Sierra Mountain Times

Ken Mansfield sits between Paul and Ringo on the couch during a business meeting. Ken, who currently resides in Murphys, was an Apple Records executive as well as a friend of The Beatles. You can hear his insider’s presentation of The Beatles next Friday in Murphys. In the photo (from left to right) are George (back of his head), Ron Kass, Paul, Ken, Ringo, Stan Gortikov, Mal Evans and John (in lower right corner). Photos from “The White Book.”

Everyone’s path is different. Some take life’s highways while others take the back roads. Some roads are short, others are long. Some are straight and narrow, others are wide and meandering. Some are freshly paved and others are made of dirt and full of potholes. Yet no matter what path you are on, you are bound to have some incredible experiences and meet some fascinating people along the way. Murphys resident Ken Mansfield’s long and winding road has led him through fame and fortune and into the lives of some of the world’s most legendary figures, namely The Beatles.

Because his path intersected with The Beatles at the right place at the right time, The Beatles became his clients and friends and he was hand-picked to be the first U.S. Manager of The Beatles’ Apple Records and thrust into a world that was only experienced by a select few. Ken was one of these few, and was there in the midst of it all during the apex of The Beatles career – enjoying the rollercoaster ride with the biggest group in musical history. But those five years, from 1965 until The Beatles breakup in 1970, was just one bend, one segment of his winding road, and since then his journey has continued, filling his life with more tales to tell. Today, Ken’s travel’s take him all across the nation as he puts on presentations to give an insider’s look into the life and times of The Beatles. Nearly 40 years after The Beatles rollercoaster came to a stop there is still a fascination with melodic pop group, and Beatles fans come from far and wide to hear the former friend of the Fab Four speak of his incredible life experiences. For Beatles fans of Tuolumne and Calaveras Counties, your turn has come! Next Friday (Nov.14) Ken will be speaking at 7 p.m. at Harmony Life House in Murphys. Yet Beatles fan or not, his popular presentation titled: The Beatles, the Bible and Beyond, is designed to be a good time for all.

Ken Mainsfield

Loyal readers of the Sierra Mountain Times may recall an interview with Ken Mansfield in the popular Beatle-filled January 11, 2007 “White Issue” of the SMT in which Ken was interviewed about his second book, “The White Book: The Beatles, The Bands, The Biz.” Ken was gracious enough to set aside some time for the SMT for a second interview, and after he finished his interview with Entertainment Weekly I had the pleasure of hearing tales from Ken’s long and winding road:

“We have lived in Murphys for almost exactly six years now,” said Ken during our phone interview. “My wife Connie and I lived in Bodega Bay for nine years and this area was kind of our getaway, and we eventually moved up here. It’s just easier to live up here and the commute to the Sacramento airport is less hectic than the commute to SFO from Bodega Bay.”

However, it was during his time in Bodega Bay that Ken began his writing career. It was here where he completed his first book, “The Beatles, the Bible and Bodega Bay”, which focused on his spiritual journey as well as on rock and roll.

“It is half and half and goes back and forth between two entirely different aspects of my life,” explained Ken. “It will talk about me being on the roof of Apple with The Beatles and the next chapter I will be on the beach having conversations with God in Bodega Bay, and then it will jump back to me in England or hanging out with George Harrison or something. It is a really interesting book.”

 Ringo, Dolly Parton and Ken hanging out in Ken’s living room.

When the book was released in June of 2000, readers found it interesting as well and it became an instant success. In fact, Amazon.com’s Rock Editor rates it as one of the top three Beatles’ books of all time – and of the over 600 books about The Beatles, Ken’s is the only one that they have officially approved other than their own “Anthology”. After its release, Ken was bombarded with requests to come and speak.

“I had so many requests but I kept turning them down because I didn’t think that speaking was what I was supposed to be doing,” he said. “I had decided that it wasn’t something I wanted to do and I didn’t want to go on the road. But I finally decided to go do this big weeklong event at this giant church complex in Atlanta because it was so intriguing. I figured that if this is where God wants me then I will give it a shot, and if it turned out good I would continue to do it, and if not, I wouldn’t do it again. And it just turned out incredible!”

