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January 30, 2024 • 40 mins
Monmouth University Professor and Beatles author Kenneth Womack returns to 'Beatles Revolution' to talk about his new book 'Living the Beatles' Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans.'

Kenneth's new book is a warts-and-all biography of a mainstay of the Beatles' inner circle, a longtime roadie, assistant and devoted friend to the Fab Four, who served and protected the band through its most extraordinary times.

Mal left a stable job in telecommunications to dive into life on the road with the Beatles, leaving his family for months on end. While quickly became a key cog in the band's machine, both on the road and in the studio, details of Mal's life away from the band have always been murky, and the circumstances leading up to his death in 1976 have remained largely unknown, until now.

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(00:00):
Tube. It's Candash's Beetle Revolution,Bunk Tu Faith All on the iHeart Radio.
Finally back in this saddle on KenDashell's Beatles Revolution on the iHeartRadio app.
This is podcast episode number one ohthree. Uh, it's been so

(00:20):
many times. It's just been toobusy. Me and producer Andrew finally rolling
up our sleeves with a returning guest, doctor Kenneth Womack, who teaches a
course in the Beatles at Monmouth StateUniversity. Monmouth University is not a gut
course. No, no, youhave to know your stuff. And Ken
got hold of malt Evans' diaries.The inner circle was the four Beatles,

(00:43):
Neil, Aspinal and mal Evans.The man who drove the van, fixed
the van, got the equipment fixedthe equipment, set it up, broke
it down, fought through the crowdsto get them in and out. It
is an amazing story from inside theHurricane, living the Beatles legend, the
untold story of mal Evans. Doyou remember that we once had Ken up

(01:03):
a couple of years back because hestarted at Penn and he teaches a Beatles
course at Monmouth University. Welcome back, Ken, So good to be with
you, Ken and so many people. My favorite story just to sum up,
you know, oh, we'll listento Beatles records. It's an easya.
It is not an easya. Itis no. There are three or
four hundred terms that the students needto be familiar with and then apply them

(01:26):
to the songs in the album.So it's not an easy a not a
blowoff course. Give me a fewexamples of the terms that you have to
know. Oh, well, youneed to know all the parts of a
song. You need to understand studiotechnology, so a basic understanding of engineering
and the different kinds of techniques thatGeorge Martin and Jeff Emmerck and all those
guys used. So it's it's it'sa course. It's pretty forceful. So

(01:49):
they have to understand what phasing is. They have to understand like multi track
recording that's right, and then beable to apply it to a day in
the life and explain what's taking place. Oh that's really hard. It's not
as easy as people think. No, I mean just because I'm a geek,
you know, actually as geeks,yes, but I think the average
listener when I talk about something likethat, or if when I get a

(02:14):
little bit granular with the musicians.If Mark Rivera or Little Steven talking about
something, I would think half theaudience is just kind of nodding but has
no idea of what they're talking about. But you know, which is fine.
But this is a course for youto learn. That's right by the
way I digress. It's elliptical myspecialty. But Jack Douglas, the producer

(02:35):
who you know, was an assistantengineer on Imagine and John. He hit
it off so much, and he'sgot a great story. He's the one
who produced Double Fantasy. He producedall the great early Aerosmith stuff, and
he found and produced Cheap Trick.He teaches a masterclass in California on engineering
on production, and I don't knowif you know the story, do you

(02:57):
know what the final is? Thefinal is he brings in a rock band
and the students have to produce asong. And he's given the rock band
one instruction, get into a fightand quit and walk out. That's wonderful.
And I thought, yeah, Seeanother teacher goes, oh, that's
wonderful. So he said, lookwhat microphone you use? What the one
that sounds the best? Where doyou put the strings where it sounds good

(03:21):
to you. The trick if you'regoing to work with an aerosmith, if
you're going to work with people,is to figure out what you have to
do to get it recorded. Whenthey're going at each other, are you
going to take a side? Areyou going to throw a bucket of emotional
water on them? Are you?How are you going to get this done?
No matter how much you have tolie or buy beer or drug or

(03:42):
get a girl, how are yougoing to get this record done? Because
you your job is to get makethe baby. Nobody cares how you did
it, get the record done.You know. One of the mantras from
both my Beatles and my Springsteen courseis creative differences are real. As Warren
Haynes said, we were talking aboutthe get came up just after Get Back
and come out that winter. Isaid, you see it? Of course,

