THE INTERVIEW: BEATLES PRODUCER & AUTHOR KEN MANSFIELD (PART 4 OF 4)

Former Apple Records Building,
3 Saville Row, London, England

Ken Mansfield was There!

Ken Mansfield Today

Ken and Connie

Manning: There is a story you write about in the book about a tremendous weight that was lifted from your life during a Whitney Houston concert. Because that story showed so much character that every person reading this interview can relate to, I wonder if you could share that moment of truth with us?

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Mansfield: Well, it as a moment where God basically says where you read The Word about how God feels about pride. One of the hardest things for me was when everything fell apart was my pride. Because I've always had a ton of pride. There were smaller ways--and I didn't realize this until later--that He tried to make some inroads with me on that and they're all at The Starwood (Theater)--there's three stories. There's Julian Lennon. This is when I was a new Christian and I was really on my bottom at this time and just struggling. I had just come up the stairs up behind the Amphitheater and Julian came off (stage) after doing a sound check and we ran into each other on a cat walk. He walked past me and I just dropped my jaw and I said 'Julian'. And he stopped and looked at me and just said. 'Yes?' I said, 'I knew your father, I used to work for him.' And Julian just looked at me, this dirty old grimy, smelly stage hand. But he just looked past that and it was embarrassing for me to say I was once in a lofty position working to run the company for his father. He looked past that...

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Manning: ...No kidding!

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Mansfield: ...It was embarrassing. But he just wanted to know more about his father. He went right to that. He wanted to know things. So, I swallowed my pride. The reason that I wasn't going to say anything in the first place was because I was embarrassed. But I did it. And God rewarded me in just having a real conversation with Julian Lennon. The next thing happened was with James Taylor where here I was the head of Apple, and James was one of the first artists we signed and I was on top of the world. James was a new artist. The next time James and I got together, I was Vice President of MGM and we're all hanging out together and because Peter Asher was my friend and his producer. We were in the studio hanging out and cutting records like Fire and Rain. We had that time together. Now, I was working at the Starwood. James was headlining and I had to walk up to him during his sound check and ask where he wanted me to place his amps. And James looked at me and I was grimy, because after you've been out there in the hot sun ten or eleven hours working straight through, you're pretty much a mess. And he looked at me and bless his heart, it took a lot of guts for me. But I still didn't quite get what I was doing. I had to do it. And I didn't really put it together that God was really working on my pride. The night that I was working the Whitney Houston concert, it was like He was stepping it up. I didn't get that until later. (Houston had problems hearing her performance through her on-stage monitors and Mansfield walked out before a capacity crowd that included his former fellow executives sitting near the stage who recognized him as he made the sound adjustments for Whitney). The first time was Julian and it was behind the building--just he and I.

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Manning: Right.

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Mansfield: And the next time, was with James Taylor on stage with a couple of stage hands around and some musicians. I still didn't get it. So, God put me before twenty thousand people so I could work it out there (begins laughing). I don't know what He would have done next if I hadn't gotten it then! It was hard because I didn't want to do it. He delivered me from my pride. Even if you're delivered from it, you still have to deal with it all the time. These things just don't go away once and forever. I finally got it. I got what He was looking for. It was a great thing to be delivered from that knowing that He had delivered me. I understood what the situation was. Michael, a little caveat to that story. Connie and I were together at this point and she had seen all that I'd done and been through. She said to this day--and we've been together 25 years now--that for her, that's the proudest she's ever been of me my whole life. Not getting a Dove Award or a Grammy.

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Manning: So often so many people over-identify with their position in life, and here you had endured such a fall, and yet you survived where a lot of people succumb to a failed career and many of them, sadly, are no longer with us. But you retrenched and began life anew. You write about standing atop the Apple Building rooftop where The Beatles last performed (in the film Let It Be) There was a sense of closure. What is your life like today in your new role as an ordained minster, Ken?

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Mansfield: It's not about me anymore. I've structure it out that I'm an evangelist. I didn't really realize that about myself until I got going. I didn't want to go on the road. I did not want to be a speaker or a minister. It's a long story about how I ended up doing that. Once I ended up speaking at churches and being on the road, I discovered that I was an evangelist. My heart is to bring the truth to people. I'm looking at a particular group of people and that's those who normally wouldn't come into a church, wouldn't hear a testimony. But the fact that I know now that whole time period had nothing to do with me and what a big deal I was. It was just God putting together something quietly over thirty years to use later on and if that had to do with me being a big deal with The Beatles, it gave me a background or a platform for me to speak from. In all honesty, I think that everything about my forty years of life, in Ringo's life and Paul's life and Judy Garland's life --everything may have led up to me just mostly speaking before someone in Des Moines and to hit one person and to change their life, and that was the whole purpose with my life. That person may become the next Billy Graham or something. I don't know. We can't fathom how He works in that realm. But it could be that the whole reason for everything I did was that He had his eye on me for later on.

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Manning: That's what I understood when you write that when you were leaving the roof of The Apple Building in London recently, and it was just another roof! You just looked in another direction.

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Mansfield: Right. Now for Connie and I, it's just to be worthy to the call. We deal with our two dogs fighting in our life just like everybody else. But it's a constant to know that for us to be a good witness, we have to be a good witness. That's my life right now. My main concern is being pleasing to God. I just want Him to look down and say, 'You know, you're a good and faithful servant and in you, I'm well pleased'.

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Manning: And by the 'two dogs' example, Ken, you're talking about selfish versus self-less?

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Mansfield: Yeah. We're all selfish in many ways. But I just try to feed the self-less dog more than I do the selfish dog.

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Manning: Well, Ken I always ask my Guests on "THE INTERVIEW" if they have any final thoughts they would like to share as a sort of way to sum up their message or clarify any points they feel are crucially important to those who will be reading this for some time to come on the Web. And in that spirit I'd just really like to turn the floor over to you for any final thoughts you might like to share with us?

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Mansfield: Well, I do have a final thought. I think if I have to have a point. You know, Harry Nilsson used to say. 'Everybody has to have a point'. My point is that it doesn't matter where you've been, it doesn't matter how bad you've been, how wretched and shameless or what a big deal you were, or how you used you life or how long you were that. Once you drop to your knees and ask Jesus to come into your life as Lord and Savior, He's promised all mistakes are forgotten, all sins are forgiven and you're brand, brand new! And you're just as beautiful and shining as the best in the world when you become his child. Even with all your stuff, it's not like when you become a Christian it's going to become a rosy day and that the tattoo of the naked lady with a serpent around her neck doesn't fall off your arm just because you're saved. Because we do suffer the consequences of our sins. We do pay for some of these things. But we are redeemed. If I came to The Lord when I was 15 and you came to The Lord when you were 5, I'm just as saved as you are. I'm just as blessed. I'm just as much as His child. I just want people to know not to let that hold them back--that they feel so unworthy that they're not redeemable, because they are. In my book I write that I just value being a child of the King of Kings so much that because of what I went through before that and my decadence, it doesn't mean I'm more saved. I just recognize the consequence and this is just astounding the difference between the two lives. When I look back now I really think that my best day in the world is not as good as my best day as a Christian. Because there is a peace in the knowing and that hollow spot has been filled up.

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My thanks to Ken Mansfield for making this interview possible.

It's been an incredible week, folks!
Michael