It’s been half a century since the release of Abbey Road, the final album that the Beatles ever recorded. Also, it’s very conveniently the 50th anniversary of the tragic death of Paul McCartney. Right?
Yes, as everyone knows, and Skeptoid neatly sum up in the above link, McCartney was gruesomely killed and replaced by a lookalike in one of the most elaborate cover ups of all time, which the band naturally then attempted to unveil via their songs. You know, like they absolutely would do after going to so much effort. It just makes sense!
If you’ve missed it, the story goes as follows: in November 1966 Paul was recording with the band at Abbey Road studios when he got into a heated argument and stormed off.
He got in his car at 5am, was distracted by a hot meter maid (who was, naturally, out checking cars at that hour), missed a red light and had a tragic accident which sheared off the top half of his head.
The distraught band then held a Paul McCartney lookalike competition, won by an orphan named William Campbell, who was given plastic surgery to be indistinguishable from the real thing, and then the Beatles all grew beards to hide the imperfections. Except, weirdly enough, Paul. Sorry, “Paul”.
And then after going to all this effort Campbell and his bandmates then wrote a bunch of songs revealing that Paul was dead.
On Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band there was ‘Lovely Rita’ about the meter maid, and of course ‘A Day In The Life’ (“he blew his mind out in a car / He never noticed that the lights had changed”). Oh, and Paul was facing backwards on the back cover so you know, obviously dead.
And then William announced his arrival on the ‘Hello Goodbye’ single, singing “you say goodbye, I say hello” to his dead predecessor. Obviously.
Then on The Beatles (you know, The White Album) if you play the unlistenable sound collage ‘Revolution 9’ backwards like a normal person would you’ll heard someone say “turn me on dead man”, while John Lennon’s nonsensical mumbling at the end of ‘I’m So Tired’ is obviously “Paul is dead miss him miss him” when you play it backwards. Again, the sort of thing you’d say if you’d gone to massive lengths to cover up your bandmate’s death.
But the biggest giveaway was the Abbey Road cover, with McCartney barefoot (you know, like the dead always are) and out of step AND holding a cigarette; the other Beatles are dressed as the undertaker (Ringo Starr, black suit), the gravedigger (George Harrison, denim workclothes) and the priest (Lennon, in white).
Also, the numberplate of the Volkswagon beetle (BEATLE., GEDDIT???) parked on the road is 28IF, because Paul would have been 28 years old IF he had lived! Sure, in 1969 McCartney actually turned 27 BUT STILL!
Then again, people might tell you that this elaborate story has a rather more prosaic explanation – it’s all bullshit, made up by one Tom Zarski who called into Detroit radio station WKNR-FM Sunday October 12, 1969 with the news that McCartney was dead, which were further embellished with bits of Beatles lore courtesy of journalism student Fred LaBour in an article published two days later in the Michigan Daily.
Among his awesome bonus facts was that “the walrus was Paul” (in ‘Glass Onion’) was more evidence since “walrus” is Greek for “corpse”. Fun fact: “walrus” is absolutely not the Greek word for corpse.
(For the record: the Greek word for corpse is “nekró”, where we get lots of dead thing related words like “necrosis” and “necromancer”. Linguistics are fun!)
Anyway: there are still people who genuinely believe that McCartney died in 1966, despite the strong evidence for the continued existence of Paul McCartney, like how he is still touring and putting out music.
But the story is just so fun! And hey, how about all those cool coincidences-slash-lies which make everything sound excitingly detailed?
And obviously there had been propaganda and misinformation before, but this was the first manifestation of what we now know as fake news: something completely made up and pushed through the media with zero scrutiny because it’s a compelling story.
Hot tip: if things fit together a little too neatly, it’s almost certainly bullshit since real things are messy and complicated and rarely make a compellingly straightforward narrative. I blame The X-Files, myself.
But 50 years on, the Paul McCartney Dead story proves that we’re no better with coping with fake news now than we were then.
Unless Paul really is dead, of course. And actually, if you play ‘Mull Of Kintyre’ backwards…