O.K., let’s file this one under …
THE CONSPIRACY OF THE DEAD BEATLE
Those of you who regularly follow this blog know that, once in awhile, Jeff and I lay down our arms (See: THE CONSPIRACY OF THE LOST PART OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT)… and we order up some ethnic food (See: THE CONSPIRACY TO REPLACE ENGLISH AS THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE)… and I take a break in my pursuit of the truth about the end of the world, secret societies bent on world domination, and the other regular fodder of this blog…
We use the opportunity to bring out a golden oldie that, just like a catchy tune, sticks around long after it probably should.
Today is the anniversary of the death of Paul McCartney.
Yesserie, one of the very same Beatles that Jeff once claimed were responsible for the entire downfall of Western culture.
Paul McCartney, according to conspiracy theorists, has been dead for 45 years, and his death was the subject of a massive cover-up.
It’s been the subject of movies, books, magazine articles, and even comic books.
Batman cover -
So, in the hope of finally connecting to the truth about the conspiracy of Paul McCartney’s death, and laying all the hoopla to rest, Jeff and I broke out our Beatles CDs and argued peacefully as to whether or not the man who sang Live and Let Die was actually Paul McCartney or a doppelganger inserted into the Fab Four in 1969 by Apple Records, so as to not lose record sales.
Who Buried Paul McCartney Poster -
Now witness the following, and follow along as a witness, as we try to connect the dots through our Magical Mystery Tour:
According to the most popular version of the story, early on Wednesday morning, November 9th,1966, Paul McCartney had picked up a female hitchhiker on his way to visit some friends. When the woman realized who was driving the car, she became so excited, that she threw her arms around McCartney, and immediately caused him to lose control of the car. The car swerved off the road and it hit a stone wall.
Paul and the excited hitchhiker were killed instantly.
(In another version of the story, McCartney was tossed out of a flying airplane and was found by on a beach by a passerby, who said the bloated corpse looked like a walrus. This becomes significant later.)
The group’s record company quickly gathered together the remaining Beatles, swore them to secrecy (despite the fact that they must have been distraught), and the conspiracy and cover up quickly began.
It started to unravel almost as quickly.
In 1969, Russell Gibb, a disc jockey on WKNR-FM, in Detroit, received a mysterious phone call from someone named “Tom”. “Tom” told Gibb that he was holding a terrible secret, and he simple could not keep quiet any longer: Paul McCartney had died three years earlier and was replaced by a lookalike who he said was named Billy Shears.
Lot’s of evidence has since been offered to substantiate the substitution of the 1966 McCartney with this imposter.
the 1966 Paul McCartney:
The pre and post November 9, 1966 McCartney supposedly looked very different.
the post-1966 Paul McCartney:
People have claimed over the years that in 1966 McCartney looked, sounded, and played very different then the one who had crashed.
He mysteriously became two inches taller.
His voice was said to have radically changed.
He no longer played the base properly and was seen playing guitar with the other hand.
Yet he could still sing, and compose, and fool hundreds of thousands of people for three years until “Tom” spilled the dots out of the bean jar.
Those who advocated the conspiracy theory claimed that, even though, at first, the surviving members of the Beatles agreed to go along with the fabrication, the guilt so overwhelmed the three of them that they soon began to leave clues and messages on all of their subsequent records to McCartney’s death.
It was as if they were taunting the fans with almost dead-on desire to be found out about the lookalike who slipped into McCartney’s shoes…
Or lack thereof, by the looks of the Abbey Road CD cover.
As such, the cover of Abbey Road is a perfect place to begin our investigation of these guilt-ridden clues, and start to connect the CDs.
Abbey Road CD Cover -
The way the Beatles are dressed is considered significant. George Harrison is dressed as a grave digger, Paul McCartney is barefoot and dressed for burial, Ringo Starr is dressed as an undertaker, and John Lennon is dressed in priestly white.
In the background, a yellow Volkswagon “Beatle” sports the license plate “28IF”.
Or Paul would be 28, if he were still alive…
(Interesting aside: when Abbey Road was released, McCartney was only 27. That’s just simple research.)
Sgt Pepper CD Cover -
The front cover of the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band CD shows the four Beatles holding quite unusual instruments. McCartney’s instrument is both wooden and black, supposedly signifying death. The entire cover of the album is a grave scene with the word “BEATLES” spelled out in red hyacinths, the mystical flower of death. The yellow flowers are in the shape of a left handed – or sinister – guitar.
McCartney is the only one of the Beatles with a hand over his head, which has been interpreted by the clue-searchers as a symbol of death, in a ritual performed by a religious leader who blesses a body before it's interned. This seems to indicate that’s it’s meant to be the funeral of McCartney. Paul is also wearing a patch that reads OPD, which has been interpreted by conspiracy theorists as “officially pronounced dead”.
