Life of Beatles' road manager celebrated with museum display
The life of the Beatles' road manager has been celebrated on what would have been his 90th birthday.
Mal Evans was road manager and personal assistant to the band from 1963 until their break-up in 1970 but died six years later when he was shot by police in Los Angeles in the US.
A display dedicated to Mr Evans was revealed at the Liverpool Beatles Museum on Tuesday, which would have been his birthday, in front of his children Julie Rossow and Gary Evans.
Ms Rossow said: "I find it a real honour to be honest; the recognition and the interest people have in him. It's really lovely and very special."
She said interest in his life had grown since he was shown in Peter Jackson's documentary series The Beatles: Get Back, which aired in 2021.
A biography about him, Living The Beatles Legend, written by Kenneth Womack, was published in 2023.
Ms Rossow said: "It's changed my life in ways. People who knew him and knew stories have been able to tell me and I've learnt more about him. It's been an incredible journey."
She added: "I was born in 1966 when he was away with the Beatles and from what I know he was told by them 'your wife's had a baby girl - go and see her'.
"He loved those four boys, to the detriment of his family at times. What a life he had."
Among the items going on display on Tuesday is a signet ring which Mr Evans lost in a poker game to fellow roadie Neil Aspinall - whose son Roag Best runs the museum.
The ring was apparently thrown into the pot by Mr Evans during card games in 1964, when the band stayed in Paris for concerts at the Olympic Theatre.
Ms Rossow said: "I never knew this story. The ring was given to him on his 21st birthday from his parents so it was a bit naughty of him to lose it but he must have been caught in the wildness and excitement of a poker match.
"From speaking to Roag I believe he lost the ring several times and was given it back but lost it finally to Neil."
A portrait of Mr Evans, by artist Dave Miles, was also unveiled on Tuesday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Examiner
17 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Culture That Made Me: Music legend Brush Shiels picks his touchstones
Brendan 'Brush' Shiels, 79, grew up in Phibsboro, Dublin. In 1967, he formed Skid Row, Ireland's seminal rock group, which briefly included Phil Lynott on vocals, and Gary Moore on guitar. The band released two acclaimed records, Skid and 34 Hours, before disbanding. He fronted a show, Off Yer Brush, on RTÉ television for two seasons, 1986-87, and he has released several solo albums. He will perform at Connolly's of Leap, Co Cork, 6pm, Saturday, June 14. See: Save the Last Dance for Me We lived in one room on the Phibsboro Road. Beside us was a pub, across the road was another pub. We had no radio. Seven nights a week, people came out of the pub and would sing for another two hours. Some fella used to sing, 'If I can help somebody as I pass along … Then my living shall not be in vain' again and again. Right at the railings, about a yard away. That's how I learned Save the Last Dance for Me and all these songs – from people singing them outside. After that, we got a radio. I started listening to Saturday Club with Brian Matthew on BBC. I remember hearing the very first Beatles live programme, Too Much Monkey Business. It must have been '63. The Beatles had harmonies and a sound I'd never heard before. I loved them for that. Bob Dylan I couldn't believe Bob Dylan when I first heard him. To this day when I hear Like a Rolling Stone, it has the same effect on me. I've learned hundreds of Bob Dylan songs. I love Desolation Row, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall and Mr. Tambourine Man. I still have the same fascination for his use of lyrics and symbolism. Until he arrived, it was Elvis, Cliff Richard, songs like Take These Chains from My Heart, and The Beatles were all kiss me quick numbers and meeting girls. When Dylan came along, it was a different way with words. I never looked back from that. He was my biggest inspiration. We Gotta Get Out of This Place Funny enough, I started off on the guitar because of The Shadows and that sort of stuff. Then around 1965, I started to hear other things. There was a baseline in The Animals' We Gotta Get Out of This Place, something about it influenced me. It spiked my interest – what you could do with the bass. Chuck Berry There was a bookshop up the road. It had a box of music magazines, all the same, called DownBeat. I got them for next to nothing. They were about jazz in America, like Duke Ellington, Count Basie. My mind went back then to this film I saw when I was about 12 called Jazz on a Summer's Day. It was about the Newport Jazz Festival. This film had a big effect on me. It had all the greatest jazz musicians in America at that time in it. In the middle of it all, this guy Chuck Berry came on, and he does Sweet Little Sixteen. When I saw Chuck Berry I realised that's the only way to do it. Brush Shiels. Night Train The jazz thing was always in the back of my head. I was interested in why the jazz scene was so big in America. A lot of it was hard to follow. I could follow them singing the melody, but once the solo came in and went off on a tangent, I didn't really understand it. Then I read in one of these magazines – I became an expert after reading 72 DownBeat magazines [laughs] – that Ray Brown, the bass player with the Oscar Peterson Trio, was the man to listen to, and the album to listen to was Night Train. That Night Train record changed my life. That's where I went next. Unison Blues DownBeat magazines also said, 'There's a great bass player called Vinnie Burke. Have a listen to him.' He had a track called Unison Blues which is the origin of the Skid Row way of doing things. A lot of the ideas about playing, I got from Vinnie Burke, his bass lines stood out. The sax, the bass and the piano playing the same line in unison gave it a particular sound, which, ultimately, I could hear in Cream and Jimi Hendrix. Lucky enough I came across Gary Moore when he was only 15 and he knew exactly what I was talking about. Phil Lynott Phil Lynott performing with Thin Lizzy at Cork City Hall in 1982. