The Gentle Giant : Mal Evans

Mal Evans by Guest Blogger Jackie Spencer

Hi there, I'm Jackie. I've been a tour guide in the City of Liverpool since 1995, and in the tourism business since I was only sixteen...all those years ago! My private tours are the real deal for Beatles Fans travelling Across the Universe to see my fabulous City. I hold the coveted Blue Badge, the top qualification in tour guiding as recognised by travel companies Worldwide and am one of Liverpool's few officially certified Beatle Guides.

 

After working on the Magical Mystery Tour bus for several years, I realised that some fans wanted more than just a coach tour and so set up the absolute first organised private taxi tours of The Beatles Liverpool in 1998 (a good 10 years before any of the others claiming to be the first). This won me the title of Merseyside Small Tourism Business of the Year in 2001. I have been awarded the Trip Advisor Certificate of excellence every year since 2011, which has now earned me a place in the Trip Advisor Hall of Fame.  More recently I was awarded the Bespoke Tour Operator of the Year, and Tour Guide of the Year categories at the Luxury Travel Awards.

 

I have been recognised as a Beatles expert (to me I'm just a fan) and was chosen to work with Cirque Du Soleil when they researched the ‘Love’ show. I've also worked with many VIP’s and celebrities, advised film & television companies including MTV & VH1 and have appeared in several Beatles documentaries. Most recently has been the upcoming Stars North production, "Pre:Fab', the life of Colin Hanton. I also collaborated with the wonderful Lush Spa as they created a Beatles themed treatment.

 

I can be heard regularly on Sirius Radio Beatles Channel talking about Liverpool Beatle Locations and was delighted when the producers of Carpool Karaoke featured my tweet on the most successful Paul McCartney edition. I'd love to think Paul OK'd that!

 

With the tourist industry currently at a standstill because of the pandemic I was happy to take up the offer to do a guest blog on ‘There Are Places I Remember’ (“about whatever I wanted”).

 

One of the main things I took from the whole ‘Get Back’ series was the fact that Mal Evans was always there for the Beatles. He’s one of the heroes of the film, especially in the final episode where he does his best to keep the Police detained until the Beatles finish their rooftop concert.  Officially their road manager and minder but so much more, one of the loyal and trusted friends from Liverpool who the Beatles took with them on their amazing journey and remained with them until the very end. I wanted to find out more about Mal and his early life and the important places in his story.

31 Lorne Street, Fairfield, L7

Malcolm Frederick Evans was born on 27 May 1935 at 31 Lorne Street in the district of Fairfield of Liverpool, not far from Newsham Park.  This was in fact his Grandparents home where his Mum had grown up.  His Mum was Joan Hazel Evans. His Grandfather was Alexander and according to the 1911 census he was a coachbuilder - a man from the motor trade. His wife was called Annie. 

It gets confusing because their daughter Joan Hazel Evans met and married Frederick William Evans, so she never changed her surname, and despite Evans being a very Welsh name we have to go back about five generations to find anyone in either family actually born in Wales.

When Mal was just a couple of years old his family were given social housing, a corporation house at 75 Waldgrave Road, Wavertree and this was where he was to live right up until his marriage.

75 Waldgrave Road, L15  

Mal lived here with his Mum and Dad, Fred and Joan and three younger sisters from around 1938 until 1957. 

Waldgrave Road is the home that Mal’s own children Gary and Julie remember visiting to see their grandparents.

He attended Northway Primary School, which is still there today, facing Mal's house, and later The Holt High School for boys on Queens Drive near Childwall Fiveways, known today as Childwall Sports and Science Academy.

Mal's father Fred worked in the fruit warehouses. Ironic that Mal was to work in one too.... the Cavern Club!

Mal met local Liverpool girl Lily White at New Brighton funfair, just a ferry across the Mersey.

They were married on 28 September 1957 in the magnificent St Agnes and St Pancras Church on Ullet Road, close to Sefton Park.

For the first couple of years of married life Mal and Lily Evans lived here at 12 Kenmare Road, a street of terraced houses off Smithdown Road, Wavertree near Sefton General Hospital.  

28 Hillside Road, L18

Mal had a decent steady job as a telephone engineer for the General Post Office and they moved to 28 Hillside Road, in the Mossley Hill district of Liverpool. A couple of years later their first child, Gary, was born in October 1961.

