Paul is dead

File:GreatHoax.jpg

"Paul McCartney Dead: The Great Hoax", a magazine reporting on the rumours concerning McCartney.

"Paul is dead" is an urban legend alleging that Paul McCartney of the British rock band The Beatles died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike.

Evidence for McCartney's death consists of "clues" found among the Beatles' many recordings, most of which are treated as if they were deliberately placed by The Beatles or others—as if McCartney's death was a mystery to be solved by the public. These include statements allegedly heard when a song is played backwards, symbolism found in obscure lyrics, and ambiguous imagery on album covers. A few of them are well known, such as the fact that McCartney is the only barefoot Beatle and is out of step with the others on the cover of Abbey Road, but others are far more obscure, such as the allegation that bisecting the words printed on the drum on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover shows a coded message.

It is often unclear whether proponents spread this story as a joke or as a real conspiracy theory. The rumour has been the topic of much sociological examination because its development, growth, and rebuttal took place very publicly, due to the Beatles' enormous popularity and propensity for hidden messages and double meanings in their songs, as well as in their album titles and artwork.

Some have claimed that the rumour was a hoax perpetrated by The Beatles themselves, either as a joke or to stimulate record sales (the initial call placed to Russ Gibb coincided with the release of Abbey Road). This was denied numerous times by all four band members.

Longtime "Paul is dead" expert Joel Glazier wrote a 1978 treatise which included a theory suggesting John Lennon's love of wordplay and clever studio editing may have been responsible for the more bizarre clues in later albums, and that after Charles Manson claimed The Beatles were hiding references to an upcoming racial war in their song "Helter Skelter", the band members may have chosen not to reveal the joke.

Background

The rumours surrounding McCartney began in earnest on October 12, 1969, when someone telephoned Russ Gibb (a radio DJ on WKNR-FM in Dearborn, Michigan serving the Detroit market). Identifying himself as "Tom" (allegedly Tom Zarski of Eastern Michigan University), the caller announced that McCartney was dead. He also asked Gibb to play "Revolution 9" backwards. Gibb thought he heard "Turn me on, dead man." Gibb also produced (with John Small and Dan Carlisle) The Beatle Plot, an hour-long radio show on the rumour. The show aired on WKNR-FM in late 1969 and has been repeated in the years since on Detroit radio.

Fred Labour and John Gray, juniors at the University of Michigan, published a review of Abbey Road called "McCartney Dead; New Evidence Brought to Light", itemizing various "clues" of McCartney's death on Beatles album covers, in the October 14, 1969 issue of the Michigan Daily. Terry Knight, a former Detroit DJ and then singer on Capitol Records, had visited the Beatles in London for the August 1968 "White Album" session during which Ringo Starr walked out. Although Terry's song, "Saint Paul", was written about the impending breakup of The Beatles, it was picked up by radio stations in autumn 1969 as a tribute to "the late" Paul McCartney.

The rumour gained momentum when Roby Yonge, an overnight disc jockey on the Top 40 station WABC in New York, discussed it "incoherently" on October 21, 1969. Yonge was immediately fired for making the broadcast. WABC, a 50,000-watt clear channel station, could be heard clearly in 38 states, and as far as Africa's Atlantic coast. Soon, national and international media picked up on the story and a new "Beatle craze" took off.

The rumour is the subject of several books, including American journalist Andru J. Reeve's 1994 book Turn Me On, Dead Man (ISBN 1-4184-8294-3).

The story of the alleged death

The most common tale is that on Wednesday, 9 November 1966 at 5 am, McCartney, while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, stormed out of a recording session after an argument with the other Beatles and rode off in his Austin-Healey, which he subsequently crashed.

The story was largely pieced together by fans from the lyrics of several Beatles songs. The most common narrative includes the following pieces of evidence: "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ("A Day in the Life") because he was busy watching the pretty girl on the pavement (the eponymous meter maid of "Lovely Rita") after narrowly missing her dressed in blue (she's said to be the blur on the back of Abbey Road) jaywalking ("Blue Jay Way"). He then crashed into a light pole (a car crash sound is heard in "Revolution 9"). He was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" ("She's Leaving Home"), and nobody found out this because the news was withheld: "Wednesday morning papers didn't come" ("Lady Madonna"). A funeral procession was held days later (as supposedly implied in the Abbey Road album cover).