(04:03):
I said, you know that.He said, you know that shock
of seeing them mark you and Georgequit. If we're all so uptight and
as kids were uptight, that's aTuesday with the Olman Brothers. That was
just that's any day. If theyhad cameras in the seventies, none of
our bands would have ever made it. That's every day in every studio you've
ever seen. Oh my god,unbelievable. You know, it's as they

(04:27):
said, what what, what isit? What happened between Daltrey and Townshends.
Nothing. They hated each other sincethey met. It's always been that.
And it's their manager Bill Kirbershlely alwayssaid, it's not hate, it's
more, it's more dynamic tension.It's and I thought that is such a
BS answer, but it's brilliant.But we are here because what Ken has

(04:49):
a new book out called Living theBeatles Legend, The Untold Story of mal
Evans. Now, if you're abig Beatles fan, you know the names
Neil Aspinall and mal Evans. Theywere the other two. There are four
Beatles, Well there are two guyswho got them from point A to B
through their entire days from sixty threeon. Who got the equipment, who

(05:10):
set it up, who made theshows happen? There were two, only
two, and Neil Aspitall was theguy to start the road. He had
the van, he could drive themaround, and he was doing it by
himself. And here is this guy, this giant bear of a man,
who was working at the Cavern Club. Basically he is a bouncer and all
that, and that wasn't him.He's a lovable guy. He wasn't a

(05:30):
fighter and loved the Beatles and lovedthe scene and talked to Brian Epstein,
to the manager and they hired himon. And there's Mal Evans. Now,
so many people have written books aboutthe Beatles experience in the history of
the Beatles, and they've done theirresearch, But this is Mal Evans's story.
This is a guy who was there. This is a guy who wasn't

(05:51):
just watching it. He worked forit. He made it happen. He
was an effector that made these showshappen. And the diary and how in
the world did all this did hisdiaries wine up in Kenwell Max's hands?
How did this come about? It'skind of a crazy story. It was
very unexpected. In twenty twenty,as COVID was getting underway, we all

(06:15):
remember that shared experience, Ah,the Choice, the Times, and it
was getting underway and a mutual friendsaid, Gary Evans would like to talk
to you. And I said GaryEvans, he said Mao's son. I
said, well, I'll talk toGary. Sure, you know he said,
he's probably gonna ask you to writeMal's story. I said, well,
let's hear it. So Gary andI get on zoom and you know,

(06:40):
almost immediately Gary says, would youwould you like to tell my dad's
story? And I said, well, you know, I've always loved Mal.
I'm a Beatles fan, I'm anaficionado here and Gary said, well,
you know it would mean a lot. And Gary is very lovable,
very much like Mal. Actually sometimesI call him Mal accidentally. And you
know, within minutes I knew Iwould do this for him, just to

(07:01):
please Gary. And I figured Ican get eight thousand words out of this,
you know, I'll find a publisher. But before we rang off on
that zoom, I said, hey, is it true that he has all
this stuff? And Gary said yeah, do you want to see it?
Of course no, I don't thinkso, yeah, I'll pass now.
I said, yeah, can wemake that happen? And the next week,

(07:25):
this gigantic box arrives and I couldn'tbelieve my eyes when I opened it
up. It was stunning. Thediaries, the photographs, you know,
all the material. I mean,we're talking to three hundred thousand words of
material that Mal left behind twenty fivehundred photographs. It was. It was

(07:46):
pretty staggering. Basically the book wasin that box. It really was,
and I realized just thumbing through it. In fact, I had to kind
of put it down for a whilebecause how long did it take to go
through it? To go through thebox? I'm still doing it. No,
I'm very serious. It is sovoluminous identifying that's a lot of photographs

(08:07):
to identify, right. So Ihave an army of grad students and undergrads
who started working on this during COVIDwhen they needed something to do. And
the grad students loved it because Iwould say, you know, this is
top secret stuff, and they'd say, well, then we want to do
it even more, you know,give me the NDA. So no,
I'm still organizing this material. Itis enormous, the amount of it,

(08:31):
and of course the more you studyit, you realize that you need to
reorganize it to create different kinds oforganizational schema to make it all happen.
But I realized very quickly that itwas going to change a lot of my
understanding of the story, and thatI had to really go to school on
Mal before I could write a wordmore with author teacher and my friend Ken

(08:54):
Willmack wrote this amazing book Living theBeatles Legend, the untold story of mal
Evans, their roadie driver. Thereeverything. When we come back on Ken
Dashouse Beatles Revolution, we're back withdoctor Kenneth Womack who wrote the book got
the diaries from mel Evans, thesixth wheel in the Beatles inner Circle,
in the middle of the hurricane,through all those years. It's a fascinating