With the help of his wife, Ken has now been putting on presentations for the past six and a half years all around the country.

“We are on the road about 50 percent of the time,” he said. “We are always somewhere. We recently got back from Nashville and Washington D.C. and in a few days I am going to a church in Louisiana.”

Looking back on Ken’s life, one will see that he has come around full circle, and although Ken’s spiritual journey began in church as a child, it is the bends and twists in the road along the way that people find the most fascinating.

Ken and Ringo chatting at the Apple offices – 3 Saville Row with Jackie Lomax’s promo picture on the wall behind them. The two ladies are Apple staffers.

“I grew up in the church, but because of the church I grew up in I didn’t like it at all,” he said. “It was a Hell and Brimstone type of church and I don’t think the pastor smiled once. So when I was 17 I left home and left that behind.”

His journey for answers took him into the music scene where he became the leader of a successful southern California folk group called the “The Town Criers”. He then transferred from the entertainment side to the business side of the music world and got a job as a record label executive at Capitol Records where he had the fortune to work with artists such as Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, George Shearing, The Four Freshmen, Nancy Wilson, Judy Garland, Lou Rawls, Glen Campbell, Bobbie Gentry, and Al Martino as well as the early careers of legendary country artists Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Sonny James. But the tempo really picked up when he began working with bands like The Beach Boys, The Band and The Beatles.

“The job I initially got was promotions manager for the West Coast, which essentially meant that any band that came through the area fell into my lap,” he said. “So when the Beatles came through, they were my band to work with. And we just hit it off. I was a 20-something guy and semi-hip myself and we hit it off perfectly.”

Ken first met The Beatles in 1965, but he had no idea that he would spend the next five years working with them.

“The fact that I ended up becoming a small part of the historical musical phenomenon called The Beatles began with being in the right place at the right time,” he said. “The years of the Beatles were pretty much part in parcel of just the way my life was going. I started out in the entertainment business and it just was ever upward and onward. I went to Capitol Records and within nine months I was promoted to a national position and within less than two years I had more people reporting to me than the president of the company. I was just a skyrocket.”

Ken continued to climb the ladder of success, and from The Beatles arrival in the U.S. to their eventual breakup he was the executive in charge of their U.S. Apple Records operation and personal liaison between the U.S. and U.K. for the individual Beatles. He was even one of the 12 or so lucky individuals to witness The Beatles last live performance on the roof of Capital Studios in London.

During these explosive years with The Beatles Ken continued to run further from his church-based roots.

“No, you know it’s funny, I can’t remember one conversation during those days,” said Ken, when asked if talk of faith, Jesus or religious beliefs were ever discussed with The Beatles. “But the caveat to that would be is that if it came up we probably shoved it away so quick that it never got a chance. So either we didn’t discuss it or we just rejected it so quickly. But I can’t speak for The Beatles on that because they did have that guru phase.”

Ken also explored this path of religion as he searched for answers.

“It was George that really got me into having a guru and the whole thing,” he said. “But that was him alone that talked to me about it when he and I were spending a lot of time together. But the rest of them, I got the impression that they just did it for awhile because it was a cool thing to do. This was after I was no longer working with them, but I still had a personal relationship with George and we were more or less hanging out together.”

When the Beatles breakup seemed inevitable Ken decided it was time to move on.

“From there I left the Beatles and Apple and Capitol and went to MGM and from there I went to president of a CBS label owned by Andy Williams called Barnaby,” he said. “And then from there I went and set up my own company because I thought, ‘Why am I making all this money for these other people?’…and I started producing name artists in my own company called Hometown Productions.”

His success continued and he began producing famous artists of that era such as Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, Don Ho, David Cassidy, Andy Williams, Claudine Longet and The Flying Burrito Bros. However, without warning, it all came crashing to an end.

“There was no reason for my company to fail because I was doing so well,” he said. “I had never been fired, never failed, had an incredible resume and hit records…but I think God knew the only way he was going to sort me out was if he took all my toys away. And things just started falling apart to the point where I was just trying to play catch up with everything that was going wrong. I was spending so much time falling behind that I quit creating and I quit moving ahead and it just became an avalanche after awhile. Now it’s pretty clear that it was the only way God was going to get my attention.”

