Tragedy of roadie on £38 a week who worshipped the Fab Four – but died in a hail of police bullets
MODERN rock bands on tour can have technical and security teams running into hundreds. But the Beatles travelled around their crazy world with just two roadies – Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans.
A former Post Office employee, Evans was working as a bouncer at Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club when the band’s manager, Brian Epstein, recruited him to help Aspinall shield them from the first throes of Beatlemania in 1963.
He stayed with them, as did Aspinall, until their breakup in 1970. And the notebook record he kept of the year 1967-68 opens a new window on this most momentous phase of their career. Along with his lists of his duties are handwritten lyrics by the Beatles themselves of songs in development – All You Need Is Love, Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite, A Day In
The Life – and Paul McCartney’s first rough sketch for the cover of their album masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
A big bear of a man, Evans was too soft-hearted to really bounce anyone. But he was tireless in attending to his four charges’ whims and devoted his life to them, often not seeing his wife, Lil, and young son for months.
When we spoke for my Beatles biography, Shout, Lil told me: ‘I used to tell him, “You’re a person in your own right – you don’t need to follow others” but he was starstruck.’
Evans appeared in all four of their films, sang with the chorus as they performed All You Need Is Love by satellite to an audience of millions, and studied Transcendental Meditation with them in India.
His role became demanding in diverse new ways when the band gave up touring in 1966. It followed a disastrous visit to the Philippines when the Beatles were accused of discourtesy to Imelda Marcos, wife of the then President. Just as their flight was about to leave Manila, Epstein and Evans were ordered off the plane. It was only to negotiate a bribe, but Evans thought he was about to be killed.
Paul McCartney celebrated his liberation from ‘the road’ with an extended holiday in Kenya, accompanied by Evans. On the return flight, Paul had the idea of a concept album with the Beatles portraying an imaginary band led by ‘Sergeant Pepper’, and sketched a possible cover in the ever-present notebook. It went on to record Evans’s missions on a project for which expense was no object: ‘Two bass guitars… Sgt. Pepper buttons … paint piano for John…’
He played organ notes in For The Benefit of Mr Kite and helped to sound the crashing E major chord from three pianos and the harpsichord that ends A Day In The Life.
Though deeply respectful to all his charges, he couldn’t hide his disapproval of John’s desertion of his wife, Cynthia, and five year-old son Julian to go off with Yoko Ono. Paul had voiced his own disapproval by writing Hey Jude as a consoling message to Julian.
The notebook contains Evans’s covert rewrite of the lyric, urging John to return to Cynthia: ‘Admit your feeling and don’t forget her.’
He certainly didn’t get rich by working for the Beatles. Even after being promoted to ‘personal assistant’, he stayed on £38 per week. He later claimed his contributions to the records entitled him to a share of their royalties, but that didn’t happen. After their breakup, he tried to forge a new career as a record producer without success.
In January 1976, he was living in LA with a woman named Fran Hunter, working on an autobiography with ghostwriter John Hoernie while struggling with alcoholism and depression. One night, a worried Hunter called Hoernie to their apartment to find Evans incoherent on Valium and waving what looked like an air rifle. Hunter called the police. After he’d ignored repeated orders to put the gun down, four officers shot him dead. He was 40.
His funeral took place in LA with none of the Beatles and no family present but a sizeable crowd including the singer Harry Nilsson, who arranged for him to be cremated and his ashes to be sent back to Lil by ordinary surface mail.
What then befell this former Post Office employee’s remains had a gruesome appropriateness. They got lost in the post.