(09:18):
book. You know, the Beatlesstory, Where do you start on Mail's
story? So what I did wasI created a set of about fifty questions
and I still have three or fourthat I just don't have the answer to
yet, and they would grow overmy conversations with Gary. We would speak
and still speak every Friday four o'clock, so I'm busy then everybody and Gary

(09:39):
and I would put in one ortwo hours and still do you know,
so I've got a thousand hours loggedwith Gary pretty easily at this point.
And we would sit and go overthe material, often over and over again,
so I could get different kinds ofnuances. And every now and then
I would rattle something loose from hima memory and I would think that's damn

(10:00):
important. We have to go downthat rabbit hole. So I created this
list of questions. And some ofthem are pretty obvious. You know,
how did Mal die, what reallyhappened? You know, those sorts of
things, But others would become morearcane. You know, what was Mal
doing on this date? And thereare a few of these I still don't

(10:22):
know the answer yet, and it'spossible that they are indecipherable questions. Well,
one of the things that I getright from reading this book is that
Listen, Mal has a wife anda child, and you know, just
like John Lennon with Julian to bemarried with a child in the middle at
the very start of Beatlemania, it'slike you have a wife and a child

(10:43):
and you're on a rocket ship thatyou have built and not even realizing how
fast it's going to go, andit just keeps going faster and you're not
there for the ride. You arefeeding it, you're making it happen.
So, you know, we alwaystalk at this point in twenty twenty for
about you know, work life balance, home work balance. There is none,

(11:03):
There is here none. You arein Beatlemania and that's it. And
if you get home for a day, it's amazing, but the only thing
you're thinking about is what you haveto do tomorrow, what you have to
fix the van, you have toget this. Where are we going?
Because remember it's two people and they'reup and running. Listen, two people

(11:24):
in nineteen sixty two just drive himaround clubs in the UK and setting up
the equipment, driving in back.It's a bit of a frenzy, but
yeah, you could do it.It's fine night year and late night.
Yeah, we're you know, inthis book, you realize by sixty three
to sixty four and we're up andrunning, and we're going, and we're
going to America. Beatlemania is hitand it's still Neil and mel. Isn't

(11:50):
it amazing that no one said,we're going to America? This is the
big show, this is what we'vebeen aiming for, dreaming that, thinking
it wasn't even possible. And yet, as we know, sixty years ago,
in a few weeks, it wasnobody said, hey, we ought
to get a couple of more guys. That's the That's on every page that
I read in this book. KenWillmack, his story, Kenth Womck,

(12:13):
living the Beatles legend now Evans everyminute. I was thinking brand Epstein's a
really smart man, and I knowhe's watching, you know, the ex
checker, but you would have tothink Neil and Mel said, this can't
happen with two people safely. It'snot about luxury, it's safety. When
you think about for Shorthand folks.When you think about the video that you

(12:33):
see of their first show in Washington, d C. And the stage is
supposed to turn and it doesn't,and the drums are stuck, and John
Yell's now the drums and he hasto come up on stage trying to turn
Ringo's kit because they won't turn.And you know, there's thousands and thousands
of screaming fans and there's an oldguy on a chair who's doing security.

(12:56):
And it's by the grace of Godthat this worked. I mean, when
McCartney tours, you know, Isaid to Brian Ray, how many people
are on your staff? You knowhow many people are in the crew when
you tour? He said about onehundred, and we pick up about twenty
or thirty locally. And that goesfrom Bruce Springsteen. For any giant tour

(13:16):
these days, you tour with onehundred people. They had two two,
one and two, and of coursethey'd arrive in you know la and they
would Mal would warn them in advanceand there'd be two sheriffs. Yeah that
ought to do it. Yeah,this will the kids will stay in line.
When you think about you know whatwas Mal's duties. Mal drove the

(13:39):
van. Mal fixed the van,set up the equipment. If something broke,
he had the equipment fixed. Heset it up on stage. He
broke it down, He'd set upthe amps. He'd do that. Then
you've got to get if they wantbreakfast, he got breakfast. And if
they needed food, to get themin and out somehow without being torn apart,
get them through the crowd, getthe van not to be destroyed.

