NEAR the end of Living The Beatles Legend, his lengthy biography of the band’s gofer Mal Evans, Kenneth Womack quotes anote from John Lennon. The Beatle has heard that Evans is turning his diary into a memoir and offers apastiche of its likely contents. “‘Tues: 1965’,” Lennon writes. “‘Got up, loaded van’ …should be alaugh.”
It’s aharsh judgement, but not entirely inaccurate. True, Lennon’s quip underestimates the many roles assumed by Evans after he graduated from being apart-time bouncer at the Cavern. It also underscores the way he was taken for granted. What did Evans do? He was avan driver, aroadie, a bodyguard, agatekeeper, aprocurer of girls, adrug supplier, abooze cabinet (his “sin kit”, Womack writes, acted as “an alcoholic complement to his dope bag”). He was ahousekeeper to Paul McCartney, finding Martha the sheepdog and her irritable bowels “an ongoing nuisance”. He played trumpet on “Helter Skelter” (he could not play the trumpet). He provided acondom for amicrophone when Lennon wanted to record underwater during the “Yellow Submarine” session. He made beans on toast for Ringo. In his own account, he co-wrote “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” but was charmed out of acredit by McCartney. He delayed the police during The Beatles’ rooftop performance. That’s him, in the horn rims, at the climax of the Get Back documentary.
Mal Evans wasn’t just thereabouts, he was there, in the eye of the storm. What did he see? Sadly, Evans isn’t around to elucidate; he was shot dead by Los Angeles police in January 1976 during a depressive episode in which he refused to surrender his Winchester rifle. The details of his evident despair are shocking and quite at odds with the Beatles nostalgia which dominates the book. “Please forgive,” Evans appended to his last will and testament, just acouple of days before his death. “I loved the world, but I can’t cope.” Kenneth Womack adds, heavy-handedly, that when Evans died, he slumped backwards, “mere feet away from the diaries, photographs, and other attendant memorabilia comprising his life’s work”.