West Long Branch Author Writes The Book Beatle Fans Have Been Waiting For
They talk about who “the fifth Beatle” is. I’ve heard producer George Martin. I’ve even heard NYC DJ Murray The K. The truth is it was Mal Evans. He was their go-to guy. He was right in the thick of it. He was their fixer, roadie, personal assistant, tambourine player, confidant and procurer. From 1963 to the 1970 break-up, he was, indeed, The Fifth Beatle. And he came to a shocking violent end at 40 six years later.
Leave it to Kenneth Womack, 57, of West Long Branch, to write Living The Beatles Legend: The Untold Story Of Mal Evans (Dey Street Books), a project that has had Beatle fans buzzing for years. There’s not too many Beatle Scholars in the world. Womack is one. The Historian-Professor at Monmouth University has already written such books as John Lennon 1980: The Last Days in the Life (2020), Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles (2019), and two books on George Martin—Maximum Volume (2017) and Sound Pictures (2018).
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The author maintains that most of what has been written about Evans is wrong. Reportedly, he was granted rare access by the family to the thousands of pages Evans wrote down during those heady years. There’s a great scene in Get Back where Evans stops the cops from stopping the surprise Beatle rooftop concert. Now he finally gets his due.
ORDER / READ: “Living the Beatles Legend” (via Harper Collins)