(14:00):
Where do you park it? Howdo you get the equipment out? Much
less than four beatles? And theother thing I came away with was if
you could have a mal Evens inyour life, folks, if everybody in
this country somehow, if you hada mal Evens even for a year,
it would be the greatest thing inthe world. Everybody needs a mouth.
Mal I want breakfast, Mal,we need guitar strings, Mal I want

(14:24):
sex. Mauth, we need ananvil, Mal, We need whatever you
need, Mal, and it's done. Mal. I want to rope.
I want to swing from the ceilingyet, Maul, and even to the
days from the very start from sixtythree, all the ways we saw in
the movie Get back at George saysto a mau, get the broccoli,
but make sure they put the cheesesauce on it. I mean literally,

(14:45):
when I say everything, whatever youneed, you yell now, and it's
done. On the roof. Howdo you stop the police, Mal,
now, stop the police now.It's unbelievable how important this guy was and
didn't make a fortune. You know, didn't make a ton of money.
If that was that guy, now, he'd beat Doc McGee. He'd be

(15:07):
rich as anything. The people whocan do that, who do one tenth
of what he did for a rockband on tour, are make it a
fortune, that's right, And theyare insulated with all sorts of legal agreements.
And Mal had nothing nothing. Imean, he was always worried.
It sees like every time he madea mistake he was afraid he would get
the sack. There's a bittersweet momentearly on in the book about that he

(15:30):
was really close with Pete Best andthat when Pete was fired, if they
got to London and George Martin didn'tthink much of him, thought he wanted
a different drummer, and you know, and Pete said, will you come
out and have drinks with me?And Mal said, I can't really sit
all night and drink because I haveto drive the van in the morning.
He said, yeah, but Igot the sack. Yeah, but I

(15:50):
have a job and I have todrive. That's kind of heartbreaking. There
are a number of bittersweet, heartbreakingmoments in Mal's story. It's a really
human story, you know, everyaspect of it, from as we spoke
about before meeting Gary and feeling hispassion to have his father's story told,
or the miraculous way in which weeven have this material that it wasn't trashed

(16:15):
for all time. It's a it'sa pretty staggering tale, you know.
But just as Julian didn't have areal connection to his father in many ways,
he knows the legend, but hassaid, you know, my sense
of him as a dad is sketchyat best. What did what did Gary
have as far as his father goes? Did he have a connection, a
father's son relationship here, he reallydid, you know, and it was

(16:40):
it was pretty deep. In fact, the reason Mals started keeping diaries in
the first place was to plot Gary'sprogress as a kid. That's that was
what he was interested. And itjust turned out that a few weeks after
he started keeping the diary the windscreencracked, and you know, the legend
was born. But prior to that, you know it, it was all

(17:00):
about Gary. And Mal was verygood with anybody at being present. He
had a real, real set,a real great sense of eq. He
could emotionally connect with people well,probably too well on occasion, but he
was the guy that they were neverafraid to put in front of people.
He had a gift of gab.But he really connected with Gary and with

(17:22):
Julie, Gary's younger sister, fiveyears younger than he. Mal was very
good at that. He really was. Now the doubt that the dark side
of that is when Mao's about tomove to la for essentially the rest of
his life. Gary senses it andhe says, you're leaving us, and

(17:42):
Mal doesn't want to cop to it. So there's kind of a dark side
to that, that sense of connection. But Mal was wore his heart on
his sleeve. He was an openbook. Yeah, and I think you
know, he was never cut outto be the tough guy. He just
kind of was forced into it asin some spots, but he was.

(18:03):
You had to be the jack ofall trades in order to do that job,
and you know, to get cameos. In the movie he's the swimmer
who's looking for Dover, who keepspopping up in the ice. You know,
he has these cameos that appear somewherealong in the movies and in Beatlemania,
and you know, whether it's moviesor music or recording, he's part
of every scene. To see himholding the lyrics, you know, for

(18:26):
Beatles while they're singing, and evensaid he suggested some lines, so he
wrote out some lines and added somewords. I got to tell you the
craziest moment, while I'm watching theGet Back documentary, and of course by
this time everything's digitized on my computer, and I see Mal playing with some
lyrics. In that moment, Iwas able to call up that item he

(18:48):
was looking at and see it.What was it? I don't recall which
tune it was, but it wasone of one of the tunes and I
think the first real Mal's messing aroundwith the lyrics and you can see over
his shoulder the writing and I'm lookingright at it. In his version,
it was it was a crazy momentof I don't even know what the adjective

(19:10):
is for that. It was bizarre. I mean, Mal's the one who
finds the IVS, folks, Maw'sthe one who brings in the IVS.
With it became Bad Finger and andvery much his his greatest discovery. You
know, in a lot of ways, people ask me a lot about the
tragedy of his dealings with the Beatlesand the aftermath of their breakup. All

