Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
Speaker 1: the Myth, the Legend, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2: Z azaltop.
Speaker 3: As we were talking beforehand trying to figure out when
Speaker 3: it is, and I had forgotten this. On April twentieth,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five will be four years I've been on
Speaker 3: Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2: Of the first episode I edited in Doctor T. W.
Speaker 3: Stallings, the One Man's corvid hating quest make Oklahoma literally
Speaker 3: eat Crow.
Speaker 2: It didn't cut off. I had to click it into it.
Speaker 4: But yeah, we love core here. Well, we should have
Speaker 4: brought you some flowers or a cupcake or something.
Speaker 1: Pupcakes or like a basket of crows.
Speaker 4: It could be we could. I'm sure we could find
Speaker 4: a way to serve you a cupcake. Man. Surely there's
Speaker 4: a condition approved cupcake.
Speaker 2: There's actually muffins and stuff cupcakes.
Speaker 4: There are what is a muffin if not a cup
Speaker 4: a healthy cupcake?
Speaker 3: Or what is a cupcake if it's not an unhealthy
Speaker 3: muffin or actually healthy?
Speaker 1: For the soul muffin right right, and again you'll get
Speaker 1: your basket of crows once accounting approves. Folks, we couldn't
Speaker 1: be more excited to join with you for our continuing
Speaker 1: exploration of Paul is Dead courtesy of our research associate,
Speaker 1: Jordan's Noel.
Speaker 4: How you feeling good, great jubilants. All you need is love,
Speaker 4: baby piece and love, peace and love always. That's what
Speaker 4: Ringo says. Nowadays he's all about peace and love. But
Speaker 4: back in the day he knew how to throw some punches,
Speaker 4: and potentially he was responsible for Sir Paul McCartney running
Speaker 4: out of Abbey Road Studios and driving like a bat
Speaker 4: out of Hell and his Aston Martin, which led to
Speaker 4: his untimely demise, at which point a plot was cracked
Speaker 4: or hatched by mi I five, the British Secret Service
Speaker 4: and the Beatles themselves being complicted and covering up Paul's
Speaker 4: death and replacing him with the Canadian doppelganger by the
Speaker 4: name of Billy Shears. And then later they regretted it
Speaker 4: and decided it was only fair since they couldn't come
Speaker 4: out and speak about it openly, to just sprinkle in
Speaker 4: some little tidbits that fans could decode to let them
Speaker 4: know that Paul was dead. I don't understand to what end,
Speaker 4: but you know, it's a fun story, that's for sure,
Speaker 4: and we're entering part two of it in terms of
Speaker 4: the albums, and said clues sprinkled therein that's.
Speaker 1: An excellent recap by none other than mister Old Brown.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben Bilin. This is part two of
Speaker 1: Paul Is Dead, which, folks spoiler, may well be a
Speaker 1: three part series because we've got so much stuff to
Speaker 1: get to off air. We were hobnobbing a bit and
Speaker 1: Nola you brought up a great point that maybe we
Speaker 1: should go album by album. At this juncture, Paul Prime,
Speaker 1: according to the tail Dies, is decapitated in a car
Speaker 1: accident in nineteen sixty six. Let's go to the white album.
Speaker 1: When was that nineteen sixty eight? Right, So now Billy
Speaker 1: Shears is already Paul Prime's body double.
Speaker 4: But before we do that, Ben, there was one really
Speaker 4: cool tidbit that we referenced, and I think is worth
Speaker 4: mentioning for the song Strawberry Fields Forever, one of the Beatles'
Speaker 4: most famous jams, lovely little mellotron flutes. There at the beginning,
Speaker 4: we talked about the idea that John Lennon, in his grief,
Speaker 4: was somehow responsible for burying Paul McCartney Paul Prime's mangled
Speaker 4: corpse in a shallow, unmarked grave in Strawberry Fields Salvation
Speaker 4: Army Park there in Liverpool. And supposedly there are tons
Speaker 4: of little hints to this occurrence buried, unintended, intended whatever.
