If you’ve watched the Beatles’ “Get Back” docuseries on Disney Plus, you’ve seen the Beatles’ long time road manager Mal Evans. Throughout the eight hours he’s constantly called upon by the group to supply equipment, fix things, shlep stuff, etc. One of them will say, “Mal?” and Evans pops in looking like a young Gerard Depardieu sporting thick eyeglasses.
Now Evans’s biography will be published by Harper Collins, followed by his archives, next year. Evans was killed in 1976 at age 40 by stupid Los Angeles Police Department officers in his rented apartment. They confused his air gun with a real one and just shot him dead. Evans was separated from his wife, who’d recently asked for a divorce. The Beatles did nothing for his family. According to Wikipedia, Paul McCartney once sued them for trying to make money selling handwritten lyrics.
But now Evans will have his say, from the grave. Beatles scholar and author Kenneth Womack has worked with his family to put the projects together. They will be invaluable documents for Beatles scholarship and history. Evans was hired in 1963 and worked with the group right to the last day.
“My dad meant the world to me,” Evans’ son Gary said in a statement. “He was my hero. Before Ken joined the project, I thought I knew the story of my dad. But what I knew was in monochrome; 15 months later it is like The Wizard of Oz (dad’s favorite film) because Ken has added so much color, so much light to his story. Ken has shown me that dad was the Beatles’ greatest friend. He was lucky to meet them, but they had more good fortune with dad walking down the Cavern steps for the first time.”
The Evans family likely been stewing since Mal’s death. They’ll finally get to his story and make some money from it. They deserve it.