(19:33):
of that paled in comparison to whathappens with Bad Finger. I mean,
it's it's a heartbreaker. He's theirguy. He produces their signature song no
matter what. And Alan Klein,if you if you didn't think he was
bad before, oh I thought wetold he was bad. Yeah, well
it confirms it. He for heforbade Mal from working with him anymore simply

(19:56):
out of cruelty. Yeah, heenjoyed that. You know, he was
truly truly one of those people.There was everything he didn't just do evil.
He did it. He enjoyed shadenfreud, He enjoyed making people angry and
making them suffer. Yeah, itwas on purpose, and you know it
was payback. I mean, hemade a terrible discovery when he was working

(20:18):
his con in those early months.He realized pretty quickly, there are two
guys you need to get rid of. Mal and Neil. They've been here
forever. They got to go.So he plans to fire them, and
of course they have that great answerthat we all hope we'll have when somebody
wants to fire us. You can'tfire me. I don't work for you,
because they worked for Beatles in company, not Apple. And it must

(20:41):
have been delicious in the moment,but of course they both paid in the
long run because he made their lives. Hell. Yeah, and you know
Paul saying, hey, in theend, I was right. You know
everybody had to agree I was right. Yep, Paul's right. Paul's always
right. If you just listen toPaul, it was damn right. Yeah.
I mean, just ask Mick Jackerwhat he thinks of Alan Klein.

(21:03):
Just who's a friend I've met recentlyor the Verve, Yeah, who worked
for APCO and Tracy, and Isaid, tell me what about Alan Klein
as your boss? And again verydiplomatically, she said, I learned everything
I know about the business and howto conduct yourself from Alan, which leaves

(21:29):
it open to if she answered myquestion without answering it, like, you
don't have to do all that.I learned all the dirty tricks, but
I realized you don't have to dothem. That's what you do. If
you're an evil, nasty person,you can be kind and still everybody can
make money. That was the deathof the Beatles. As I've always said,
Yoko has taken the brunt of allthat very unfairly. In fact,

(21:52):
she's the hero of the Maul story. How so, So, in nineteen
eighty eight, twelve plus years aftermy A's death, a temporary worker working
for Putnam's, who had purchased Grossetand Dunlop, the publisher who was going
to put out Miles Memoirs, tooka temporary job and she was assigned to

(22:15):
what they called the storeroom in theNew York Life building. And she went
downstairs into the basement and another tempwas the supervisor, and he said,
we're throwing it all away. Ifyou see something you think is important,
we might store it in wait forit, New Jersey. But if not,
but we really don't want that.We want everything to be thrown away.

(22:37):
This is it's go time, becausePutnam's didn't want to pay the rent
anymore. In the New York Lifebuilding. They were heading uptown to where
where their head offices were. Anyway, I think it was day two.
This Estonian immigrant, this wonderful temporaryworker named Lena Cootie still with us,
thank goodness, who lives up anupstate New York. She's kind of off

(23:00):
the grid. She's really cool.Anyway, she finds all this stuff,
the stuff that would arrive in myhouse many many many years later, thirty
plus years later, and she decides, as a Beatles fan, this is
important. Something's got to be donehere. So she alerts the temporary supervisor
and he said Beatles insects, Andshe said, okay, he's not a

(23:25):
fan, No point in talking tohim anymore. No, and she's only
got a week there, by theway, before she has a new gig
coming up at Credit Sweese, andso she goes up the flagpole, right,
she goes to the up the chainof command and this Doienne of the
publishing industry, who was really longin the tooth in and is no longer
with us, looks at the materialsand said, man, this looks like

(23:47):
a lawsuit. She said, Idon't know, and she takes everything uptown
to where her office is, getsit out of the New York Life Building.
And that's when Lena thinks, nowthis is not good. They're gonna,
They're gonna, They're gonna Raiders ofthe Lost Dark this which, by
the way, by that point hadbeen out for six years, and she's
just imagining all sorts of havoc.She goes to the New York Public Library,

(24:11):
finds out who mal is, realizeshow he died, that his family
was left bereft, and she marchesup to the Dakota and leaves a note,
which, of course we have,it's in the boxes. She leaves
a note and said, you needto help out your employee here, and
Yoko calls up Neil and they getit done. It's like a scene out
of Star Wars. You remember,these are not the droid you're looking for.

