Paul is dead

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"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.

The legend hinges on supposed hints among the Beatles' many recordings and presumed to be deliberately placed by The Beatles or others. Hundreds have been cited at various times; they include statements heard when a song is played backwards, symbolic interpretations of obscure lyrics, and ambiguous imagery on album covers. Some of these have become well known, such as the fact that on the cover of Abbey Road, McCartney is the only barefooted Beatle and is out of step with the others.

It is often unclear how many proponents of this story spread it as a joke, as opposed to a real conspiracy theory. The rumour has been the subject of much sociological examination, since its development, growth, and rebuttal took place very publicly. A claim that a hoax was perpetrated by The Beatles themselves, either as a joke or to stimulate record sales, has been denied by all four band members.

Background

The first known printing of this urban legend was in the Drake University paper, the Times-Delphic, on September 17, 1969. 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. Celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey hosted an hour-long television special in which he both prosecuted and defended the claims, concluding ultimately that the rumor was unprovable.

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) and English author Benjamin Fitzpatrick's 1997 book, Rumours from John, George, Ringo and Me.

"Paul is dead" analyst Joel Glazier hypothesized in 1978 that John Lennon's love of wordplay and studio editing may have been responsible for some clues in later albums, but that after cult-leader Charles Manson claimed The Beatles were hiding references to an upcoming racial war in their song "Helter Skelter", the band members chose not to reveal the joke.

McCartney himself responded to the rumours of his death with the tongue-in-cheek cover to his 1993 live album Paul Is Live, sending up both the Abbey Road cover and the supposed "hidden clues" on it.

The advent of the Internet gave "Paul is dead" rumours new life, with some websites claiming that photographic evidence proves that the McCartney before and after late 1966 could not be the same man.

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 Aston-Martin which he subsequently crashed, and died.

The story was pieced together from the lyrics of multiple Beatles songs. The most common narrative includes the following pieces of evidence:

1. "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ("A Day in the Life").
2. He then crashed into a lamp-post (a car crash sound is heard in "Revolution 9" and "A Day in the Life").
3. He was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" ("She's Leaving Home")
4. Nobody found this out because the news was withheld: "Wednesday morning papers didn't come" ("Lady Madonna").
5. A funeral procession was held days later, as was supposedly implied on the Abbey Road album cover by the Beatles' clothing. (John Lennon dressed all in white, like a clergyman. Ringo Starr wore a black suit as an undertaker would. Paul McCartney wore a suit without shoes, a common custom for corpses being buried, and walked out of step with the other Beatles. George Harrison's denim outfit resembled that of a gravedigger.)
6. Adding fuel to the legend is the ending of "Strawberry Fields Forever". Some believed John said "I buried Paul" in a slow deep voice over the final refrain. He later refuted that, stating that he had said "cranberry sauce".

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 the song "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"), or some combination of the names.

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McCartney during the filming of the "Rain" video, showing the chipped tooth and scar from the moped crash at the end of the previous year

There is no evidence of any 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 moustache.

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 titled "How Do You Sleep?" from the 1971 Imagine album, commenting, "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead."

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 1972 National Lampoon Album, Radio Diner, featured a short track that, when played backwards, has a voice that sounds like Paul saying, "I'm Dead!"
• A 1983 Saturday Night Live sketch with Eddie Murphy claiming he was the original fifth Beatle spoofed the backward message.
• The Simpsons television show has included many references to it. When McCartney guest-starred on The Simpsons in "Lisa the Vegetarian", he claimed there was a vegetarian hidden message in "Maybe I'm Amazed". Over the closing credits the song played with a backmasked lentil soup recipe. At the end, he says "Oh, and by the way, I'm alive." Also, on one of The Simpsons' annual Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes, McCartney's name appears on a grave seen in the opening.
• John Safran's Music Jamboree contains a segment about the conspiracy, followed by a mock George Harrison-is-dead conspiracy, following 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's 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 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!".
• 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 gotten wasted in 1966 and passed out for 8 years.

Hitchhiker: 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.
• A deleted scene in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story has Jack Black as Paul and he says "Of course I remember, I'm not dead, or am I?"
• 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.
• An extended version of the theme to the animated sitcom King Of The Hill features a few seconds of silence at the end, followed by Dale Gribble saying "Hank is a dead man. Miss him, miss him."
• The Batman Adventures Annual 2 from 1995, written by Paul Dini, features Ra's al Ghul saying an incantation in order to summon the demon Hahhk. Each phrase is a pop culture reference written backwards, among them "Luap Deirub I!" or "I Buried Paul!"
• Many bands have referenced the rumour in 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.
  • Game Theory released a song called "Turn Me On, Dead Man" on their album Lolita Nation.
  • "December Is for Cynics" by the band The Matches contains the lyrics "But Snopes.com said if you play/'Strawberry Fields' the wrong way/You can hear Lennon's ghost say/'I buried Paul.'"
  • Icelandic teenage-band Retro Stefson wrote a song "Paul is dead" referring to the rumours.
  • College professor and Americana singer Luke Powers' song "Paul is Dead" [1] supposes that the dead McCartney was replaced by the reptilian alien "Faul," who serves as a front man for a world-wide conspiracy run by "Masons, Bilderbergs, Federal Reserves and overseen by the Googooluminati."

See also

• Elvis sightings
• Culture jamming

References

• Reeve, Andru J. (1994, 2004). Turn Me On, Dead Man: The Beatles and the "Paul is Dead" Hoax. AuthorHouse Publishing. ISBN 1-4184-8294-3.

External links

• 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
• Site refuting the above photographic analysis
• Paul Is Dead (2000) at IMDb, the German film based on a boy's finding out about the rumour and search for the murderer
• Is Paul Dead? Turn me on dead man! The Original Radio Show
• A Tribute to James Paul McCartney Contains photo analysis of Paul and "Billy Shears"