Mal, Lil and Gary Evans.

To put this area into perspective it’s a really nice part of Liverpool.  At the bottom end of the street, if you were to take a right turn that would bring you to the famous Penny Lane.  A left turn would take you to Allerton, the area where Paul McCartney was living. 

At the top end of the street is Menlove Avenue, where John Lennon was living with Aunt Mimi.

Paul makes an unannounced trip to Liverpool and other recent Beatles' related events

Hello everybody,

I hope you’re all keeping safe and well as we head into what promises to be a busy period for Beatles fans. Some of you are no doubt already enjoying the 50th anniversary re-release of the Let It Be album and, like me, looking forward to watching the companion film, Peter Jackson’s three-part ‘Get Back’ on the Disney+ channel starting 25th November. 

Ahead of that we get Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present book on 2 November, and the recently published sequel to his Grandude children’s book. Not only that, but Abbey Road studios in London has also today announced they are opening up their world-famous Studio 2 for a series of lectures to be held over two weekends 13th-14th and 20th-21st November. 

As you might expect, with so much to promote there have been all manner of videos, social media postings, press and television interviews, a surprising number of which have featured a little nod to Liverpool in some way, most of which involve Paul. I thought it would be interesting to compile them all here because any new photo, film clip, document or anecdote is always interesting.

What We Did On Our Holidays: Cornwall 2020-21

Operated by Cavern City Tours, the colourful Magical Mystery Tour bus is a common sight on my travels around south Liverpool, our paths crossing as it takes its latest passengers on another fun and fascinating two hour tour of the Beatles' Liverpool, which, according to their website, promises to visit all the places associated with John, Paul, George and Ringo as they grew up, met and formed the band that would take the pop world by storm. 

Well, all the places that would more than satisfy casual fans or cruise-ship tourists with a couple of hours to spend on land, and that's fair enough. But as regular readers of this blog will know, that's really only the tip of the iceberg. By my current estimation I think there's in excess of 800 places in and around the city and the Wirral with a Beatle connection. Try cramming all of those into two hours! 

The livery of the modern tour bus is of course based on the coach used by the Beatles in their 1967 television special Magical Mystery Tour which featured several scenes filmed in Cornwall, south-west England. As the pandemic has pretty much restricted any foreign travel for the last two years, Cornwall has also been the destination for my own family holidays. (I refuse to use the word 'staycation', and so should you. It will fall out of use soon with any luck).

Liverpool, Merseyside (top centre) and Newquay, Cornwall bottom left (Google Maps image)

Newquay, a town on Cornwall's north coast is one of the UK's most popular holiday destinations. I spent several summers there as a child with my family, and several more with my wife before we had children. Last year was our first time back since 2003. I love the place. It's full of happy memories, playing on the beach, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, bodyboarding, day trips to St. Ives, Land's End, the grey seal sanctuary and the Poldark mine, and in later years, drinking with friends on the beach. Away from Liverpool it's probably the place I feel most at home and certainly the most relaxed.

Newquay was (purely co-incidentally I promised my long-suffering wife) where the Beatles stayed for the three days in September 1967 during filming.  And so, in a dramatic break from the usual Beatles' Liverpool Locations I bring you:  

There Are Places I Remember Holiday Edition:

Cornwall Beatles Locations 1967 and 2020/1.

The Beatles Live! (Liverpool 1962) (part one)

1962

It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage.  

Christmas with the McCartney family, 1968

Merseyside,

Christmas 1968

'They may not look much,’ Paul would say in adult life of his Liverpool family, having been virtually everywhere and seen virtually everything there is to see in this world. ‘They’re just very ordinary people, but by God they’ve got something - common sense, in the truest sense of the word. I’ve met lots of people, [but] I have never met anyone as interesting, or as fascinating, or as wise, as my Liverpool family.’

Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, by Howard Sounes

The Beatles Live! (Liverpool 1961)

Following the positive reception to my recent post John Lennon: A Childhood in Photographs I thought I'd try something similar with all the photos I've collected which show the Beatles in performance at various venues in Liverpool and the Wirral.

It turns out that there are many more than I'd realised,  so many in fact that I've decided to break the post into three years - 1961, 1962 and 1963.