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive The first time I got in touch with Phillo, I got the bus out to his house. I knocked on his door. I went in to say hello to him. He told me he was listening to The Velvet Underground. I said, 'Forget about that.' Then he said, 'Paul Simon's I Am a Rock'. I said, 'No, if you want to come along, we'll try this Jimi Hendrix thing, which is going to be the next big thing.' A couple of days later, he sang Hey, Joe, and that was the start of it. Phillo had film-star appeal. Back in the 1960s, he lacked a bit of confidence, but the potential was unbelievable because he had everything else you needed. But life being the way it is, now he's gone. Somebody said to me once, 'How well did you know him?' I said, 'Well, he came on my honeymoon with me.' That's how close we were. Led Zeppelin Skid Row loved Led Zeppelin. We were playing in the Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles in 1970. Who turns up only John Bonham, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood. We're playing away and John Bonham wants to get up to sing, and Robert Plant says, 'I'll play drums.' So, the two boys got up. These lads from a band called Slammer – I knew them – took photographs and bootlegged the gig. You can still get it on YouTube. You can't buy it. The sound was just noise, but it's up there. John Bonham Led Zeppelin in 1973: From left to right, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham (1947 - 1980), John Paul Jones. (Photo by) John Bonham had a particular way of drumming that we hadn't heard before. It was thunderous. It sounded like an elephant stampede, like a wildebeest with an outboard motor on its back. Carmine Appice from Vanilla Fudge had a similar style. It was the start of all these great drummers like Ginger Baker, the way of doing it with the two bass drums, even though it had been done years before in jazz. It got lost along the way, but very fast playing made a comeback. Charlie Parker Charlie Parker – one of the great saxophonists, one of my biggest influences solo-wise – was in this café once, and Hank Williams' I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, was playing. Somebody asked Charlie Parker, 'Why do you keep putting that on?' He says, 'It's the words, man.' Like he's soloing all night. He's no problem soloing. So, when somebody is singing something like that, and he has felt that bad himself, and put it into words, he wants to listen. A lot of sad songs are about when somebody puts into words what we're all feeling. There's beauty in it.
Irish Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Parade atrocity hit hard in Ireland thanks to our unique links to Liverpool
News of the atrocity which befell the city of Liverpool on Monday quickly reverberated around the globe. Shortly after 6 pm, a 53-year-old man drove into multiple fans who were attending the Reds' bus parade. What started as a truly joyous occasion quickly turned into utter devastation. Nearly 80 people were injured, some of whom remain in a serious condition in hospital. Here, in Ireland, our strong ties with Liverpool meant it hit hard. The decades-long deep-rooted connections between Ireland and the English port city meant the pain and devastation were felt even more deeply here. Figures show there are nearly 500,000 Irish Liverpool fans and it's estimated around 75 per cent of Liverpudlians have Irish ancestry. The link is deeper, though - from music to accents to our vernacular and emigration, there's a lot that connects Ireland with Liverpool. Here, we take a deeper look at the unique Liverpool-Irish links. Everybody knows the Beatles hail from Liverpool. But some might be surprised to learn that the four members of what is arguably the most famous band in the world had Irish roots. John Lennon's grandfather James was born in Down while his great-grandmother, Elizabeth Gildea, hailed from Omagh in Tyrone. Paul McCartney's clan had connections with Monaghan. His maternal grandfather, named Owen Mohan, came from Tullynamallow. Ringo Starr is considered the most English member of the band, but his roots go back to Mayo. George Harrison's family, meanwhile, originally hailed from Wexford as it emerged that they were landowners before being stripped of their land by Oliver Cromwell during the plantations. All the families eventually found their way to Liverpool. During the Beatles' infamous visit to the Irish capital in 1963, Lennon declared: 'We're all Irish!' A more recent musical connection would be Nathan Carter. The 35-year-old Wagon Wheel singer was born in Liverpool to Northern Irish parents. He moved across at 18 and is now based in Fermanagh. Liverpool was also featured in songs by The Dubliners, including The Leavin' of Liverpool and Liverpool Lou. Trade Unionist leader James Larkin, who, along with James Connolly and William O'Brien, founded the Labour Party, was born in Toxteth in Liverpool in January 1874 to Irish emigrants. Big Jim gained national and international acclaim for his part in organising the 1913 strike that sparked the Dublin lockout. The lock-out was an industrial dispute that began over pay and conditions and the right to unionise. It involved around 20,000 workers and 300 employers and lasted from August 1913 to 18 January 1914. It is widely considered the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish history. Another well-known Irish figure with connections to Liverpool was William Butler Yeats. A New York Times article recalls how, as a youngster, he would frequently travel across the Irish Sea to Liverpool on board his grandad's boat. Many Liverpudlians have Irish heritage. Most of this can be traced back to the famine, but some stretches even further back. The Irish Famine began in 1845, at which point around 50,000 Irish settlers were already living in Liverpool. The numbers grew exponentially in the subsequent years as conditions in Ireland continued to deteriorate. A staggering 120,000 Irish arrived in Liverpool during the first three months of 1847. Eight months later, around 300,000 had landed. Most had plans to continue on their journey to the USA, but a large portion, who were considered the poorest and weakest, remained in Liverpool. It's been estimated that over the course of 63 years, between 1850 and 1913, more than 4.5 million Irish men and women left Ireland for Liverpool. The famine had a lasting impact on the demographics of Liverpool. It is believed that an estimated 75 per cent of the city's residents have some Irish ancestry. The company that built the Titanic, known as the White Star Line, had its headquarters on James Street in Liverpool. The infamous ship was constructed in Belfast and set sail from Southampton to the US, stopping in Cork. She was registered in Liverpool and, as a result, bore the city's name on her stern. The ship left for New York on April 10, 1912. In total, 2,208 people were onboard when the ship struck an iceberg. More than 1,500 lost their lives. Many of those onboard the ship, including passengers and staff, had ties to Liverpool. The Scouse accent and particular words and phrases are heavily influenced by the Irish who emigrated there. One example of this is the 'Ta-ra' which is regularly used by Liverpudlians. It is a shortened version of 'take care' and is often used as a way to say goodbye. The exact origins of the phrase are disputed, but one theory is that it emerged from the Irish phrase 'tabhair aire' which means take care. Another example of this is calling someone 'a wool' when they are from outside of Liverpool. It is thought to come from Irish slang when referring to people from the countryside, 'a woolyback'. Other common slang phrases which are heard in both Ireland and Liverpool include words and phrases like 'grand', 'melter', 'gaff', 'baltic' and 'swelterin'' and 'craic'. The roots of the late Cilla Black go back to Ireland. The British singer's great-grandparents were all Irish while her maternal grandfather was born to Irish emigrants in Wales. Her Irishness also shaped her upbringing. She was raised as a Roman Catholic and lived in the Irish-Catholic stronghold of Scotland Road in Liverpool. TV presenter Paul O'Grady, who passed away in 2023, also had strong Irish roots. During his life, he often said he'd love to move to Ireland - particularly to Roscommon. Manchester United ace Wayne Rooney also has links to Ireland and it's been reported he even considered playing for the Boys in Green.
Sunday World
5 days ago
- Sunday World
Barry Keoghan was so nervous meeting Ringo Starr he ‘couldn't look at him'
The 32-year-old is set to play the drummer in an upcoming four-part Beatles biopic. Barry Keoghan has said he was so nervous meeting Ringo Starr that he couldn't even look at him. The 32-year-old Dubliner is set to play The Beatles drummer in an upcoming four-part biopic. 'I sat opposite him and I could not look at him because I was nervous and his wife Barbara was there and she said, 'You can look at him',' he said at Fast Net Film Festival in West Cork this weekend. 'Every time I looked at him I saw myself in his glasses. 'I said to him: 'I am not coming here to quiz you. I am coming to find out what made you and how the contrast was going back to Liverpool after Beatlemania,' he continued. 'We can all do imitation but I wanted to know where it came from. He was so on the money.' Ringo Starr He described doing 'Beatles Bootcamp' as an 'absolute joy', sharing that he's been learning to walk and talk like the 84-year-old. 'It's a place of failing, a place of learning and trying. That's the process I'm in now. It's a playground for me.' 'The drumming is going great,' he continued. 'I've been doing it for like six, seven months. I've got blisters on my hands now.' Keoghan will star alongside Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison. Each of the four films, which will focus on one the members of the band, will be released in the same month as part of The Beatles: A Four-Film Cinematic Event. Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison at the announcement of The Beatles films. Photo: PA Keoghan has recently starred in box office hits such as Saltburn, The Banshees of Inisherin, and Dunkirk. Earlier this month, he revealed he was not allowed into a Dublin cinema while attending the premiere of Dunkirk, as he had previously been barred. During a tour of the city with Hollywood Authentic, Keoghan revealed that he was known to staff in Cineworld, and when he showed up to the Dunkirk premiere, they didn't believe he was in the film. 'This is the main cinema I used to go to, on the mitch from school,' he said of the Parnell Street picture house. Keoghan went on to explain that when he had no money to pay in he would break in through a back stairway, which eventually got him barred. 'I remember coming to the Dunkirk premiere, and getting in here, and them not knowing that I was in the film. 'They were like, 'You're not allowed in.' 'I said, 'It's my movie, though.' 'They were like, 'No, no. You're not allowed in.' 'It was a whole thing… It was just a turning point for me.' 'All the people in the cinema now, I know,' he added, pointing at a poster of Chris Hemsworth, adding: 'I just worked with him.' Barry Keoghan News in 90 Seconds - May 28th
