put that show on the road, with so much tension and so much humanity there all the time. It was really an outlier in terms of the mania of Beatle-mania, what happens of course in your neck of the woods.”
A crowd at Wellington Airport awaits the arrival of The Beatles. Photo: Morrie Hill courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library
Evans' memoirs also draw on how an ugly scene in the US at the British embassy, where a lock of Ringo’s hair was cut off, resulted in the band’s policy to decline state visits, Womack says.
That ultimately led to the misunderstanding in the Philippines, when the band angered some Filipinos by dismissing the Malacañang Palace’s invitation, he says.
“They were bodily injured as they tried to cart their stuff through the airport, people are pushing them and shoving them, the exact opposite of every other experience that they’ve had.”
Evans took the brunt of the jostling in the airport, causing an injury to his leg, he says.
But he did more than just protect them, Womack says, adding that Evans was an indispensable force to the band and his influence reached their music too.
“In the Beatles’ case, they needed a guy who when they said ‘play this note on the organ’, they would play that note, or you know, can you help out with a lyric here Mal? And he would help out.
“Or in a way that may not seem significant but probably is just as significant as those examples, Mal can you cook us up something? Because if Mal made that meal right there in the studio for them at 2am, they could stay another four hours and make that great music.”
Although he was making peanuts in wages compared with the band, he still managed to live comfortably enough in England, Womack says.
“He and Neil Aspinall would talk about how at various times the Beatles called them every name in the book, but they needed people they could be real with.
“Because they all recognised that their kind of fame was not real, that it was unusual, it was off the charts and so having people around with whom you can be real and your authentic self, even your authentic crappy self, was valuable. So, he existed in that fashion for them.”
John Lennon (1940 - 1980) plays his guitar while the other Beatles and manager Brian Epstein (1934 - 1967) relax in a hotel room in Paris. Photo: Harry Benson/Getty Images
Even after the band broke up, he continued to work for them and had his own music aspirations, writing songs like ‘You and Me (Babe)’ with George Harrison and producing Badfinger’s ‘No Matter What’.
“But as one might imagine, it’s tough to, no matter who you are, emerge from the shadow of something like that,” Womack says.
“It’s hard even now I think for us, to understand the kind of overwhelming size of Beatles’ influence and achievement and here’s Mal, a big guy physically, trying to find his way outside of that, and that was difficult even if you were a Beatle.”
Just before Evans died, he was getting ready to publish a book with all his memoirs, but he was struggling in his personal life and his wife was going to divorce him, Womack says.
“He’s living a kind of double life, he’s got the family in England, girlfriend and her a young daughter in the United States, and he was at his wit’s end and got to the point where police came by and it was now what we call suicide by cop.
“I’ve spoken with his son so many times about this, if poor Mal could’ve held on just a little longer, [imagine] what he might’ve seen out in Beatles world.”
The first edition of the book is expected to be published by HarperCollins’ Dey Street Books either later this year or early next year, while a second edition is expected to follow later, which will include Evans’ diaries, manuscripts, and photos.
