THE INTERVIEW: BEATLES PRODUCER & AUTHOR KEN MANSFIELD! (PART 1)

My Guest on "The Interview", Ken Mansfield

Ken's New Book Just Released

It is my sincere privilege to welcome Ken Mansfield as my special guest on "THE INTERVIEW". Ken is a Grammy Award winning record producer and the former U.S. manager of The Beatles' Apple Record Company. As a top record producer and an executive with several renowned labels (including Capitol Records), Ken has also been associated with Waylon Jennings, James Taylor, Roy Orbison, Glen Campbell, Nick Gilder, David Cassidy, War, Eric Burdon, The Osmonds, Hank Williams, Jr., Tompall and the Glaser Brothers, and John Sebastian of Lovin' Spoonful, Bobby Gentry, The Beach Boys, Deep Six, Byron Berline and Sundance, Andy Williams, The Imperials, Flying Burrito Brothers, David Frizzell, OXO, The Steve Miller Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Band and Jessi Colter--to name but a few musical artists. Moreover, Ken was at the center of the "Outlaw" movement in country music, which he helped popularize. The progressive country music scene of Willie and Waylon took off like a rocket ship in the 1970's. Ken produced Waylon Jennings' top-selling album, Are You Ready for the Country and Jessi Colter's crossover hit song, I'm Not Lisa. Ken's career through the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's grew at a fast clip.

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Armed with a marketing degree from San Diego State University, Mansfield became employed with Capitol Records as one of its youngest executives at age 27. When The Beatles decided to form their own corporation in 1967, they turned to Ken Mansfield to run their record division as U.S. Manager of Apple Records, where he was involved with such legendary projects as The White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road and Let It Be. It's more than ironic that I previously ran photos and footage of the final live concert The Beatles performed atop the Apple Record Building on January 29, 1969. Ken is the man wearing the white winter coat at that truly once-in-a-lifetime musical event. By the 1980's, Ken's professional success with wealth and materialism collided with tremendous debt, and he succumbed to ruin with only a suitcase and a few boxes of clothing to begin his life over in Nashville, Tennessee. He survived!

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In his newly released book, Between Wyomings: My God and an Ipod on the Open Road, Ken and his wife Connie take to the open road in their van to reconnect with the good, the bad and the tragic periods of his life over 10,000 miles. As a man who started his life over again, Ken weaves a fascinating story against the background of the musical artists and circumstances that were once an integral part of his life in Los Angeles, London and Nashville. The book is a delightful read that flows by as if the reader were along on Ken's journey watching the white lines of the roadway pass by. This is Ken's story written with a rare honesty and humility.

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Today, Ken and his wife Connie reside in the California Sierra Nevada Mountains, far away from stadiums and clubs filled with screaming fans who filled his life for decades. Ken is an ordained minister and a highly sought after public speaker who appears in colleges and churches across the nation. He is the also the author of The Beatles, The Bible and Bodega Bay and The White Book. We caught up with each other last weekend and here's how our visit unfolded.

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Manning: Well Ken, you've certainly had a remarkable career in a rough and tumble business that was filled with accomplishments. Today, you're an ordained minister and on a new journey in your life. Do you miss the music business?

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Mansfield: There's a song that says: "I remember the good". And I do remember that and also in the same fact, I don't really miss it. I don't feel that I should still be doing it. I think that I have a very proper reflection of that (period). Because God's blessed me with kind of forgetting the bad and remember the good. There was a time for me to be over with it and simultaneously, the business decided it was time for it to be over me. We had a great respect for each other after thirty or forty years.

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Manning: Sounds like a very healthy philosophy.

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Mansfield: Oh, it is and I just think that it's a gift from God because I have so many friends who just can't let it go.

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Manning: There were so many things you wrote in the book that I admired. One area was where you discuss hitting bottom in the 1980's. This was after you were unfairly targeted in a false smear campaign by a rival manager, and you paid for it dearly.

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Mansfield: Oh, yeah!

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Manning: How did you make the decisions to emerge from that dark period and to get back on your feet?