Yet, why is it interpreted to be McCartney’s funeral? McCartney is, himself, standing at the grave, and the flowers spell out “Beatles”, so the cover design could just as easily been to symbolize the funeral of the band, whose breakup was imminent.
A crowd of the dearly departed look over the grave, including Edgar Allan Poe, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, WC Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and dozens more. Have fun picking them all out.
Magical Mystery Tour CD Cover -
The cover of the Magical Mystery Tour CD has all four Beatles dressed in animal costumes. McCartney, standing alone in the front, is dressed as a black walrus, hearkening back to the version of the story of McCartney being found dead on the beach as the dead animal.
Supposedly there are also three phone numbers hidden in the stars that spell out the name BEATLES. This requires holding up the cover to a mirror (you can try this at home) and when you connect up all the stars it mysteriously reads 8341735, 483 5317, and 2377038. Unfortunately it’s 41 years later, so it’s difficult to know who was at the other end of the call, but, at the time, callers claimed it was a funeral parlor.
Now this all occurred years before the internet, but somehow fans devoured all these clues ravenously, and news of each discovery spread. The Beatles may have been popular after Ed Sullivan, but their popularity continued to grow by means of a massive marketing machine.
Looking back, it seems that part of what fueled the continued hysteria, and the obsession with the band, until their untimely break up, was the “Is he or isn’t he dead?” debate.
It seems in retrospect to have certainly worked in the record’s company’s favor, both that McCartney had “died”, and that the fans became aware of it.
Look at, Elvis Pressley, Buddy Holly, and Jim Morrison. Nothing helps longevity as much as a good funeral.
So is it too much to imagine that the death of McCartney was all an elaborate sales tool? Now add to that a mystery and a treasure hunt.
After all these years this story just does not really stand up to scrutiny, does it?
Everything about it just seems so flimsy. What was McCartney doing picking up a hitchhiker? Who was the other woman? And why was there no one else reported missing? What happened when the look-alike who was masquerading as Paul vanished from his real life?
About ten years ago, Paul McCartney gave an interview where finally he admitted the whole things was all a hoax.
It seems the management and publicity arms of the group wanted to make certain there was a hedge against the change in musical styles that might cause the fans to lose interest in the group. Apple records and the band’s management wanted to assure that fans would buy the albums whether or not they liked the music.
Supposedly, it was Lennon’s threatening to leave the group that caused Paul McCartney to expose the clues. Paul was worried about the demise of the band. This explains the timing of the “break in the band’s silence” to be 1969.
McCartney said that Mal Evans, the Beatles road manager, went to Detroit and told some college students about the clues “in secret”. The call to the radio station sealed the deal.
Paul hid away at his farm in Scotland to further fuel the hoax.
When a reporter from Life Magazine (pun intended, I guess) finally was granted an interview at McCartney’s quiet home he said: “It is all bloody stupid. I picked up that OPD badge in Canada. It was a police badge. Perhaps it means Ontario Police Department or something. I was wearing a black flower because they ran out of red ones. It is John, not me, dressed in black on the cover and inside of Magical Mystery Tour. On Abbey Road we were wearing our ordinary clothes. I was walking barefoot because it was a hot day. The Volkswagon just happened to be parked there.”
Life Magazine Cover –
But even the picture of the obviously-alive Beatle on his farm with his wife and child did not satisfy the conspiracy theorists who did not buy the denial, and were still convinced it was the imposter.
Undaunted, years later, McCartney famously spoofed the album cover that started it all.
(In the blog layout this image should placed for reference:
Paul Is Live CD Cover –
So, jokester or imposter? I say the dots clearly connect to the former, but there will always be some who doubt.
After all, there are two conflicting interviews, and one time Paul was lying, either to Life Magazine, or to the reporter to whom he detailed the hoax.
The conspiracy theorists could be right, and it could still be a fake McCartney giving that interview, and it could have been the same imposter who, years earlier, had given the Life Magazine interview in which the hoax was denied.
We’ll place this one in the file folder, “still unresolved”.
When researching for clues to the “death” of Paul McCartney” I discovered an item that was truly unexplainable in the booklet that accompanied the Magical Mystery Tour vinyl album.
There is a photograph that shows John Lennon standing next to a sign that reads: “The Best Way to Go is by M & D C.” The initials MDC are the same as those of Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman.
This is no clue to anything, and was obviously unintentional. Years later, with two of the members of the group actually deceased, the whole “Is Paul Dead?” frenzy seems a lot less whimsical.
Sadly, John Lennon is really dead, and was killed by a lone gunman. Even Jeff does not dispute that one. Sadly, those dots were easy to connect.
Until next time, e-mails are always welcomed.
I think Paul traded his own life for Elvis.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: What's an album exactly?
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