Speaker 4: In the song Strawberry Fields Forever, there's a giant sun
Speaker 4: of music concrete sound collage fade out at the end
Speaker 4: where you can hear John saying what sounds like I
Speaker 4: buried Paul, though it has been determined that he was
Speaker 4: actually saying Cranberry sauce. You know, let me hear what
Speaker 4: you want to hear, like you said, And it's a
Speaker 4: little bit more apparent on an out take version of
Speaker 4: the song that you can find on the Beatles endthology,
Speaker 4: which is pretty cool. Paul later explained that's John's humor.
Speaker 4: John would say something totally out of sync like Cranberry's sauce.
Speaker 4: If you've seen the Let It Be Recording documentary multi
Speaker 4: part series that came out on Disney Plus that Peter
Speaker 4: Jackson put together, you can really see John Lennon's rye
Speaker 4: wit on full display, where he's always changing the lyrics
Speaker 4: to songs and making little goofs. So Paul characterized it
Speaker 4: as saying, if you don't realize that John's apt to
Speaker 4: say something like Cranberry's sauce when he feels like it,
Speaker 4: then you start to hear a little funny word there
Speaker 4: and you think, aha. As another example, during a day
Speaker 4: in the life, you can hear him saying sugar plump fairy,
Speaker 4: sugar plumb fairy. But Ben, you teed up the White Album,
Speaker 4: which is it's hard to pick a favorite. It's like
Speaker 4: Stars in the Sky. But the White Album is when
Speaker 4: you start hearing the Beatles kind of beginning to go
Speaker 4: their separate ways, and they have kind of each of
Speaker 4: their own personalities represented much more fully on this album,
Speaker 4: where you really start to hear each of them kind
Speaker 4: of have their own songs. Glass Onion is an incredible song.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, we can we spend a second here on
Speaker 1: that pronunciation, because I think it's important what you're saying,
Speaker 1: cranberry sauce, iburry, Paul. It's like house of Lord's House
Speaker 1: of Paul.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I also have to point out with respect to our
Speaker 1: research associate Jordan run talk that if this theory is true,
Speaker 1: it is not Paul Prime, later.
Speaker 4: Explaining this, it is what's true. Billy Shears, that's true.
Speaker 4: Billy Shears, Yeah, aka Paul fall right for Paul. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so let's jump right into the white album with the
Speaker 4: song glass on You.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all about this pivotal line. Here's another clue
Speaker 1: for you. All. The Walrus was Paul, And for proponents
Speaker 1: of the Paul is Dead theory, the guy who replaces
Speaker 1: Paul Prime is seen wearing a Walbrius costume on the
Speaker 1: cover of Magical Mystery Tour a year earlier, in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. So if you ask armchair folkloors and speculators,
Speaker 1: they will tell you that the Walbrius is a mythical
Speaker 1: symbol of death in certain cultures. Issue is nobody really
Speaker 1: seems to be able to agree on which cultures fine
Speaker 1: walers as a symbol of death.
Speaker 4: I've never really heard that one. He's certainly not on
Speaker 4: tarot cart or anything. I've never thought of the walrus
Speaker 4: as being a harbinger of death. I think it's also
Speaker 4: important to mention we're going to get more into this.
Speaker 4: I think in part three. But at this point, the
Speaker 4: discourse around Paula's dead is heavy in the press, and
Speaker 4: they're getting asked about it a lot, and they are
Speaker 4: absolutely fed up with it. So they're honestly at a
Speaker 4: certain points starting to play into it for their own
Speaker 4: amusement and also as a little middle finger to all
Speaker 4: the folks that they perceive as being dumb dums asking
Speaker 4: about this stuff and the press bugging them about it.
Speaker 4: So him saying, and here's another clue for you all.
Speaker 4: He says it with some stank on it in the song,
Speaker 4: very kind of almost sneeringly. The walrus was paul So
Speaker 4: you know, it's definitely John Lennon's very punk kind of
Speaker 4: snotty sensibility coming out in his delivery of that line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can dissect this a little bit. If
Speaker 1: you go to the Michigan Daily shout Out to Michigan
Speaker 1: by Fred Labor, you'll see a claim that walrus is
Speaker 1: the Greek word for corpse. Sorry, Fred, that is not true.