According to believers, McCartney was replaced with the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. The name of this look-alike has been recorded as William Shears Campbell, Billy Shears (the name of the fictitious leader of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), William Sheppard (based on the inspiration for song "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"), or some combination of the names.

There is no evidence of any sort of car crash in which McCartney was involved, although during the first week of January 1967, McCartney's custom-made Mini Cooper was wrecked by a friend on the M1 Motorway outside London. McCartney was involved in a moped crash on December 26, 1965, which resulted in a chipped tooth and the scar on his lip that can be seen on promotional videos for the "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" single, made shortly after the crash, in May 1966. According to McCartney, his desire to hide the scar on his lip was the impetus to grow a mustache; at about the same time the other three Beatles grew mustaches as well—in time for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

References by The Beatles

• Lennon joked about the rumour in the years following its initial growth and, in his solo years, referred to it in his vengeful song to McCartney entitled "How Do You Sleep?" from the 1971 Imagine album, commenting, "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead."
• McCartney himself parodied the rumour with his 1993 live album and tour, Paul Is Live, the cover of which is a replica of the Abbey Road cover with the "LMW 28 IF" license plate changed to "51 IS", 51 being McCartney's age at the time of the album's release. Also, he appears with his shoes on and holding, by a leash in his left hand, one of the puppies that his sheepdog Martha gave birth to.
• During the Magical Mystery Tour film, Vivian Stanshall and the Bonzo Dog Band performs a song entitled "Death Cab for Cutie", a satirical song about a fatal car accident. McCartney was known as—and even described himself in an interview as—"the cute one".
• When Paul McCartney performed in a skit on the television show Saturday Night Live in 1993, Chris Farley's character says to McCartney: "Remember when you were in The Beatles and you were supposed to be dead, and there were all these clues and everything like if you play that one song backwards it says 'Paul is dead, Paul is dead'... That was a hoax, right?" McCartney replies, "Yeah Chris. I wasn't really dead."

Internet

With the advent of the Internet, the "Paul is dead" rumours have found new life. Several websites have sprung up claiming that photographic evidence proves that the McCartney before and after late 1966 could not be the same man. Some of these new theories postulate that McCartney was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, the Illuminati, or even the other Beatles.

Satirical or other references

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Batman #222 (June 1970). Cover by Neal Adams.

• The June 1970 issue of the DC Comics title Batman, written by Frank Robbins, parodied the rumour with a story entitled "Dead...Till Proven Alive" in which it is rumored that "Saul" from the band the Oliver Twists was deceased and replaced with a double. A twist ending revealed that an accident had killed every member of the Oliver Twists but Saul. The album that Robin is holding on the cover of the comic book mimics the back cover image on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• WMCA radio released a pinback promotional button for their station that read "Paul Lives WMCA Swings".
• The Rutles, a parody of The Beatles, included a couple of "Paul is dead" parodies.
• The Simpsons television show has included many references to it.
• John Safran's Music Jamboree contains a segment about the conspiracy, followed by a mock George Harrison-is-dead conspiracy, after Harrison's death in 2001.
• The Onion's Our Dumb Century collection includes a fake headline from January 21, 1981 that reads, "Secret Album-Cover Clues Reveal John Lennon Is Dead."
• In the film Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks' character, Sam Baldwin, comes home to find his son, Jonah, listening to an album and declaring "Dad, this is incredible. If you play it backward it says 'Paul is dead.'"
• In a comedy bit as an ersatz DJ ca. 1970, George Carlin declared, "Alright, here's John Lennon's latest record that, when you play it backwards at slow speed you can hear a voice saying 'Dummy! You're playing it backwards at slow speed!'" (later changed to "screws up your needle!")
• In the song "Readers Digest" from the album Only Visiting This Planet (1972) Christian rocker Larry Norman sings/recites:

"Dear John, who's more popular now? I´ve been listening to some of Paul's new records. Sometimes I think he really is dead."

"Who's more popular now?" probably refers to Lennon's famous claim that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

• In episode 819 of the series Mystery Science Theater 3000, a record player runs backward in a scene of the movie Invasion of the Neptune Men. Crow quips "Paul is a dead man! Miss him! Miss him!" when this occurs.
• In October 1974, the National Lampoon Radio Hour aired a skit titled "Rip Van Ripple" which told the story of a reporter picking-up a hippie hitchhiker who had apparently gotten wasted in 1966 and passed out for 8 years.

