Anyone who saw Peter Jackson's film Get Back a couple of years ago, about the famous Beatles songwriting sessions in 1969, may remember Mal Evans striking an anvil during an early take of the song Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
Mal was the band’s six -foot-three road manager, fixer, bodyguard and trusted friend, and indeed he’d found the anvil one lunchtime somewhere near the Twickenham studios – in response to a request from Paul McCartney.
Mal started working for the band in 1963 as a driver. When global fame came for the Beatles, he’d become one of only four people in their inner circle – alongside Neil Aspinall, George Martin and Brian Epstein.
Crucially, he kept diaries during that time – the subject of some speculation since his death in 1976 – and now the subject of a new biography, Living the Beatles Legend: On the Road With the Fab Four - The Mal Evans Story by Kenneth Womack, a Beatles expert and professor of English and pop music who has written many books about the band.
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