Let him be: how McCartney saved roadie from arrest after Beatles final concert

Diaries of band’s road manager, Mal Evans, revealing chaos at gig to feature in major biography

The police famously tried to shut down the Beatles’s rooftop concert on 30 January 1969, over concerns of breach of the peace, in what was to be the band’s final public performance. Now a further backstage drama has emerged with the revelation that Paul McCartney afterwards used his charm to stop a police officer from arresting their road manager and confidant, Mal Evans.

Kenneth Womack, one of the world’s foremost Beatles scholars, told the Observer: “It turns out that Mal was actually arrested that day but managed to get out of it only when Paul went into PR mode and changed the copper’s mind after the show.”