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Mansfield: I didn't make that decision. I was incapable of really making good decisions at that point because everything I thought was in terms of the world and how I could get back, get even or get going. It was all me and what I could do. I take no credit. I praise God everyday for the circumstances He put me through, but I'd be brought all the way down to my knees to the very bottom. I know myself. I did know how I'm put together, and God loves me so much that in order for me to get broken, I had to go broke first. I just praise Him everyday for the circumstances I went through. Because if I wouldn't have gone through them, I would just never turn to Him. I would never need Him. You know? Why would I need Him if I was doing so good? So, it was a real blessing. Real blessing.

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Manning: It's impossible not to mention the role of your wife Connie during this time frame. You credit her for saving your life. But from what you write, she was no push over either. She obviously wasn't drawn to you for your past achievements in the music business. When did you know that your relationship was serious when Connie entered your life?

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Mansfield: The first time we went out, she pulled back her hair so I could see her face better. It was over! The last thing in the world I needed was a relationship. It was the last thing I wanted. I was stone broke. I had nothing. I wasn't in a position to be dating, and I had nothing to offer except I was a stoner, I had a guru, my life was messed up, I had a bad reputation. If I had put an ad in the paper, no one in their right mind would have answered it.

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Manning: Wow!

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Mansfield: And here she was at that point in time pressing into The Lord more. She had set aside a whole year just pressing into The Lord. She wanted to draw closer, and she was at the deepest point of her walk. I was absolutely not what she was looking for. We both just fell in love that first night. There was no question that when we met, that God had put us together. Because I had walked into a "Music Row" hangout in Nashville after flying into town a couple of nights before, and I walked into that place for like ten minutes, and she walked in for ten minutes. We had never seen each other, and I was rather aggressive and I did get her phone number. But God had a purpose. We've had this phenomenal marriage now. She's my side-kick in ministry now. She brought me to The Lord. She's just a faithful, faithful servant and no question about how we got together.

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Manning: You've lived in the fast-lane of Los Angeles, Ken. Where do so many people become lost and find their personal lives in serious trouble in the entertainment world today?

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Mansfield: One of the first problems is that we all start believing our own press and our publicity and we start thinking we are these people that we're touting ourselves to be. The reward for success is indulgence and decadence. If you are in this lifestyle, it's very gradual. When I first got into the music business I saw these crazies. All kind of crazies: drugged-out crazies, ego-crazies, there were power-crazy people and I thought. 'I'm just here for the music. I'm never going to become one of those people'. And about ten years later, I just stopped and I said, 'Wait! I am one of those people! That's exactly what I am'. Little by little, I don't care how you're brought up and how good you come into the thing. But you just give up a little piece here and there. 'Well, okay. I'm cool with this. Okay, I'll let this slide'. And all of a sudden one day, you've given away all of the pieces.

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Manning: That sounds like a stark realization. When you and Connie started your road trip in your van, Moses, yo write that you "felt adrift with no real roots", and I wanted to visit a quote you include from Donald Miller's book, Through Painted Deserts.

"We get one story, you and I, one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would e a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

"It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave"

This is such a powerful passage for a man who seemingly had it all with the intoxicating fame, money and power so many dream about in the music industry. At what point did you decide to write this book?

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Mansfield: Like most of the books I write, in some way I've been writing them for a long time. This book really came out of a book that I was incapable of writing because of my style of writing. I had an idea for a book entitled Stumbling On Open Ground. And that's taken from Jeremiah where you know, 'If you are weary running with men, how are you going to race with the horses? If you stumble on open ground, how will you do in Georges' Jungle?--I'm paraphrasing. I had this idea of stumbling on open ground, and I thought. 'Here I am. I'm a Christian. I've got all the promises, I've got all the assurances, I know everything about how my walk is supposed to go with The Lord. So, why would I have any doubt or any confusion? Why am I still stumbling on open ground?' So, I did start out on a journey where I went from very famous Pastors like Lee Strobel and it was kind of a book I was writing about 'Why Bad Things Happen to Good People?' type of thing. With Lee, I approached the subject and he gave me an answer. My whole idea was to travel from place to place to a Pastor of my youth, to the Pastor that brought me to The Lord, to the Pastor that spoke at my wedding. I was going to tape record all of these different kinds of Pastors, similar to what you and I are doing right now, but I'm not a reporter. I really had a hard time constructing it. I found I could write the travel part of it. But all I could do was repeat. I couldn't put anything of me in the other part. So, I ended up just putting it by the wayside. But it really inspired this idea of movement and gathering and revisiting this book really came out of that. The original title of this book was Idaho, I Don't Know. I Think I'll Take My Banana's and Go--which is a chapter title and I explain that.