Hitchhiker: I guess that means my Jimi Hendrix tickets aren't any good.

Reporter: I'll say. Hendrix is dead.

Hitchhiker: Ahhh! ... Hey, is Paul McCartney still dead?

Reporter: No, he's alive again.

• The Star Trek Customizable Card Game Alternative Universe expansion set's "Paul Rice" card reads "daed si luaP" ("Paul is Dead" backwards) next to the copyright information.
• Many bands have referenced the rumour on their music:
  • SR-71 released a song called "Paul McCartney" on their debut album Now You See Inside which references that Paul is dead.
  • The Union Underground wrote a song called "Turn Me On, Mr. Dead Man", a reference to the "Revolution 9" clue "Turn me on, dead man".
  • "You Turn Me On", a song by Beat Happening, contains the lyrics "Turn me on, dead man," repeated multiple times throughout the chorus.
  • Five Iron Frenzy's "Get Your Riot Gear", from their Quantity Is Job 1 EP, contains the backmasked message "Brad is dead. Let's kill Brad." The next song on the album, "The Untimely Death of Brad", tells a story about a false rumour that their trumpet player has died.
  • Game Theory released a song called "Turn Me On, Dead Man" on their album Lolita Nation, also a reference to the "Revolution 9" clue "Turn me on, dead man", that features reversed humming and guitar playing.
• In a 1987 edition of American Top 40, host Casey Kasem revisited the "Paul Is Dead" era as a related story to the Bananarama song "I Heard a Rumour". The following year, Dick Clark featured a similar story on Rock, Roll and Remember. He played the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" in which John Lennon allegedly says "I buried Paul" at the conclusion of the song (once it begins playing backward). (Lennon said in his 1980 Playboy interview that he actually said "cranberry sauce", which can be heard clearly on the song's extended version on Anthology 2.)
• When McCartney guest-starred on The Simpsons in "Lisa the Vegetarian", he claimed there was a vegetarian hidden message in "Maybe I'm Amazed". Indeed, over the closing credits the song played and with a backmasked lentil soup recipe. At the end, he says "Oh, and by the way, I'm alive." In the episode "D'oh-in In the Wind", a psychedelic version of the regular theme is played during the credits by Yo La Tengo, over which Homer says: "I buried Flanders!". Years earlier, Yo La Tengo had a song called "Paul is Dead" on their album Electr-O-Pura.
• In an episode of Celebrity Deathmatch pitting all of the Beatles against each other, Paul is the first band member to seemingly be killed early in the fight, only to come back with a giant silver hammer. When Paul tries to smash in John's head, he instead smashes in Ringo's head. Paul quickly swings at John again, breaking John's arm and causing him to reel and mumble unintelligibly. When the blow is instantly replayed in reverse, John's mumbling is revealed to be a confession to burying Paul "outside behind Abbey Road studios. It was great fun!"

References

Reeve, Andru J. [1993] (2004). Turn Me On, Dead Man: The Beatles and the "Paul is Dead" Hoax. AuthorHouse Publishing. ISBN 1-4184-8294-3.

Patterson, R. Gary (1998). The Walrus Was Paul: The Great Beatle Death Clues. Fireside Publishing. ISBN 0-684-85062-1.

See also

• Elvis sightings
• Culture jamming

External links

Some completely insane websites full of wacko individuals which state the 'Paul is Dead' rumours:

• Officially Pronounced Dead?
• The Rotten Apple Series
• A video of the Beatles song Revolution 9 Backmasked. Contains many Paul Is Dead clues, including the audio of the alleged car crash
• Features Song snippets with 'hidden clues'
• Article
• Paul is Dead Hoax Allegedly first website dedicated to the Paul is Dead Hoax.
• Jeff Milner's Backmasking Site Forward and reverse audio examples of "I'm So Tired" and "Revolution 9"
• Who Buried Paul McCartney? Dutch Documentary by Wouter van Opdorp
• Hints of What Was There
• Who Buried Paul? Lecture includes images and audio clips
• More on the Rumour
• Photographic analysis of Paul before and after his alleged death
• Paul is dead FAQ (rec.music.beatles)
• IMDb entry on "Paul Is Dead", the German film based on a boy's finding out about the rumour and search for the murderer
• Paul Is Dead - 1969 Report - Beatles A 1969 late-night radio broadcast on WABC in New York City, in which the DJ describes "something strange going on about Paul of The Beatles."