Of course the Beatles were also photographed in Liverpool in 1960. These images all originate from a single date, 10 May, when the group auditioned for Larry Parnes. I have already included these in an earlier post which you can view here.   

There are also a number of photographs from the Quarry Men and Japage 3 era.  No doubt there will be a post using these in the near future, but not yet, I'm still trying to create the definitive chronology of that 1956-59 period.

Photograph Smile

137 Gateacre Park Drive

Liverpool

L25 4UE

I've previously written about John and Yoko's visit to Liverpool in June 1969 on this blog (you can read about it here).  Another photo from the visit has just turned up. 

This is Yoko's daughter Kyoko Cox, and John's son Julian pictured on the driveway at 137 Gateacre Park Drive (see below) just before they set off on the long drive up to Scotland to see John's Aunt Mater and Uncle Bert in Edinburgh.

Mimi Mendip

251 Menlove Avenue

Woolton,

Liverpool,

Lancashire,

England

Circa 5 September 1960, John Lennon sent his Aunt Mimi a postcard from Hamburg. 

Dear Mimi,

Sorry I haven't written much but we're terribly busy and don't finish playing 'till about 2 in the morning and by the time we've eaten we're "dead beats."

This is the street we playing (the little yellow bit at the end). I'll write a proper letter soon as I get time. I hope you're well and everything  and don't worry about me I'm eating and sleeping well and keeping out of trouble xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    Ok and no trouble. I'll be home in 5 weeks I think (we might be going to Berlin).

cheerio,

Love John

You can just imagine Mimi simultaneously smiling and tutting as she read it. 

The postcard appears in the new book, The Beatles Mach Shau in Hamburg, by Thorsten Knublauch, which looks to be the final, definitive word on the Beatles in Germany. 

The first run of 500 copies has already sold out. A reprint is currently underway, and you can order a copy here: 

Accosted by a Rozzer

Empire Theatre

Lime Street

Liverpool 1

I previously wrote about the Beatles last but one appearance in their home city here

Here are a couple more photos taken on the day of that appearance (8 November 1964). Paul making polite conversation with Joseph Wright Teesdale Smith, the Chief Constable of Liverpool before the Beatles' performance. 

The other three were presumably as far away as they could get.  

Liverpool Airport, Speke, 10 July 1964. The Beatles arrive for the Northern Premiere of 'A Hard Day's Night'. Note the imposing figure of Chief Constable Teesdale Smith to the left of Derek Taylor.  A home visit from the Beatles demanded the presence of the top man.

The Tram Sheds with no Trams

Former Tram Sheds adjacent to the Substation,
Now known as the Penny Lane Emporium

Smithdown Road,

Wavertree,

L15 5AF

John Lennon: ‘In My Life’ started out as a bus journey from my house on 251 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place that I could remember. And it was ridiculous. This is before even ‘Penny Lane’ was written and I had Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Tram Sheds – Tram Sheds are the depot just outside Penny Lane – and it was the most boring sort of ‘What I Did on my Holidays Bus Trip’ song and it wasn’’t working at all. I cannot do this! But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. [1]  

So where exactly where these Tram Sheds that John was still thinking about in 1965? That's what fellow historian and Beatles blogger Steve Bradley wanted to know when he messaged me last week.  

The answer is that they were just around the corner from the 'Penny Lane' bus shelter familiar to Beatle fans the world over. The circular shelter can be seen bottom right in the above photo, while the tram sheds were once sited where the rectangular, overgrown area is to the left of centre.  The tram (later bus) depot is now occupied by a small retail park. 

The Smithdown Road depot was Liverpool's second electric tram depot and opened in 1899. In 1912 the depot employed 64 persons and had a capacity of 96 cars [2] The double-arched sheds can be seen on the right of the above photo.  

According to Ron Smith's Liverpool Trams site it was in use up to around 1936 which means the depot was out of service, and presumably without its trams, even before John Lennon's birth in 1940. 

Paul McCartney: ‘Penny Lane’ was kind of nostalgic, but it was really a place that John and I knew; it was actually a bus terminus. I’d get a bus to his house and I’d have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. [3] 

Trams to Woolton via Smithdown Road and 'Penny Lane' ran until 15 October 1949 when the service was replaced by buses, which is clearly how Paul McCartney remembers it. Between 1940 and 1945 John Lennon lived for a time on Newcastle Road, just around the corner and it's no stretch to imagine that he actually saw the trams still in operation passing through the depot and heading along the bottom of his road, up Church Road towards Picton Clock. 

