Ah, 9 November — a sad day: 57th anniversary of the day Paul McCartney died, forcing the other Beatles to replace him with an orphan they had trained to impersonate him, and then (obviously) to put clues in songs and on album covers so people could find out anyway.
The story really begins on 12 October 1969, when a radio station EXPOSED THE TRUTH — but we were busy on 12 October, if you remember, marking Aleister Crowley’s birthday…
…and that was also the date Samuel Pepys had a pint of ale placed where the sun does not shine, both of which were too important to miss.
Anyway, on 12/10/69 — according to The Beatles Forever, by Nicholas Schaffner — a DJ on underground Detroit radio station WKNR-FM, Russ Gibb, got “an eerie phone call” telling him to listen to specific Beatles songs’ fadeouts carefully, and to play others backwards.
And one of his listeners that night, according to the University of Michigan, was
a mischievous young U-M natural resources student named Fred LaBour
…who two days later wrote an article for the student newspaper (which, being weekly, was obviously called Michigan Daily).
Among other things, this article suggested that
Paul McCartney was killed in an automobile accident in early November, 1966, after leaving EMI recording studios tired, sad, and dejected
…and was found four hours later
pinned under his car in a culvert with the top of his head sheared off. He was deader than a doornail.
Schaffner pins down the exact date of Paul’s death, through careful — nay forensic, almost Sherlockian — application of Occam’s razor and STRINGENT ANALYSIS.
But it was LaBour who established the salient FACTS of this COMPLETELY TRUE STORY, noting that McCartney is facing backwards in one of the Sgt. Pepper photos, and the cover also shows a mourning flower arrangement in the shape of — AHA! — a bass guitar.
He also spotted the VERY REAL CLUES on the Abbey Road cover (Paul being barefoot AS A CORPSE WOULD BE and holding a cigarette in the wrong hand, and the VW numberplate which partly read 28IF — i.e. the age McCartney would have reach by then IF he had lived).
LaBour also wrote about clues which aren’t as well-known: the three live Beatles crossing the road are dressed as a minister (John), an undertaker (Ringo), and a gravedigger (George), because they have just left a cemetery. OBVIOUSLY.
AND the Magical Mystery Tour booklet shows Paul sitting near a sign that says “I WAS”, and another photo has him wearing a black carnation while the other Beatles’ buttonholes are red.
The University of Michigan, CLEARLY IN ON THE WHOLE THING, suggests now that
the clues were nothing more than a college prank … LaBour admits — and has always admitted — that he made up his clues on the spot, as a joke
EXACTLY WHAT YOU’D EXPECT THEM TO SAY.
They even have the temerity to claim that “the walrus was Paul” is not a clue, because LaBour claims ‘walrus’ is Greek for ‘corpse’ when in fact it isn’t. BUT HOW DO WE KNOW THAT FOR SURE?
Some people tried to point out that Paul McCartney would in fact have been 27 if he’d lived, but they were rightly dismissed. After all, Ringo had said:
I’m not going to say anything because nobody believes me when I do
which was HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.
‘Paul’ himself said
Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. If I were dead, I’d be the last to know.
And, as everybody knows, McCartney didn’t have a silly sense of humour or enjoy mucking about, so that obviously wasn’t him.
Actually, can we just skip back a bit and note that if he’d been 27 (had he lived), that must mean that Sgt Pepper, released on 26 May 1967, came out before this absurdly, insanely, preposterously talented bastard was even Twenty. Fucking. Five (on 18 June that year)?
Anyway, back to the important and TRUE story. John Lennon tried to pretend that his guiltily muttering “I buried Paul” at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever was really “cranberry sauce”. OH YEAH, RIGHT, JOHN. A LIKELY FUCKING STORY.
In 2018, some absolutely sick bastards made a short ‘comedy’ film about the affair, in which the remaining Fab Three replace Paul with a man called Billy Shears. You can watch it if you want, but you OBVIOUSLY SHOULDN’T.
Perhaps most distastefully of all, the impostor who replaced Paul McCartney released an album recorded on his UTTERLY FRAUDULENT 1993 tour, which he named Paul is Live, and on the cover mocked the death of the man he’d replaced.
Still, though. Impostor or not, imagine recording Sgt. Fucking Pepper at the age of twenty fucking four. I was in my first job when I was 24, and I was shit at it.