(24:34):
It's this great moment where the Applelawyers, who are across the street
from the New York life building.They come over and they're they're like,
we're here for our stuff. Andat first Putnams tried to play dumb,
but the jig was up, andApple essentially said, look, you know,
here's what you're gonna do. You'regonna seed copyright on everything. You're

(24:57):
not going to publish this book.You're gonna seed copyright to the Evans estate.
You're gonna box it up, you'regonna give it to us, We're
gonna send it to Neil. Andthey just immediately in their letters, which
I also have repeated, we're gonnabox it up, We're gonna see it.
I mean, it's just a completeverbatim repetition job. I talked of
all the lawyers, and the guysat Putnam's are really funny. They said,

(25:18):
we never knew who blew the whistleon us, and I said,
well, I think I can helpyou out. And it was Yoko who
lit that fuse, didn't wait,didn't miss a beat, and the next
thing you know, the family hasit. And it's just a happy ending
for a family that really had nopart of their dad's legacy until then.
Yeah, I mean, that's thewonderful finish. Maybe it didn't. It

(25:41):
didn't finish with money, it didn'tfinish with a luxurious life, but it
finished with a resolve. At leastthere was resolution. And to me,
this book, as great as itis for Beatle fans, I kept thinking,
what this is for the Evans family, for everybody. This is a
better care for them then all ofthe Beatle fans put together ken beautifully done.

(26:04):
Well, thank you so much.And you know they deserve big time
credit for not putting any stipulations onit. You know, this is a
warts and all story. There wereno limitations on what we would say.
We weren't going to put Mal inthis great light that would have been historically
unfaithful and disloyal. Anyway, that'swhat Hollywood does. Yeah, somebody else

(26:26):
will do that. Yeah, wedid not do any of that kind of
varnishing. This is the real guy, like we all are, warts and
all. So I'm skipping ahead andyou have to find this again. It's
living the Beatles legend, the untoldstory of Mal Evans from Kenneth wolmck And
you know, people at the festthat the fest for Beatle fans know you've
been there and we've heard you herebut definitely go find it as a Beatles

(26:51):
fan to get a sense of AsI said, it's not researched from the
outside end. This is Mal inthe center of the hurricane, on scraps
of paper and diaries, writing downwhat he did, what happened, how
this went, the hilariousness of backstage, especially early days, you know,
the painful moments of it all.And for those who don't know, it

(27:14):
was a horrible, sad finish toMal's life. Let's talk about that.
Explain that, Explain how it gotthere. Well, of course there's been
nothing but rumor and hearsay about thissince it happened. You know, the
Beatles themselves were confused by I neverremember hearing a quote or a thing from
Paul or from from John, fromanyone, well as it would happen,

(27:38):
of course, you know, Ididn't even know to find this guy.
There was a fellow who after thebook was published, called me up and
he said, I was there whenJohn Lennon was informed about Mal, and
he said he just sobbed. Itjust broke him. He you know,
he was hoping that the news hewas hearing wasn't real. And he called
he called out to California the housewhere Mal was living, the duplex,

(28:00):
and he said, what's going onand they said, you know, Mal's
dead, and John just it brokehim. You know, they love this
guy. But what happened essentially,I mean it was a mental health crisis.
For lack of a better word orphrase, he Mal had lived in
compartments since nineteen sixty three. Hewas keeping all the balls in the air

(28:22):
and he got busted. We'll beback with more insight into the crazy Beatles
hurricane of a life and the sadfinish of mal Evans. They're roady the
book Living the Beatles Legend, TheUntold Story of mal Evans. When we
come back, We're back with authorKen Wollmeck, who wrote the book about
mal Evans diaries, Living the BeatlesLegend, The Untold Story of mal Evans.

(28:45):
When he went out to California,he wanted it to seem like a
business trip. But you know,ultimately because his wife found out. Interestingly,
because of Julian Lennon and Cynthia whohad gone with Mal the Disneyland and
they came back to Mal's widow Lilyand said, hey, we met your
cousin and she said, we don'thave a cousin out there. Well,

(29:07):
that was Mal's new girlfriend. Andanyway, all of those worlds were colliding.
And throughout all of this, theinfidelity, you know, the lies,
et cetera, Lily had really triedto stay with Mal. But after
the new year, or around theturn of the new year in nineteen seventy

(29:30):
five into seventy six, she said, I'm going to see a solicitor.
She didn't say I'm going to divorceyou. She just said I'm going to
go see a lawyer. And thatwas it. That was the fuse,
and he had probably, if youlook at the signs, been thinking about
suicide for a while. He wasdoing those classic things such as showing Fran
his girlfriend, you know, howto win a rise the house or the
car or what have you, andshe'd be like, well, why are