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Manning: Sure.

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Mansfield: Maybe Moses was my next title. Between Wyomings--I had nothing to do with that, My publisher suggested that after reading the book. It has great meaning in it and it is a metaphorical journey and I mention in the book . The trip in the book is not an actual physical trip in total. It's a trip made up of a lot of little trips and what I did is that I glued them altogether using the van as my vehicle. I've traveled all those roads and experienced all those things and all those things happened. But they didn't happen all one at a time like it said in the book. What I did is I recreated the road trip of my life and put together as one single trip. And that was the idea that gave me the freedom to really kind of branch out a little bit more, so I wasn't totally restricted by the concept of the road trip where I was able to kind of put it together as I wanted to. I wanted to let it unfold in a linear way, and Moses (the van) was more or less my foil in this thing.

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Manning: Early in the book, you were reflecting on thirty years in the music business and two quotes stood out to me that would be of great interest to my readers. On the one hand you said, "As the old saying goes, if you remember the sixties, there's a real good chance you weren't there". And then afterward you write: "I must admit that I write like a Christian on acid. But to be honest, the whole entertainment industry is built on induced fantasy and even less certainty". It sounds to me like Ken Mansfield then and now?

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Mansfield: Well, you know, we are now from what we were made up from then. When I say that I 'write like a Christian on acid', and I promise you, I'm just so in love with The Lord--that's just everything to me. But when I start writing, I sometimes just start tripping out. The whole thing about getting high back when I used to get high is really about finding what we're like when we're not getting high on drugs, we're getting high on the beauty of the life that God gives us and His love and His mercy and His grace. So, when I start writing about that, it's almost like my mind goes into this other area and I really get out there sometimes. I really have to pull it back before it goes into print. I'm able to write about things as a Christian. But I'm also able to kind of let my life expand and pull in all the kind of nice things around it--almost like I'm sitting here with The Bible in one hand and getting a little high and writing.

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Manning: Ken, I have wide variety of wonderful bloggers and readers worldwide. Some are Christians, others are agnostic and some are athiests. I'd like to read a quote from your book about a tremendously honest statement you make about your faith. "To be brutally honest, there are times when I actually don't like being a Christian. It's that peculiar place That I find myself when I am really up against a stone wall that blocks me from my walk. It should be no surprise that there is a direct relationship to the fact that this is usually what happens when I am setting my own rocky course". It's a very human conflict you're describing, isn't it?

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Mansfield: We live in that conflict! It's made very clear in The Bible that we have our human nature and our Godly nature and these two are always warring with each other. And so when I say something like that, the thing that's always the hardest about being a Christian is that you don't have as many choices. Before, I could go out and I could get high or I could do anything that I wanted. Now, there's a very limited way that I can really respond to a situation and they all have to be as God tells me. So, what He's doing is this. He's made me independent. But that independence sometimes feels very restricted. I don't get to do everything my way anymore--which is absolutely the Good News. There's an old story that I thought about putting into the book, because I love the Indian people. I grew up around them and their beauty. There was an old Indian guy that got saved, and after a while he said he wanted to talk to the Pastor. And the Pastor said 'What's the problem?' The Indian said, 'Since I've been saved I feel like there's these two dogs fighting inside of me all of the time. And like, one's the dog that wants me to do the sinful things and the other is the dog that wants me to do the right thing--the Godly things. And these two dogs are driving me crazy'. The Pastor said, 'Which one is winning?' The Indian thought for a minute and said, 'The one I feed the most'. That's the dilemma that we have is the dog that is winning is the one we feed the most. There is that conflict we have inside.

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Wednesday: We journey back to Ken's career in the music industry. We'll talk about Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and yes...The Beatles all straight ahead. As always, thank you for joining us!