Mal Evans's Beatles Memoir Publishes in December — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- With the Beatles, Mal Evans's long-planned memoir, will be published for the first time in December, a 95,000-word manuscript assembled by Beatles expert Kenneth Womack from material Evans stored in six boxes.
- Mal Evans, the Beatles' road manager, had planned to publish the memoir with the band's permission before his 1976 death aged 40; he was shot by Los Angeles police, and his distraught state over his marriage led to the belief that it was "suicide by cop" after he pointed an air rifle at officers.
- Kenneth Womack drew on the manuscript for his 2023 Evans biography and holds all the cassette recordings of Evans dictating into a portable recorder in 1975 with a hired stenographer.
- Elvis Presley at his Bel Air home in August 1965: Evans devotes pages to the one-off meeting, calling it "the biggest day" of his years with the Beatles, while Womack says the complete record settles writers' debate; Evans wrote that Elvis played them Beatles LPs before finding each of them a guitar.
- The Beatles endured what Evans called "a morning of terror" in the Philippines after declining an invitation to an official event with first lady Imelda Marcos: he reported promoters' staff carrying automatic pistols, a gunman pressing him for autographed photos, and jostling at immigration where he says he could not retaliate.
- Cavern Club — Evans went from bouncer at the Liverpool club to the band's roadie in their early days, keeping diaries and notebooks and gathering thousands of photographs, discarded lyric sheets and receipts, material that underpins a book featuring about 400 photographs, some never seen before.
- Magical Mystery Tour — the memoir follows the band from the Help! album through the Magical Mystery Tour EP to the Get Back single sessions and their final studio years.
Why it matters: Beatles scholars and fans gain a 95,000-word eyewitness record this December, including what Womack calls the complete account of the August 1965 Elvis meeting, plus about 400 photographs, some never seen before. Womack already used the manuscript for his 2023 biography; this edition brings it to readers for the first time.
Ask SkimNews
