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This is later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews podcast war What You Hear Weekday

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Afternoon's on the Drive. Kenneth Walmack
is one of the world's foremost writers and

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thinkers about everything Beatles. He's written
many volumes before about the topic, and

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his newest creation is Living the Beatles
Legend, The Untold Story of mal Evans.

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Let's start with who Malcolm Evans was, Kenneth Womack. Well, he

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was the guy who essentially handled all
of the needs of the Beatles. He

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was their fixer. He was the
fellow who set up their equipment tore it

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down. He was the guy who
would stay up all night with him while

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they mode these amazing recordings. He
really was a jack of all trades,

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and he was there for them throughout
the entire time of Beatlemania and beyond.

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Did he start before the Beatles caught
on? Oh? Yes, he had

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known them them when Pete Best was
still in the band in nineteen sixty one,

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and he was there as they were
gearing up for their first number one

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Stringles. In fact, he helped
with the promotion, and then when things

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got really hot in summer of sixty
three, punintended that mouth stepped up and

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joined them full time, left his
really pretty good job with the British Post

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Office to help out the boys.
How did he meet them initially? Was

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he just going to maybe one of
the clubs where they were performing. Oh?

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No, He was absolutely at the
cavern. Right he went down those

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steps, He heard the rock and
roll and just thought, man, this

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is for me. Sounds like Elvis. He loved Elvis like a lot of

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folks during those days and for now, and that was too much for him

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to resist. They asked him to
be a bouncer because he was a big

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guy, but only because it would
help him get close to the band.

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It was just so into the music
and when it time, because they were

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so familiar with him and trusted him
when the king times more, mal was

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really the natural choice. The book
is about Malcolm Evans, the beatles longtime

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roady, personal assistant and devoted friend. Kenneth Womack is the author of this

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little known chapter in the life of
the of the Beatles, living the Beatles

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legend, The untold story of mal
Evans. What is it about the Beatles

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music? I mean, I'll tell
you what I experienced when I first heard

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it, and it was early seventies. Sister had just bought the Sergeant Pepper's

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Lonely Hearts Club band album, the
Beg's remake for that film that they did.

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I heard the music and I thought, well, let me go back

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and hear the original, and I
started looking and listening in the original.

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And I shared a house with a
lot of people, so I would have

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to put on the headphones to listen
to music so as not to disturb everybody.

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But I think putting on those headphones
and hearing what they were doing engineering

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one was for that time for me
was Wow, this is amazing. The

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production value of these songs. Yeah, they are incredibly well made. You

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know, we can chalk that up
to George Martin. You listen to the

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Beatles and then you compare them to
most, if not all, the acts

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in the nineteen sixties. They just
sound better. And a lot of that

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has to do with working at EMI
in Northwest London. It also has to

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do with George Martin, who is
just the perfect producer for them. But

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those recordings are going to stand the
test of time because they don't sound like

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some scratchy outtake from you know,
Days Gone by they are very well recorded,

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and of course then you throw in
the fact that these guys could really

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play, and you've got something.
Well, it's amazing too. None of

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them are classically trained, yet a
lot of the production value of the music

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was I think that's where Martin came
in, and because he had recorded so

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many classical recordings, and when the
Beatles would say we want it to sound

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like this, he would say,
yes, I know exactly how to do

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that. But back to mal Evans, which is what the book is about,

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Kenneth Walmack is with us, and
I guess Mal also had a sense

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of discretion because you didn't hear that
much about him, No, you didn't,

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and he understood that in ways that
again we should be really impressed with,

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because you know, these were different
times. Mal understood his role and

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he understood that part of his job
was to be discreed. Like you said,

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if part of his job was to
hang back so that you know,

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the Beatles would have space, was
his job was to make space. His

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job was to move people along.
But at the same time he was very

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cognizant of not wanting somebody to say, wow, those Beatles treated me really

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badly. He didn't want those kinds
of stories out there, so he would

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be very careful to ensure that folks
felt like they got their money's worth,

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that they got their times worth.
But they didn't. Kenneth Womack, he's

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one of the world's most foremost writers
and thinkers about the Beatles. And this

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book is about the living of the
Beatles. Legend the untold story of Malcolm

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Evans, one of their confidants and
roadies. And did he endeared himself to

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all of the members? Then?
I gather not just one or two.

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Oh No, he was very close
with all four of them. When the

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touring days thankfully ended in nineteen sixty
six, his family and him moved from

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Liverpool down to London so they could
be in the center of where all the

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boys lived. Mal had to have
working relationships with everybody, and he was

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so good at it. They would
sometimes get jealous of each other. Whoever

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had mal really storing that particular day. He also contributed to speaking of the

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production value of the songs, He
contributed to some of the background instrumentalists and

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lyrists. Yeah, he played on
a good two dozen songs or so.

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You know. He would help out
if they needed a word here and there,

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he would. You know, somebody
needed to play a piano note,

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he would do it. You know, it didn't matter. He plays on

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that gigantic chord. At the end
of the day in the Light, oh

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Mal was they just had so few
people in their orbit, which was probably

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smart of them in retrospect, because
you know, if you don't have an

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entourage that you're constantly traveling and what
round with, you get more work done.

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You're not having to tend to the
entourage. So you know, having

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only Mal and Neil asp and all
the other the other road manager with them

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meant that they got a lot more
done. You mentioned that chord. That's

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one of my favorite production values because
I've listened to it again and again and

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again and you don't even hear any
breathing, which is incredible considering how they

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would record songs back then. That's
yeah, a day in the Light.

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I taught it last week in class
and what the it's a map work.

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It is just incredible. You can
hear Mal counting down the measures before the

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during the orchestration, because they needed
a way to get from the verses to

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the middle section with McCartney. What
what a Tube. I mean that thing

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is, that's one of the great
works, along with The Wasteland and you

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know Ulystes of the twentieth century,
Kenneth Wolmack. The name of the book

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is Living the Beatles Legend, The
Untold Story of mal Evans, available everywhere

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you get books. And we thank
you for joining us today, Thanks for

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listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to

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listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation