Post by TotalInformation on Mar 20, 2005 0:31:35 GMT -5
March 20, 2005
McCartney wrote Sgt Pepper ‘with a little help from his roadie friend’<br>A ROAD manager for the Beatles who was shot dead by police in Los Angeles left behind diaries in which he claimed to have co-written some of the group’s songs, writes Maurice Chittenden.
Mal Evans, who died 29 years ago after allegedly brandishing a rifle during a domestic row, said he helped Sir Paul McCartney write the title track to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Evans also claimed he helped to compose Fixing a Hole — or Where the Rain Comes In, as he called it — as McCartney sat at a piano in the Beatle’s home. He hoped to get royalties but instead had to make do with £38-a-week pay.
Extracts from the diaries, which span the life of the group’s fame, are published for the first time today in The Sunday Times Magazine.
Evans was a phone engineer in Liverpool in the early 1960s when he first saw the Beatles perform at the Cavern Club. His 6ft 3in frame and gentle manner helped him secure a part-time job as a bouncer and when he became friends with the group their manager, Brian Epstein, offered him a job. He went on to play the Hammond organ on You Won’t See Me on the Rubber Soul album in 1965, bass harmonium on Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! on the Sgt Pepper album and a piano on A Day In the Life on the same album.
A diary entry in February 1967 says: “Sergeant Pepper sounds good. Paul tells me that I will get royalties on the song — great news, now perhaps a new home.”<br>
Neither McCartney nor the band’s Apple label would comment. However, Keith Badman, author of The Beatles Off the Record, said he had obtained a tape of Evans talking months before his death in which he repeated the claims. “Mal said he was asked if he minded if they did not put his name on the song because Lennon-McCartney was a really hot item,” said Badman.
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1533142,00.html
McCartney wrote Sgt Pepper ‘with a little help from his roadie friend’<br>A ROAD manager for the Beatles who was shot dead by police in Los Angeles left behind diaries in which he claimed to have co-written some of the group’s songs, writes Maurice Chittenden.
Mal Evans, who died 29 years ago after allegedly brandishing a rifle during a domestic row, said he helped Sir Paul McCartney write the title track to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Evans also claimed he helped to compose Fixing a Hole — or Where the Rain Comes In, as he called it — as McCartney sat at a piano in the Beatle’s home. He hoped to get royalties but instead had to make do with £38-a-week pay.
Extracts from the diaries, which span the life of the group’s fame, are published for the first time today in The Sunday Times Magazine.
Evans was a phone engineer in Liverpool in the early 1960s when he first saw the Beatles perform at the Cavern Club. His 6ft 3in frame and gentle manner helped him secure a part-time job as a bouncer and when he became friends with the group their manager, Brian Epstein, offered him a job. He went on to play the Hammond organ on You Won’t See Me on the Rubber Soul album in 1965, bass harmonium on Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! on the Sgt Pepper album and a piano on A Day In the Life on the same album.
A diary entry in February 1967 says: “Sergeant Pepper sounds good. Paul tells me that I will get royalties on the song — great news, now perhaps a new home.”<br>
Neither McCartney nor the band’s Apple label would comment. However, Keith Badman, author of The Beatles Off the Record, said he had obtained a tape of Evans talking months before his death in which he repeated the claims. “Mal said he was asked if he minded if they did not put his name on the song because Lennon-McCartney was a really hot item,” said Badman.
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1533142,00.html