So after over 20 years of the high life, Ken found himself in at the lowest point in his life.

Ken and Paul (with an apple) at an Apple Records function.

“It was a crash and burn,” he said. “The high lifestyle doesn’t seem real after awhile and you get the drugs in there and pretty soon you think it’s going to go on forever, and you make some bad decisions and it doesn’t. It was about 1984 when I bottomed out.”

But looking back he knows it was all a part of God’s plan.

“When I hit rock bottom, it was exactly when I met my future wife,” he said. “It was almost like God dumped me off the California coast in Nashville because he had someone waiting there for me that was going to sort me out. She was the one who led me to Christ. So after many, many years in the entertainment business and all that success I came back to the church in my late 40s.”

His journey could be summed up in the lyrics of the Paul McCartney ballad (credited to Lennon/McCartney) “The Long and Windy Road” that appeared on The Beatles’ album Let It Be: “The long and winding road that leads to your door, will never disappear, I’ve seen that road before. It always leads me here. Lead me to your door.”

And upon opening that door, Ken began to rebuild his life.

“I was in Nashville for nine years and most of that nine years I was struggling and trying to get back up on top,” he said. “It took me a long time to get to that point, but towards the end I did get a Grammy and a Dove Award for producing a couple named Christian bands like the Imperials and the Gaither Vocal Band.”

Ken then got an offer to come back out to California to run an audio file record company.
“It was this incredible prestigious job running mobile fidelity sound labs which did the audio file records of all the greatest records of all time,” he said. “I am talking about the major, major records that ever happened, like Pink Floyd, and they were re-mastered into gold CDs for audio files. It was a cream puff job and I was able to live on the ocean.”

Ken continued in the music industry until 1995, and even had a business relationship with Ringo that went into the 90’s.

“I have been out of it for over twelve years now,” he said. “The thing about the music business is if you walk out the door and leave it for ten minutes, when you try to come back in its gone past you. I’ve had so many people come to me about producing them or getting involved and I have no contacts anymore. I don’t really feel qualified, because it’s changed character a lot.”

But Ken found ways to stay busy, and began writing.

“My life now is really is about writing and speaking,” he said. “That is what I do.”

His second book, The White Book, has also been a huge success and his third book, Between Wyoming’s, is scheduled to come out in June.

“We are expecting this to be my biggest book because it’s really, really different,” he said. “There is a little bit about everybody from The Beatles to Waylon Jennings to Don Ho…basically it has a lot to do with a lot of the people I worked with over the years.”

While anticipating the release of his third book, Ken is already halfway through his fourth book.

“It’s going to be a whole different trip…I don’t even know how to explain it,” he said. “I say it’s like a Christian on acid writing. It’s a very unusual spiritual journey book.”

Yet when he’s not writing, it is his fascinating presentations that occupy the rest of his time. These presentations, titled “The Beatles, the Bible and Beyond” have been attended by thousands of those interested in these intriguing subjects.

“The response has been incredible,” said Ken. “We just got back from speaking in Sacramento up at Adventure Church, which had over 4,000 people! It’s a super event. It is a really entertaining thing for the congregation and something visitors can come to and feel very comfortable. It typically opens up with a band playing some Beatles songs (this event will be performed by local music group, Plan B) and I give my testimony and we show a film about me and The Beatles. It’s an exclusive film that is shown all over Europe, but the only place you can see it is where I appear, because it has never been released in the U.S. We cut it down to a 15-minute version and it’s beautifully done. Then we close the event with a question and answer period so people can ask questions about whatever they are interested in about the Beatles. The most common question is what is John’s thing with saying, “We are bigger than Jesus.” That is the biggest question. And it will get asked when I am at Harmony Life House next week…it always gets asked. And I have an answer…”

To hear Ken speak and to ask some questions of your own, be sure to show up early to Harmony Life House as seating is limited. Admission is free. Harmony Life House is located at 178 Big Trees Rd, in Murphys, next to Pizza Plus in the Sierra Hills Center. For more information call 728-8794 or visit: www.harmonylifehouse.org.