I used quotation marks because the bus (and former tram) terminus (the "shelter in the middle of the roundabout") is not actually on Penny Lane. It sits on a triangular junction between Church Road, Allerton Road and Smithdown Road and faces one end of Penny Lane.  Depending on where you were travelling to in the city it was often necessary to change at Penny Lane and buses with 'Penny Lane' displayed were common throughout Liverpool. 

So why didn't the buses say 'Smithdown Place'? 

John Lennon: Penny Lane is a suburban district where I lived with my mother and father (although my father was a sailor, always at sea), and my grandfather. I lived on a street called Newcastle Road [5].

So, the name Penny Lane was also applied to the area surrounding the bus terminus though some locals appear to dispute this. If you visit the area today, you might notice how many of the shops in that area have the words Penny Lane in their name (e.g., Penny Lane Flowers or the Penny Lane Emporium). Of course, these days it's hard to tell whether the owners are aware of the area name or are simply capitalizing on the Beatles' connection.   

Trams passed through Penny Lane for the last time on 6 September 1952, but some routes continued in Liverpool for the next few years. On 14 September 1957 Liverpool's trams ran for the very last time, a parade of trams running from Bowring Park where I grew up (much later) towards the city centre.

Post card showing the last tram on 14 September 1957.

In 1946, around the time that John Lennon settled in Woolton, his Uncle George was working the night shift at the depot on Woolton High Street, cleaning the trams. While John still lived at Newcastle Road it's said he enjoyed walks with his grandfather, 'Pop' Stanley and eldest cousin Stan, to places like Wavertree Park (the 'Mystery'), Sefton Park, and even as far as the Pier Head. They would have passed the entrance to the tram depot on Church Road (later known as the Prince Alfred Road bus depot) and probably paused to watch the goings on, as they walked towards Smithdown Place.  

Replace the buses with trams and add in some tracks and overhead cables and you can visualise how the depot would have looked viewed from Church Road in the late 1940s. The rear of the two tram sheds are visible in the background of this photo taken in 1985 [4]. Contrast this with the modern image below. A public house and retail park now occupy the site.

Given these early childhood memories it's likely that the young John had more than a passing interest in the trams and carried this through to his teenage years. On his way through Penny Lane on the No. 5 bus into town, heading for the Art College or perhaps a Beatles' engagement, he obviously noticed that many features of the Liverpool tram system remained well beyond the final closure. 

This picture of the Smithdown Road sheds was taken by Ron Smith on 28th September 1986 and was still standing in 1989, thirty-two years after the last Liverpool tram operated! The two depot entrances that were used by trams coming off the street can clearly be seen sealed-up at the front.  

Twenty-six years on from Ron's photo and the sheds have long gone as these shots taken in 2012 and 2019 attest. The entrance to the site was fenced off and displaying advertising hoardings until recently. 

But what's the shed-like structure on the left? This is what prompted Steve Bradley to message me. Obviously, it's not one of the two big sheds seen on the earlier photos but set back from the road, I think it could have been part of the depot. Certainly, when it's viewed from the side there are to be a number of openings, long bricked up which look to have abutted the missing sheds. 

Today this is the Penny Lane Emporium, a mix of small retail units selling antiques, antique fireplaces, vintage furniture, art and vinyl records, but this set of photos I found online shows what used to go inside. I'm no mechanic or tram expert but they look like generators of some sort, perhaps to power the trams?

Today there's a useful cut through from the retail park to Smithdown Road that runs along the side of the old sheds. If you felt inclined to stick your nose between the railings and look down you could see that the old tram tracks were still in place, though overgrown in places. It's hard to tell from the above photo, but they were visible, honestly (I'd taken this photo through the railings on 1 February 2020).

A week later, with lockdown finally over in England I happened to be at the retail park behind the site waiting to pick up my son and thought I'd try and get a better photo.

To my surprise I found all the trees and vegetation had been cleared. Work could only have started in the last few weeks because workmen and an excavator were still on site.

The rusted tram lines are now clearly visible, running diagonally from left to right. Furthermore, the excavations had uncovered a trench containing the remains of what looked to be a brick walled inspection pit.

