KEN MANSFIELD: “PHILCO”
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B Y R A N DY PAT T E R S O N , B O O M E R O C I T Y. C O M
EW PEOPLE have been able
to experience the things that Ken Mansfield has been able to experience in his lifetime. He was the manager for Apple Records in the U.S. This put him on a first-name basis with each of the Beatles and their inner circle. It also allowed him to be a part of Beatles history and watch the famous “Roof Top Concert” that marked the end of the band. (Go to YouTube and type in “Ken Mansfield Beatles Roof Top” and you’ll see Ken in a white trench coat, sitting near Yoko Ono.) He’s worked with many other music icons, including Waylon Jennings, The Beach Boys, James Taylor, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, and many, many more. Ken fought cancer and, by the grace of God, won and is also a traveling minister, sharing his story and the gospel all across the country. Ken is also quite an accomplished author, having written six books. The first was “The Beatles, The Bible, and Bodega Bay.” His more recent one is his first novel entitled “Philco” – a brilliantly written, Twilightstyle book that reminds the reader of what American society once was – like Mayberry. It was about “Philco” that I had the privilege of interviewing Ken for the second time. (The first was nine years ago and can still be read on www.boomerocity.com.) When asked why he wrote the book, Ken said, “Well, first of all, it’s my first fiction book. I’ve been writing this book for 18 years. I started it after my first book, ‘The Beatles, The Bible, and Bodega Bay’, and for some reason, another book would always take its 28
EVERYTHING KNOXVILLE July 2018
place. ‘I gotta write this book next.’ It kept getting shoved back. “I felt like God had told me, ‘There’s a time for this book, and I’ll let you know when.’ So, as I would write this book, I would have fellow writers who I would pass ideas onto. It’s gone through about 12 titles – just remolding the concept. Then, just last year – I mean, God didn’t say, ‘Hey, I need to talk to you about your book. I think we should go with it, now.’ – I just felt that it was time, and some things fell together with my agent and this publisher. So here it is, 18 years later.” Ken then goes into what the book is about. “What this book is about, in a way, is my yearning for what life was like when I grew up in the ’40s and ’50s. It was really an idyllic time. We weren’t a perfect society back then either, but there was a time when we would respect each other. We were brought up with certain moral values. An honest day’s work for an honest dollar. If you saw somebody alongside of the road, you stopped and said, ‘Can I help with that tire, ma’am?’ “Today I wouldn’t pull over to help somebody, because I’m afraid that I’ll be beat up and robbed or something because of all these scams and things. It was a time of innocence; a time of helping your neighbor out and a time when things weren’t so complicated." I asked Ken if we can go back to Mayberry. “No. I’ve written a song. Phil Keaggy and I were talking. They have theme songs for movies, why can’t we have a theme song for a book? We wrote a theme song for ‘Philco’. I posted it on Facebook. The point of it is I can’t go back there anymore from here. Not
from where we are. We could just never get back there like it was.” We can’t go back to Mayberry, and we can’t put the bite of the apple back on it. I asked Ken what do we do? “I think we try to recapture as much of that as we can. Literature and the movies and everything are so dark these days. My wife and I like to go to movies, but there’s never anything to watch. Everything ’s so dark. Sometimes we get up and leave just because of the foul language. I’m no prima donna. My gosh, I came out of the music business and was with Waylon Jennings for five years and rock and roll and stuff. But after a while, it’s just offensive. And dirty. We’ll be watching a beautiful movie, and you’ve got all this foul language and stuff in it. “I think we can go back – some of us can go back, in a way. But not all of us will go back. Society will never get back there again.” You can read the extensive version of this interview at www.boomerocity.com and order “Philco” online or at fine bookstores. Randy’s first interview was at the tender age of 13 with none other than Col. Tom Parker. Thirtysix years later he founded the webzine, Boomerocity.com, and has conducted close to 200 interviews with some of the most interesting people in music.