(29:52):
you telling me this? You knowthis is something you do. And January
third, nineteen seventy six, hewrites his will in a kind of a
drunken fit, and Fran wakes upthe next day and she's thinking, well,
it's blown over. He's sober now, life looks good. And then
he sets up this scenario where hehas a working Winchester rifle up in his

(30:15):
bedroom. Fran gets out, goesoutside, calls the police because Mal says,
you better get the cops. Andthey come up and Mal raises the
gun at them because he wanted themto shoot. He wanted them, you
know, he said, you'll haveto kill me. It's so sad,

(30:37):
so heartbreakingly said for a man whoexperienced so much joy and so much life.
But mental illness, as we know, is mental illness. And this
is nineteen seventy six. Yeah,we don't even have terms. We don't
get it, we don't understand it, right. I mean the ambulance that
was in front of the duplex thathad come along with the police was one
of those station wagons, right thathad a stretcher in it. That was

(31:00):
it. That was it. Youknow, this wasn't emergency the show we
watched, you know, right withall the gear. And you know again
that there's nobody when the police geta call like that, there's you know,
somebody who comes along to try totalk the person through it and out
of it and talk about the nextday and what's going on and your kid.
You know, there's a way totalk through somebody that they're trained,

(31:22):
you know, therapist to talk sometry to talk someone off a bridge off
or whatever, to have that momentwhen when it's hanging in the balance,
it's just so sad. But thisgets at least he lives on in a
full story through the book that doesn'thappen. And you said his stuff was
just scattered, you know, tofind out that all these things he saved,

(31:44):
that this treasure chest of of Beatlemaniafrom the inside out, you know,
could have been gone, could havebeen oh easily would have been thrown
away. I mean, that wasthe end game there. And we owe
a lot to Lina and to Yoko. You know. It really changed the
lives of the Evans, you know, Lily too, not just her children,
because they got to learn about him. I mean, it's it's remarkable

(32:07):
how many times sitting on a zoomwith Julie and Gary, I've shown them
something they've never seen. Wow.And at one point Julie had to get
off a zoom because she was overcome, you know. And Gary came to
two of my beadle classes speaking ofBeatles classes when we did our book tour
in November, and the first onewas Sergeant Pepper. I mean, think

(32:28):
about it. We do it aday in the life with his dad,
you know, counting off the phrases. Well, Gary was there, by
the way, so just so youguys know, in the day in the
life, when you hear that voicegoing what two, three, that's mel
Evans and he sets off the alarmclock, the whole business. The next
time Gary had for the he hadnever been to you know, not too

(32:50):
far from where we're sitting right now. He'd never been to Strawberry Fields.
And of course John Lennon had babysathim. This was a guy I had
known as a kid, and hewas really moved because you know, this
is the sight of you know,the loss of this iconic person, but
somebody that he knew very very personally. In fact, I think I was

(33:13):
with you. We did an interviewaround John Lennon's the Anniversary on my John
Lennon nineteen eighty book. Well,when I was working on that, I
played a recording of John talking toSean in nineteen eighty and Gary just started
sobbing, and he said, that'show John's voice used to be when he
talked to me when I was thatage. Anyway, So Gary comes to

(33:35):
class the next day after we goto Central Park, right and we're right
at the tail end getting ready forthe Wide album. It's the end of
class, so we're listening to Acrossthe Universe, that beautiful unvarnished recording,
the acoustic guitar and just John's voice. Gary had to get up and leave
and I said, kids, students, you just saw real emotion. That's

(33:58):
the real thing. This is ahuman story. I told you from the
outset, and that's how it resonates. What an amazing story, what a
great I mean when you think ofthere's a for you for Ken Momack a
teacher, a man, but youteach something with passion. You're teaching something
that's a personal love of yours,which is a joy. So many teachers
are just so sick of their material, whether it's a math or they just

(34:21):
go you know, they're doing itby wrote. But this to be able
to be part of this and bringthis to the world, this is really
something Ken, What a beautiful accomplishment. It was in good hands when they
handed it to you. We're doingthis in January of twenty twenty four,
and sixty years ago, this bandchanged the world. It changed America.