I know I haven't been out much in the last twelve months, but I was quite excited by the unearthed archaeology.  It must have been hidden for at least a quarter of a century. If anyone knows what this trench was used for, please get in touch.

It's amazing how by digging a simple trench we can open a window on the past. Back in September 2016 resurfacing works around the junction at Smithdown Place uncovered tram tracks not seen for over 60 years. I expect I was not alone in assuming that when the trams stopped running to Penny Lane the tracks would have been lifted and removed, to be reused or sold for scrap. In fact, they were simply covered over here with a layer of tarmac, and this seems to be the case across most of the city. Presumably this was the cheaper option in the 1950s and it still appears to be the case today.    

Photos taken around the Smithdown Place roadworks in 2016, showing the shelter in the middle of the roundabout and St Barnabas Church (where Paul McCartney was a choir boy). Photos by Mr John Lunt and the Liverpool Echo.

John Lennon: A childhood in photographs

The inspiration for this latest blog is a superb book I received for Christmas - John and Yoko / Plastic Ono Band, a near 300-page hardback volume which traces the evolution of perhaps John's finest solo album through first-hand commentary by John, Yoko and members of the Plastic Ono Band, archive material, and hundreds of fascinating and largely unseen photographs. It was released last October and intended as a companion piece to the new Deluxe Plastic Ono Band CD/DVD box which was unfortunately delayed due to the current pandemic. It's finally due out this month.

Each track on the album has its own section where you can read about the genesis and recording of the song and see John's handwritten lyrics and appropriate photographs.

Naturally, to illustrate the song 'Mother' the compilers of the book have used a number of John's childhood photos, none previously unseen but all in absolutely superb quality. They look beautiful, as do the pictures in the rest of the book. Seriously, this is like the sort of book that Genesis publications would produce but at a tenth of the price.

So, while admiring the book I started wondering, just how many childhood photos of John Lennon are there? 

I started by going through all the folders on my computer and then checked a number of books just on the off chance they might contain a photo that hadn't been scanned by someone and uploaded a thousand times. They didn't. 

I grouped together every different photo I had and deleted all the duplicates, keeping only the best quality copy of each.  Then I tried to arrange them in chronological order.

This is the result.  I'm sure I've not got the order completely right and so any constructive feedback is welcomed.  I've deliberately not included any photos of John as a member of the Quarry Men or at Art School, choosing instead to focus on his family and childhood friends. I've also put some commentary in from interviews, primarily with John, to provide some context.   

9 Newcastle Road (the author, 2020)

John Lennon: Penny Lane is a suburban district where I lived with my mother and father (although my father was a sailor, always at sea), and my grandfather. I lived on a street called Newcastle Road. 

That's the first place I remember. It's a good way to start - red brick; front room never used, always curtains drawn, picture of a horse and carriage on the wall. There were only three bedrooms upstairs, one on the front of the street, one in the back, and one teeny, little room in the middle.

[Julia] My mother was a housewife, I suppose. She was a comedienne and a singer. Not professional, but she used to get up in pubs and things like that. She had a good voice. She could do Kay Starr. She used to do this little tune when I was just a one - or two-year-old. The tune was from the Disney movie - 'Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell. You are standing by a wishing well.' 

The earliest two photos date from circa 1941-44 when John was still with his mother Julia. The first is a typical photographer's studio shot of the day the sort of print you'd get done for your relatives, and perhaps dates from around John's first birthday in 1941 or Christmas that same year.  This was John's contribution to the four childhood photos of the Beatles which appeared on the sleeve of their 1967 Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane single. A cropped version was later used as the rear cover of John's Plastic Ono Band album in 1970.

During 1943 John lived with both parents at the Dairy Cottage, 120a Allerton Road, Woolton.

(photo by the author) 

My mother and father split when I was four. Then my father split. He was a merchant seaman, and it was the Forties in the war, and I guess she couldn't live without somebody. She was the youngest and she couldn't cope with me, and I ended up living with her elder sister, Mimi.

Julia's sister Harriet was actually the youngest of the five Stanley girls.

John: Mimi told me my parents had fallen out of love. She never said anything directly against my father and mother. I soon forgot my father. It was like he was dead. But I did see my mother now and again and my feeling never died off for her. I often thought about her, though I'd never realized for a long time that she was living no more than five or ten miles away.

It was more like three miles!