Mal Evans
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Malcolm Evans (May 27, 1935 - January 5, 1976) is best known as the roadie, assistant, and friend to the hugely popular rock band The Beatles.
Evans was working as a communications technician for the Post Office in 1962 when he first heard the Beatles perform at Liverpool's Cavern Club. He eventually became friends with the band, and was soon hired as roadie.
Evans drove the van for the band on tour, set up and tested their equipment, and then packed it all up again.
When the Beatles quit touring in 1966, Evans continued to be friends with the band and to work with them in the studio. Evans even contributed to many Beatles recordings, including lending his voice to "Yellow Submarine", playing the Hammond organ on "You Won't See Me", counting off the measures in the breaks of the song "A Day in the Life", (Evans was also one of the five piano players simultaneously hitting the last chord of the song), harmonica on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", tambourine on "Dear Prudence", trumpet on "Helter Skelter", and background vocals on "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" and the unreleased track "What's The New Mary Jane".
In the Let It Be film, Evans can also be seen playing the anvil during early versions of Paul McCartney's "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", although he did not play it on the actual recording.
In 1968, Evans discovered the band Badfinger (then known as The Iveys) and introduced them to the Beatles, who eventually signed them to Apple Records.
Evans was shot and killed by the Los Angeles police on January 5, 1976, when the police mistakenly thought that the air pistol he was holding was an actual revolver.
A suitcase that he was carrying at the time, containing unreleased recordings, photos, and other memorabilia, was lost by the police during the investigation, and became known as the lost "Mal Evans Archive". It was reported in June 2004 that an English tourist, Frasier Claughton, bought the suitcase for around $36 at a flea market just outside of Melbourne, Australia, unaware of its contents. By August of 2004, however, experts had determined that the documents within the suitcase were in fact photocopies made in the 1990s and declared the "archive" a fake.