2003 OCTOBER 6 #279
When I found this homemade cassette in the Anniston, Alabama Goodwill Thrift Store, I knew I had to spend 50 cents for it. A music lover taped this radio broadcast of a syndicated special detailing the "Paul Is Dead" phenomenon off the air. The program probably dates from the late 70s, if the presence of Foreigner's 1977 debut album on the tape's b-side is anything to go by. Surely the program's writers had tongue firmly in cheek when creating the script, which collects all the "death clues" which had been circulating since '69, and adds a few new ones to the mix. John Lennon's assassination finally put a stop to this nonsense, but somehow it was a better time when we had to make up dead Beatles to obsess about.
- Perry Amberson
TT-36:54 / 8.4MB / 32kbps 22khz (MONO)
(Image courtesy of Perry Amberson)
John Davison writes:
The incidental music from 0m00s through 0m53s on the "Is
Paul Dead?" cassette (Entry #279 in the _365_Days_
project) is the "Dororo" track from Isao Tomita's
classic album, _The_Bermuda_Triangle_ (Tomita's finest
1970s work, IMHO).
Byzcath writes:
After listening to the Paul is dead thing, all the stuff
the announcer talked about really did float about. I remember
putting the LPs on reel-to-reel tapes, turning the tape
around and listening to all that backwards garbage that
resulted, just waiting for those clues (I was 15-16 at
the time and the Beatles were my life!). I think I have
a magazine from that time devoted to the subject. There
is a book out called "The Walrus Was Paul" that
deals with the subject. Considering how sappy Paul's music
and lyrics got after the Beatles split, in the '70's someone
was quoted as saying: "I've heard Paul's records:
I think he really IS dead."
Bob Purse writes:
The rumor was started by a couple of DJ's in the US, following
the release of Abbey Road, in 1969. One of them (several
years later) subsequently admitted having made the whole
thing up. Most likely due to the fact that Paul had retreated
from the Beatles' collapse as a group at that moment (and
was therefore not very visable to the world), the rumors
caught fire, with people coming up with all sorts of other
"clues". There has never, even 34 years later,
been any evidence that the Beatles were involved - certainly,
in that time, if they had been involved, SOMEONE would
have spilled the beans. It's all perception, anyway. I've
seen a list of clues written by someone who was trying
to show how Beatles lyrics/album covers could just as
easily be manipulated to support a rumor that John had
gone blind!
mcknigs writes:
I read somewhere that as a young college DJ, Fred
"Too Slim" LaBour, later of the PBS radio singing
cowboy group Riders in the Sky, was one of the DJs responsible
for giving the Paul-is-Dead hoax a big push.
Jef Stevens writes:
Fred LaBour (aka the bass player "Too Slim"
from Riders in the Sky) was indeed one of the primary
people behind the hoax, but he was not a DJ. He was working
at the Michigan Daily, a newspaper at the University of
Michigan, when he heard a DJ named Russell Gibb at WKNR
FM in Detroit who was talking about the "Paul is
Dead" thing, which at that time had not spread very
far and was obviously a joke. Mr. LaBour had been assigned
the job of reviewing "Abbey Road" when he heard
that show and invented many more "clues." Even
though it was not the first article about Paul's rumored
death, LaBour's article in the was important because it
fleshed out several aspects of the story. Many of the
elements of the rumor that have been repeated countless
times were products of LaBour's imagination. He created
the identity of Paul's replacement, William Campbell,
and he asserted the walrus was an image of death, stating
"'Walrus' is greek for corpse." The article
was called "McCartney Dead: New Evidence Brought
To Light." and was published on October 14, 1969.
John Lennon once revealed in an interview that they thought
the whole concept of backwards masking was pretty funny,
and they tried it once as a joke. Apparently in the song
"Girl" there is a backwards message of the Beatles
chanting "TIT, TIT, TIT..." but that was the
extent of their involvement in anything of that sort.