Mal Evans
Malcolm Frederick Evans (27 May 1935 – 5 January 1976) was an English road manager and personal assistant employed by the Beatles from 1963 until their break-up in 1970.
This article is about the Beatles roadie. For the bowls champion, see Maldwyn Evans.
Mal Evans
5 January 1976 (aged 40)
Shot by police
1962−1975
The Beatles' assistant and road manager [1]
2
In the early 1960s Evans was employed as a telephone engineer, and he also worked part-time as a bouncer at the Cavern Club. The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, later hired Evans as the group's assistant roadie, in tandem with Neil Aspinall. Over time, Evans became a constant companion to the group, being present on all of their tours, and after the Beatles stopped touring in 1966, at nearly all of their recording sessions. As a constant presence, the Beatles occasionally used Evans as an extra musician; he has (often uncredited) contributions on most Beatles albums from Rubber Soul (1965) onwards. During the final years of the group, and continuing after their break-up in 1970, Evans worked as a record producer and continued to work with the individual Beatles on their solo projects. As a producer, his biggest hit was with Badfinger's top 10 hit "No Matter What".
In 1976, at the age of 40, Evans was shot and killed by police at his home in Los Angeles, when he threatened officers with what turned out to be an air rifle. A decade after his death, his collection of diaries, notebooks and other handwritten documents was discovered, many of which provided key insights into Beatles recording sessions and internal band dynamics, though the disposition of these writings has been a source of some legal controversy in the intervening decades.
Early life[edit]
Malcolm Frederick Evans was born in Liverpool to Frederick and Joan Evans and grew up in Waldgrave Road, Wavertree, Liverpool, along with his three sisters Pam, June and Barbara. He could also play the banjo. Other details of Evans' early life can be found in Kenneth Womack's Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans (published in 2023), which revives the title of Evans' memoirs, Living The Beatles' Legend, from which extracts were released on 20 March 2005.[2][3]
What is known about him starts in 1961, when Evans married a Liverpool girl, Lily, after meeting her at a funfair in New Brighton opposite Liverpool on the Wirral. Their first child, Gary, was born in the same year. Their daughter, Julie, was born five years later in 1966.[4]
The Beatles were the resident group at Liverpool's Cavern Club when Evans first heard them perform during his lunch break. He was then living in Hillside Road, Allerton and working as a telephone engineer for the Post Office.[4][5] He became a committed fan, even though his musical hero at the time was Elvis Presley.[6]
He first befriended George Harrison, who put forward Evans' name to the Cavern Club's manager, Ray McFall, when he needed a doorman.[4] The 27-year-old Evans was accepted, even though he wore thick-framed glasses, but mainly because of his burly 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) frame, which was an asset when holding back unruly fans at the Cavern's door.[4] He was later nicknamed the "Gentle Giant" and "Big Mal".[7][8] In 1962, Evans wrote that it was "a wonderful year", as he had Lily (his wife), his son Gary, a house, a car, and he was working at the Cavern Club, which he wrote into a 1963 Post Office Engineering Union diary, which also had information concerning Ohm's law and Post Office pay rates.[4]
After the Beatles[edit]
In 1968, Evans had seen the group Badfinger (then known as The Iveys) play live, and suggested that they be signed to Apple. Evans then produced several of their songs in 1969 and 1970, the most notable of which was "No Matter What", which charted on Billboard's Top 10 in December 1970.[51] Evans also discovered the group Splinter and brought them to the Apple label, although they would subsequently move to George Harrison's Dark Horse Records.[52] Evans' other production credits include Jackie Lomax's 1969 single "New Day" (on Apple) and some of the tracks on Keith Moon's only solo album Two Sides of the Moon (1975).[53]
