“I am alive and well and concerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.” – Paul McCartney
Paul is Dead: The Paul McCartney Death Theory
Posted by Clever Driscoll
“Paul is dead” is an urban legend and conspiracy theory alleging that English musician Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike. The rumor began circulating in 1966, gaining broad popularity in September 1969 following reports on American college campuses.
According to the theory or rumor, McCartney died in a car crash, and to spare the public from grief, the surviving Beatles, aided by Britain’s MI5, replaced him with a McCartney look-alike, subsequently communicating this secret through subtle details of their albums. Proponents perceived clues among elements of Beatles songs and cover artwork; clue-hunting proved infectious, and by October 1969 had become an international phenomenon. Rumours declined after Life published an interview with McCartney in November 1969.The phenomenon was the subject of analysis in the fields of sociology, psychology and communications during the 1970s. McCartney parodied the hoax with the title and cover art of his 1993 live album, Paul Is Live. The legend was among ten of “the world’s most enduring conspiracy theories” according to Time in 2009.
The Beginning
According to Tony Barrow, who wrote about it in his book John, Paul, George, Ringo and Me, the rumours about McCartney’s death started circulating in September 1966. At the time, Barrow was the press officer for the Beatles and was responsible for fielding calls from fans and the media. He began receiving a number of calls from people asking whether McCartney was all right, to which he replied that he had recently spoken with McCartney.[1] In early 1967, a similar rumour circulated in London that Paul McCartney had been killed in a traffic accident while driving along the M1 motorway on 7 January.[2] The rumour was acknowledged and rebutted in the February issue of The Beatles Book.[2] McCartney then alluded to the rumour during a press conference held around the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in May.[3][better source needed] By 1967, the Beatles were known for sometimes including backmasking in their music.[4] Analysing their lyrics for hidden meaning had also become a popular trend in the US.[5] In November 1968, their self-titled double LP (also known as the “White Album”) was released containing the track “Glass Onion”. John Lennon wrote the song in response to “gobbledygook” said about Sgt. Pepper. In a later interview, he said that he was purposely confusing listeners with lines such as “the Walrus was Paul” – a reference to his song “I Am the Walrus” from the 1967 EP and album Magical Mystery Tour.[6]
In late September 1969, the Beatles released the album Abbey Road as they were in the process of disbanding.[11] On 10 October, the Beatles’ press officer, Derek Taylor, responded to the rumor stating: “Recently we’ve been getting a flood of inquiries asking about reports that Paul is dead. We’ve been getting questions like that for years, of course, but in the past few weeks we’ve been getting them at the office and home night and day.
I’m even getting telephone calls from disc jockeys and others in the United States.” Throughout this period, McCartney felt isolated from his bandmates in his opposition to their choice of business manager, Allen Klein, and distraught at Lennon’s private announcement that he was leaving the group. With the birth of his daughter Mary in late August, McCartney had withdrawn to focus on his family life. On 22 October, the day that the “Paul is dead” rumour became an international news story, McCartney, his wife Linda and their two daughters travelled to Scotland to spend time at his farm near Campbeltown.
Aftermath
In November 1969, Capitol Records sales managers reported a significant increase in sales of Beatles catalogue albums, attributed to the rumour.[62] Rocco Catena, Capitol’s vice-president of national merchandising, estimated that “this is going to be the biggest month in history in terms of Beatles sales”.[25][62] The rumour benefited the commercial performance of Abbey Road in the US, where it comfortably outsold all of the band’s previous albums.[63] Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour, both of which had been off the charts since February, re-entered the Billboard Top LPs chart,[25] peaking at number 101 and number 109, respectively.
McCartney returned to London in December. Bolstered by Linda’s support, he began recording his debut solo album at his home in St John’s Wood. Titled McCartney, it was released in April 1970.
Before the end of October 1969, several record releases had exploited the phenomenon of McCartney’s alleged demise. These included “The Ballad of Paul” by the Mystery Tour; “Brother Paul” by Billy Shears and the All Americans; “So Long Paul” by Werbley Finster, a pseudonym for José Feliciano; and Zacharias and His Tree People’s “We’re All Paul Bearers (Parts One and Two)”. Another song was Terry Knight’s “Saint Paul”, which had been a minor hit in June that year and was subsequently adopted by radio stations as a tribute to “the late Paul McCartney”.
See the Rolling Stone video about the theory.
“Someone from the office rang me up and said, ‘Look, Paul, you’re dead.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t agree with that.’” – Paul McCartney (Rolling Stone, 1974)
Author Peter Doggett writes that, while he thinks the theory behind “Paul is dead” defied logic, its popularity was understandable in a climate where citizens were faced with conspiracy theories insisting that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was in fact a coup d’état. Schaffner said that, given its origins as an item of gossip and intrigue generated by a select group in the “Beatles cult”, “Paul is dead” serves as “a genuine folk tale of the mass communications era”. He also described it as “the most monumental hoax since Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast persuaded thousands of panicky New Jerseyites that Martian invaders were in the vicinity”.
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