Beatles memorabilia from Mal Evans saved by an office temp and Yoko Ono

November 9, 2023 11:49 AM

One article I read about the forthcoming release of a book based on Mal Evans archives (namesake of MAL, the software that Peter Jackson used to extract John Lennon’s vocals for Now and Then) mentions the papers “languishing in a publishing house basement.” Another article goes more in depth on how Leena Kutti, a temp was assigned to clear out a publisher’s basement storage area. She discovered the Beatles memorabilia, manuscript and diaries of Beatles gofer Mal Evans. To save what she found, she dropped a note to Yoko Ono.

Also mentioned is a suitcase that was found that purported to contain Mal Evans’s Beatles memorabilia (previously.)

posted by larrybob (6 comments total)

That was a really interesting article, and I’m glad it focused on Leena Kutti and Gary Evans, the person who saved the documents from the trash heap, and the person for whom those documents had the most personal significance.
posted by Kattullus at 12:33 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Wow. I read that first link (the Guardian article) yesterday or the day before and was curious about the journey of the papers. The Salon article is fascinating.

How wonderful that Kutti's decisions to look after these artifacts - and to make sure Evans' family knew about them - led to the rest of us getting a glimpse of them after all these years.

I shudder to think of them having been thrown out.

Thank you so much for posting this, larrybob - I really wanted that backstory, and I'm so glad I got to read it!
posted by kristi at 12:37 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

The amount of history that's lost because "too much to look through, chuck it" is terrifying to think on.

Then again, the amount of building history we know because of "that's too much work, just leave it"..

The destructive/preservative duality of human laziness!

And good on Kutti for going way, way out of her way to get it back into the family's hands.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:42 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Wait wait wait! I know who Mal Evans is because I watched Get Back and he's always there. At one point George Harrison sends him out to get clothing frou frou items.

I'd had my eye pass over this on the front page for a while but suddenly something in my brain clicked and I realized, OH, IT'S THAT MAL!
posted by hippybear at 1:28 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

The devil is indeed in the details.
posted by y2karl at 9:38 AM on November 10, 2023

That was a wonderful story. It's crazy that these companies just didn't care about the history of their collections (I'm looking at you BBC) and just tossed them out and never even thought about saving and archiving them. Kutti understood.
posted by ceejaytee at 9:58 AM on November 10, 2023