Evans separated from his wife in 1973 and moved to Los Angeles where Lennon had moved to live with May Pang after his own separation from Yoko Ono. Evans performed chimes, handclaps, and backing vocals on John Lennon's first post-Beatles single, "Instant Karma!".[54] Evans is credited on Harrison's All Things Must Pass and the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album as providing "tea and sympathy".[55] Evans cowrote "You and Me (Babe)" with Harrison. The track appeared on Starr's 1973 solo album Ringo.[56] He also cowrote the Splinter song "Lonely Man", the musical centrepiece of Little Malcolm, an Apple feature film produced by Harrison. A rare interview appearance by Evans was included in the 1975 ABC television special David Frost Salutes the Beatles.[57]
Evans was asked to produce the group Natural Gas,[58] and was working on a book of memoirs called Living the Beatles' Legend which he was due to deliver to his publishers, Grosset & Dunlap, on 12 January 1976. Evans was depressed about the separation from his wife (who had asked for a divorce before Christmas) even though he was then living with his new girlfriend, Fran Hughes, in a rented motel apartment at 8122 West 4th Street in Los Angeles.[2][59]
Death[edit]
On 5 January 1976, Evans was so despondent that Hughes phoned John Hoernie, Evans' co-writer for his biography, and asked him to visit them. Hoernie saw Evans "really doped-up and groggy" but Evans told Hoernie to make sure he finished Living the Beatles' Legend.[2] Hoernie helped Evans up to an upstairs bedroom, but during an incoherent conversation, Evans picked up an air rifle. Hoernie struggled with Evans, but Evans, being much stronger, held onto the weapon.[2]
Hughes then phoned the police and told them that Evans was confused, had a rifle,[41] and was on Valium. Four police officers arrived and three of them, David D. Krempa, Robert E. Brannon and Lieutenant Higbie, went up to the bedroom.[60] They later reported that as soon as Evans saw the three police officers he pointed the rifle at them.[61] The officers repeatedly told Evans to put down the weapon but Evans refused.[62] The police fired six shots, four hitting Evans and killing him.[63] Evans previously had been awarded the badge of "Honorary Sheriff of Los Angeles County",[2] but in the Los Angeles Times he was referred to as a "jobless former road manager for the Beatles".[62]
Evans was cremated on 7 January 1976, in Los Angeles. None of the former Beatles attended his funeral, but Harry Nilsson, George Martin, Neil Aspinall and other friends did. George Harrison arranged for Evans' family to receive £5,000, as Evans had not maintained his life insurance premiums, and was not entitled to a pension.[36]
Legacy[edit]
In 1986, a trunk containing Evans' diaries and other effects was found in the basement of a New York publisher, and then sent to his family in London.[4] In 1992, Lennon's original pages of lyrics to "A Day in the Life" were sold by the Evans estate for £56,600 at Sotheby's in London.[64]
In 2010, a double-sided sheet of paper containing the hand-written lyrics and notes to "A Day in the Life" were sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York to an anonymous American buyer for $1.2m (£810,000).[65] Other lyrics collected by Evans have been subject to legal action over the years: In 1996, McCartney went to the High Court in England and prevented the sale of the original lyrics to "With a Little Help from My Friends" that Evans' ex-wife had tried to sell, by claiming that the lyrics were collected by Evans as a part of his duties, and therefore belonged to the Beatles, collectively.[66] A 2004 report of the discovery of a further collection of Evans's Beatles' memorabilia proved to be false.[67]
A notebook in which McCartney wrote the lyrics for "Hey Jude" was sold in 1998, for £111,500. The notebook also contains lyrics for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "All You Need Is Love". It also contained lyrics, notes, drawings and poems by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr, as well as by Evans.[68]
In December 2021 it was reported that a biography of Evans, written by Beatles scholar Kenneth Womack, was to be published by Harper Collins's Dey Street Books in 2023, to be followed the next year by material from Evans' diary and archives.[1][69][70][71] Womack's biography, entitled Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans, was published on November 14, 2023.
Evans appears in the 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. The machine learning software and models developed by WingNut Films that were used to clean and isolate instruments and vocal tracks from single-track recordings for the documentary, and subsequently used for the 2022 release of Revolver and "Now and Then", was named MAL (machine-assisted learning) after Evans, and as an homage to HAL 9000.[72]