Speaker 1: Diplomatically put, you could see the Chicago Sun Times noting
Speaker 1: that the walrus is the Viking symbol of death. You
Speaker 1: can see the Washington Post speculation that it's a symbol
Speaker 1: of death for modern indigenous communities. They used a word
Speaker 1: we're not going to use.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: We we see a lot of people sort of passing
Speaker 1: around this idea of walrus as a symbol of mortality,
Speaker 1: and the as you dive into it, what you'll find
Speaker 1: is there's really no supporting evidence. People were looking for
Speaker 1: connections that may not actually exist. But I love that
Speaker 1: you're bringing up glass onion because you know, uh, it's
Speaker 1: up to interpretation. Perhaps a glass onion refers to the
Speaker 1: glass topped coffins of yesteryear that allow mourners to look inside. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a whole bag of badgers. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a pickle. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the song I mean as a whole is is
Speaker 4: John Lennon just strike out against the whole Paul is
Speaker 4: dead thing. You know. So if you want to read
Speaker 4: it as more clues and you're kind of missing the
Speaker 4: point of what the song is about in the first place,
Speaker 4: there's references to tons. It's very self referential. I told
Speaker 4: you about strawberry Fields, you know, the place where nothing
Speaker 4: is real. Well, here's another place you can go, like
Speaker 4: straight to hell, where everything flows like lava. You know
Speaker 4: he's talking to the press looking through the bent back
Speaker 4: tulips to see how the other half lives, looking through
Speaker 4: a glass onion. It's just about seeing what you want
Speaker 4: to see. Let's say he says, I told you about
Speaker 4: the fool on the hill. I tell you, man, he's
Speaker 4: living there. Still. Well, here's another place you can be
Speaker 4: Listen to me. I mean, it's the whole point of
Speaker 4: the song Glass Onion is John Lennon saying, you guys
Speaker 4: are barking up the wrong onion here.
Speaker 1: M yeah, yeah, you're crossing the wrong Gabby road. And
Speaker 1: if we were to summarize perhaps the metacognitive state of
Speaker 1: John Lennon at this point, we would have to go
Speaker 1: to I'm So Tired. At the very end of I'm
Speaker 1: So Tired, you can hear Lenin doing some proper backmasking,
Speaker 1: which we are huge fans of. If you play if
Speaker 1: you play this apparently ostensibly incoherent mumbling at the end
Speaker 1: of the song from Lenin, then you will hear the
Speaker 1: line Paul is a dead man. Miss him, miss him supposedly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we referenced this in our live show with
Speaker 4: stuff that I want you to know that we did
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn is part of on AirFest recently, which is
Speaker 4: actually going to come out as an episode in the
Speaker 4: Stuff that I Want You to Know Feeds. And we
Speaker 4: had the lovely Justin Richmond from Broken Record on the
Speaker 4: Live show as a guest, and we talked about these
Speaker 4: different messages and had a little game where we played
Speaker 4: things backwards and tried to figure out what they were
Speaker 4: supposed to be saying, and then sort of like you know,
Speaker 4: played them forwards and talked a little bit about the
Speaker 4: history behind each of those examples. And the Paul is
Speaker 4: Dead man miss Him Miss Him is one of the
Speaker 4: ones that we reference, and that's really where in many ways,
Speaker 4: the whole kind of Paul Is Dead as a concept
Speaker 4: that is what is being referenced is that very very
Speaker 4: clip so much like Cranberry Sauce in Strawberry Fields. It's
Speaker 4: just an example of him just kind of riffing and
Speaker 4: speaking kind of random gibberish. She was a huge fan
Speaker 4: of the incredible character actor and artist Peter Sellers and
Speaker 4: a show that I'm not familiar with. He apparently had
Speaker 4: a radio career in kind of satire and had a
Speaker 4: show called The Goon Show, which is a surrealist radio
Speaker 4: play series that would do things like that, like a
Speaker 4: make up kind of you know, nonsense language, which I'm
Speaker 4: a fan of it. I got to check out the
Speaker 4: Goon Show.