(34:43):
America that night February ninth, sixtyfour, as Little Stephen and I always
say, America went from black andwhite the morning of JFK to color in
an instant. Even when you werewatching that show in black and white,
like I was, like most ofus were, it was color. Suddenly
you were allowed to laugh and smileagain, you know. And Stevie has

(35:05):
that great little story that I know, you know well, where he tells
about him and his brother the minutethey heard I want to hold your hand,
and they just looked at each otherand smiled. And you know what's
cool about that. That's the samething some kid did today. Yeah,
some kid heard I want to holdyour hand and thought, damn, wait
a minute, this is different.Yeah. As that energy's there, it's

(35:27):
always going to be there. GeorgeThurgood came up with my special guest for
John Lennon's birthday. We did Breakfastof the Beatles at Foxwoods, and we
always talk about that. And youknow, he, you and I are
Beatles fans. He he is apriest. He is you know, if
you say I like the Beatles,He'll put you against the wall and not
let you go until you understand inyour heart why this is that important to

(35:50):
you. No, you can't leave, you can't eat. You're going to
listen to me like that? CanI get an amend? Exactly? And
one of my favorite lines is hesaid, you know I've never met British.
I'll play the quote three, I'venever met the rock royalty of America.
I've never met Bruce Springsteen, I'venever met John Mellencamp. I've never
met some of these miraculous people thatwe all know and look up to in

(36:14):
me as well. But I'll tellyou, like I'm Creskin, I'll tell
you exactly where they were on Februarytenth, nineteen sixty four. I guarantee
you I know where they were becauseif you waited till February eleventh to get
to a local music store, you'dbe lucky to find a tambourine. As
soon as class got out on Monday. Me and every other kid that was

(36:36):
able to borrow any money at allfrom your dad or anything you could find
or steal, you were in themusic from going. I've never played a
guitar, but is there one Ican afford? Or Hey, do you
say to your friend, let's chipin and we'll share it like you had
to have a guitar. It wasa run on the sears and robut catalog.
It was crazy. And as Iwas told in England too, you

(36:57):
know John Lodge who said he wentto the music store and said, I
want to base an electric bass guitarand they said to me, what's that?
Manchester? We don't know what thatis. There's the musicians, real
musicians have a bass have you know, no no no idea what it is.

(37:19):
I wouldn't even know where to lookfor one, right, So now
I'm setting out on my quest inEngland to find an electric bass guitar.
He goes, That's how deep itwas that you know. Now it doesn't
matter about school, doesn't matter abouteating. I have to find an electric
bass guitar. And I know whatit looks like. And you're just trying
to draw the hof there and showit to people at music stores to see
if they can get what It's anamazing journey and told from the inside through

(37:45):
Mel Evans life and Ken Willmeckew dida great job living the Beatles legend.
If you want to know what itfelt like to be part of Beatlemania.
This was it. There's a quoteon the back of the jacket. It
was certainly exciting. I could liveon it. It is better than food
and drink. Mal on his timewith the Beatles. I've read a quote
somewhere that he told John Lennon.He wrote to him and said, I

(38:07):
think I want to write a bookand you know about for my diaries and
stuff. And John supposedly wrote backand said, sure, go ahead,
but don't fuck it up. Isthat true? That's exactly he said,
make a book, but don't fuckit And he said, I've been dying,
dying to read your diaries for thelast thousand years. Did he say
that, Yeah, oh that's great. And I believe Paul said, remember,

(38:29):
tell them how nice, I tellthem how lovely I am. That's
right. Did you I assume thisbook got to mpl I assume this book
got to Paul, I would hope. So. I mean mal adored,
I mean he adored all of them, right, But you know, Paul
was very special to him. Anduh, you know, Paul had to
go a separate path because of thenature of the breakup, and he was

(38:53):
the one suing in high court,and you know, Mal mourned not being
able to spend time with Paul likehe had and even weeks before his sad,
his sad ending they had reconnected andPaul, being gracious, had extended
opportunities for Mal to be involved inthe Wings Over America leg that was coming,

(39:15):
and of course the spring of nineteenseventy six. But you know,
Mal was blinded by something else,Well said. He would have loved that.
I think you know it. Hewould have been mesmerized by how many
other guys were there. It wouldhave been absolutely stunned that there's an actual
crew of people. He doesn't haveto get every single amp set up,
the drum kittens. Where did allthese eighteen wheelers come from? Oh?

(39:37):
How which one's your van? Yeah? Exactly, Ken Womack, thank you
so much. How do people findit? How do people find you?
Oh, they can find me atmy website at Kennethwomack dot com. But
of course the books Amazon and manybook retailers. We're just so pleased with
the response to it. And itis a labor of love, and thank

(39:59):
you so much for your kind Whereit's Ken, Oh always and forever living
the Beatles legend, the Untold Storyof mal Evans by Kenneth Womack. Continued success
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