Mal Evans

Musical contributions Evans contributed to many recordings, because Starr could not lift the hammer high enough to get the right sound and keep in time with the song. For reasons unclear, Evans did not receive any royalties and stayed at his £38-a-week pay (£ in modern currency). In Help!, Evans played a confused channel swimmer who pops up through an ice-hole in Austria, and on a beach in the Bahamas. Evans and Aspinall were asked to find and hire the actors that were needed to perform in the Magical Mystery Tour film, and to hire an old 60-seater coach, on which they were told to paint the Magical Mystery Tour logo, which McCartney had designed. McCartney then saved Evans from police arrest. The Beatles were often filmed by Evans during his time with them (without sound), and a collection of his own film recordings was later released on DVD.

After the Beatles In 1968, Evans had seen the group Badfinger (then known as The Iveys) play live, and suggested that they be signed to Apple. Evans then produced several of their songs in 1969 and 1970, the most notable of which was "No Matter What", which charted on Billboard Top 10 in December 1970. Evans also discovered the group Splinter and brought them to the Apple label, although they would subsequently move to George Harrison's Dark Horse Records. Evans' other production credits include Jackie Lomax's 1969 single "New Day" (on Apple) and some of the tracks on Keith Moon's only solo album Two Sides of the Moon (1975).

Evans performed chimes, handclaps, and backing vocals on John Lennon's first post-Beatles single, "Instant Karma!" (1970). Evans separated from his wife in 1973 and moved to Los Angeles where Lennon had moved to live with May Pang after his own separation from Yoko Ono. Evans is credited on Harrison's All Things Must Pass and the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album as providing "tea and sympathy". Evans cowrote "You and Me (Babe)" with Harrison. The track appeared on Starr's 1973 solo album Ringo. He also cowrote the Splinter song "Lonely Man", the musical centrepiece of Little Malcolm, an Apple feature film produced by Harrison. A rare interview appearance by Evans was included in the 1975 ABC television special David Frost Salutes the Beatles.

Evans was asked to produce the group Natural Gas, and was working on a book of memoirs called Living the Beatles' Legend which he was due to deliver to his publishers, Grosset & Dunlap, on 12 January 1976. Evans was depressed about the separation from his wife (who had asked for a divorce before Christmas) even though he was then living with his new girlfriend, Fran Hughes, in a rented motel apartment at 8122 West 4th Street in Los Angeles.

Death On 4 January 1976, Evans was so despondent that Hughes phoned John Hoernie, Evans' co-writer for his biography, and asked him to visit them. Hoernie saw Evans "really doped-up and groggy" but Evans told Hoernie to make sure he finished Living the Beatles' Legend. Hoernie helped Evans up to an upstairs bedroom, but during an incoherent conversation, Evans picked up a loaded Winchester rifle. Hoernie struggled with Evans, but Evans, being much stronger, held onto the weapon.

Hughes then phoned the police and told them that Evans was confused, had a rifle, The police fired six shots, four hitting Evans and killing him. Evans previously had been awarded the badge of "Honorary Sheriff of Los Angeles County", but in the Los Angeles Times he was referred to as a "jobless former road manager for the Beatles".

Evans was cremated on 7 January 1976 in Los Angeles. None of the former Beatles attended his funeral, but Harry Nilsson, George Martin, Neil Aspinall and other friends did. George Harrison arranged for Evans' family to receive £5,000, as Evans had not maintained his life insurance premiums, and was not entitled to a pension. In 2010, a double-sided sheet of paper containing the hand-written lyrics and notes to "A Day in the Life" were sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York to an anonymous American buyer for $1.2 million (£810,000). Other lyrics collected by Evans have been subject to legal action over the years: In 1996, McCartney went to the High Court in England to prevent the sale of the original lyrics to "With a Little Help from My Friends" that Evans' ex-wife had tried to sell, by claiming that the lyrics were collected by Evans as a part of his duties, and therefore belonged to the Beatles, collectively. A 2004 report of the discovery of a further collection of Evans' Beatles' memorabilia proved to be false.

A notebook in which McCartney wrote the lyrics for "Hey Jude" was sold in 1998, for £111,500. The notebook also contains lyrics for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "All You Need Is Love". It also contained lyrics, notes, drawings and poems by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr, as well as by Evans.

In July 2012, a solo play about Evans by actor Nik Wood-Jones premiered at the Cavern in Liverpool before a run at the Edinburgh Fringe.

In December 2021, it was reported that a biography of Evans, written by Beatles scholar Kenneth Womack, was to be published by HarperCollins's Dey Street Books in 2023, to be followed the next year by material from Evans's diary and archives. The biography, entitled Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans, was published on 14 November 2023.

Evans appears in the 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. The machine learning software and models developed by WingNut Films that were used to clean and isolate instruments and vocal tracks from single-track recordings for the documentary, and subsequently used for the 2022 release of Revolver and "Now and Then", was named MAL (machine-assisted learning) after Evans, and as an homage to HAL 9000.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill will portray Evans in The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, an upcoming film series of Beatles biopics directed by Sam Mendes.