Ken Mansfield - The Roof: The Beatles’ Final Concert

Echoes from
across the pond and the past

There is something quite Lennonesque about Mansfields soul-searchinghis tales are astonishingly clear and vivid.

KEVIN GIORDANO, BarnesandNoble.com

Ken Mansfield and I unknowingly shared the experience of the famous Apple rooftop session. Ken was not only working for the Beatles through their heyday, he was also their trusted friend. There is no one better equipped to tell the Beatles story truthfullyand more importantfactually, from the inside.

ALAN PARSONS, Alan Parsons Project, Multi-Platinum producer and engineer to the Beatles/Pink Floyd

Ken Mansfield worked in our offices in London and we crashed at his pad in Hollywood. We all hit it off immediately and he became an instant member of the Apple team. Even the Beatles took to him straight away. He is one of the few insiders left that bore witness to the highs and lows of those insane days when we ruled the world.

JACK OLIVER, former president, Apple Records (19691971)

Ken Mansfield brings us a new and closely personal perspective not only on the Beatles, but on a whole cast of characters. I lived through those Apple years with Ken and we became friends. It is a pleasure to experience so much of it all again through the accuracy of his storytelling and the clarity of his memory.

PETER ASHER, Peter & Gordon/A&R chief, Apple Records/producer-manager (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King)

Ken has a unique gift. He can take you in the room and have you sit with the folk he knows and make you one of the gang, part of the plan. And considering these folk include the Beatles, that is some doing. I respect the affection he has for our game, and what he brought to it will get you.

ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM, manager and producer, Rolling Stones

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-168261-757-1

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-758-8

The Roof:

The Beatles Final Concert

2018 by Ken Mansfield

All Rights Reserved

Published in association with the literary agency, WTA Services LLC, Franklin, TN.

Cover design by Ryan Truso

This is a work of nonfiction. Events, locales, and conversations are reconstructed from the authors memory. These stories have been retold as faithfully as possible, but all stories are those of the author and as such may be subject to discrepancies in details from actual events. However, in all cases, the author has attempted to assure that the essence of events and dialogue are as accurate as possible.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

In Dedication and

Fond Remembrance

Alexis Mardas

Alistair Taylor

Billy Preston

Brian Epstein

Debbie Wellum

Derek Taylor

Doris Troy

George Harrison

George Martin

Jackie Lomax

John Lennon

John Tavener

Larry Delaney

Linda McCartney

Mal Evans

Maureen Starkey

Michael Gibbins

Neil Aspinall

Peter Ham

Ron Kass

Stanley Gortikov

Tom Evans

Not a bad apple in the bunch.

Something in the way they movedme.

A TaBleau of Content

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Marshall Terrill

HISTORICAL CONSULTANTS

Bruce Spizer

Mark Lewisohn

Robert Rodriguez

Stefan Granados

GENERAL EDITOR

Cara Highsmith

The Roof: The Beatles Final Concert original text also includes some updated material and excerpts from Ken Mansfields 2007 release The White Book which is currently out of print. For more Apple-related stories and visuals, visit The White Books website at www.fabwhitebook.com.

The Northern Idaho Panhandle, 1946

I look down at feet covered with the dust from fields and dirt roads. I look up from my beginnings here on the edge of northern Idahos great Camas prairie. I am nine years old and this soil and the spaces within a few-mile radius are all I know. I look out at vastness and can feel timeless dimension. Our nearest neighbor is a quarter-mile away and we only see them when one of us needs help. Im common; were dirt poor, and we live far away from the small sawmill town down by the rivers. My companions are the fields, ravines, streams, a bothersome younger brother, and a dog named Blackie. Our toys are things we find abandoned alongside the country roads on our long walks to the local schoolhouse and usually have something to do with sticks, stones, or string. Life is simple. I am bored. I have no idea how blessed I am growing up here.

I am different, but dont know why I know that. Something is missing, deeply needed, or waiting in the distance. Theres something beyond these windswept hills, but I havent experienced enough of life to imagine what it could be.

I cant get enough music. I live for the handful of programs that feature records two or three times a week on our local radio stationlots of weather and farm news, but the scheduling is short on songs. Neil McCracken, who lives over in the orchards, told me about this new invention called television, and so at night I stare at the small light bulb on the radio dial trying to get a glimpse of the bands and singers coming out of that little box.

I scan the Andrew Wyeth world around me, taking in vast wheat fields and canyons leading to the apparent rivers far off in the distance. The view before me opens north and west toward a vast panorama of untouched terrain. My dad likes to brag that we can see Colorado from here, even though it is in the other direction. I turn and look down the rutted dirt road that leads away from this isolated place as it makes its way out into and across the Nez Perce Indian Reservation lands that border our home. This is the vantage spot that always captures me. Mesmerized, I stare at that road to somewhere and something that I am not even trying to discoverdistant people and events I cant even fathom. I am only nine years old for crying out loudwhat do I know? I want a bicycle and the joy of discovering more than one treasure in a Cracker Jack box, not a philosophical adventure. I know now that I was sensing other places and experiences that werent even in my conceptual vocabulary. It was a pulling, a calling out, a magnetic drawa beckoning.

Kenny!Kenny!!KENNY!!! I am being called home for dinner and even though there is nothing for the sound to bounce off of, my name echoes across the barren landscape until it finds me in the distance. It is a hot summer day, and yet I am drawn to a deeper warmthmy mom and her meatloaf. I turn away from somewhere elsefor now.

My dad gives thanks for our daily provision. We eat in silence.

After dinner, I am given an apple for dessert. I take it outside and sit on the ground beneath an open window where I can hear my mom teaching my little brother his alphabet.