Speaker 1: I don't know what goon meant. A very different thing
Speaker 1: back then to Goon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the Goon Squad is something very very differ today. Yeah,
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Leonard Peltier in that regard. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Revolution number nine. Would you describe that as a
Speaker 1: sound collage?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's again like I've used the term music concrete,
Speaker 4: which refers to a style of tape magnetic tape manipulation
Speaker 4: that was sort of spearheaded and developed in France around
Speaker 4: the same I think eras like Dadaism was starting to
Speaker 4: become very popular in art in the art world, and
Speaker 4: it is a way of taking a medium and using
Speaker 4: it incorrectly more or less. I mean that term is
Speaker 4: sort of relative, I guess, but you know, you're taking
Speaker 4: pieces of tape, splicing them together, recording bits and stuff
Speaker 4: off the radio like John did and I am the
Speaker 4: Walrus with that King lear bit, and Revolution number nine
Speaker 4: is them taking this to kind of a further extreme.
Speaker 4: It is a sound collage with lots of backwards voices
Speaker 4: and different clips. It sounds like something you might hear
Speaker 4: on a Pink Floyd record as well, very very psychedelic
Speaker 4: bits of chatter, things like the voice saying his voice
Speaker 4: was low and his eyes were high, and his eyes
Speaker 4: were closed. Paul died. My fingers are broken and so
Speaker 4: is my hair. But a thing like that, like my
Speaker 4: fingers are broken and so is my hair, is a
Speaker 4: perfect example of kind of data nonsense. You know, there's
Speaker 4: a wonderful band out of Athens, Storgia called the Olivia
Speaker 4: Trimmer Control, which is an absolute nonsense phrase, and this
Speaker 4: is very similar to that.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that stands out the most to
Speaker 1: proponents of the Paul is Dead theory is the number nine,
Speaker 1: number nine refrain. It repeats, you know, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and depending upon your ears, you may hear turn me
Speaker 1: on Dead Man, turn me on Dead Man. When it's
Speaker 1: played in reverse. Again, your interpretive mileage may vary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But a big part of music concrete and this
Speaker 4: type of sampling plunder phonic type of you know, music creation.
Speaker 4: A lot of it's just about taking a sound object
Speaker 4: and manipulating it and the intent it usually isn't about intent.
Speaker 4: It's about like taking something that already exists and twisting
Speaker 4: it around. So number literature a million percent ben exactly right,
Speaker 4: But like number nine, number nine, that's what the guy's saying.
Speaker 4: It's very clear. So yeah, okay, when you flip it backwards,
Speaker 4: it maybe sounds a little bit like, you know, turn
Speaker 4: me on dead Man, turn me on dead Man. But
Speaker 4: clearly the source material was number nine. And I don't
Speaker 4: know who is saying that. I don't know the history
Speaker 4: of that part, or if that's something they grabbed off
Speaker 4: of radio broadcasts or what, but I think they were
Speaker 4: just fascinated by the cadence of it and the sound
Speaker 4: of it, to the point where they made that the
Speaker 4: name of the song, and Revolution, of course, is a
Speaker 4: song in and of itself you say you want to
Speaker 4: rev So this is like almost like a weird artsy
Speaker 4: remix of that in concept. But I don't know that
Speaker 4: there are any bits of actual the actual song revolution
Speaker 4: in Revolution number nine. It's just them being pretty data,
Speaker 4: which I think is awesome.
Speaker 1: And again we're we're seeing that at this point when
Speaker 1: Revolution number nine hits the airwaves, people are already primed
Speaker 1: to think that Paul is dead, so they're actively looking
Speaker 1: for stuff that confirms that pattern. So now we're returning
Speaker 1: to something we talked about in our first episode in
Speaker 1: this series, Abby Road.
Speaker 4: It is a road, the studios.
Speaker 1: The record, Yeah, the rides, yes, yes, yes, the experience
Speaker 1: Abby Road the album not to be confused with the studio,
Speaker 1: nor with the crosswalk, nor with the street, nor with
Speaker 1: the ride. It comes out in nineteen sixty nine, and
Speaker 1: this delivers arguably the most well known clue in the
Speaker 1: conspiracy or folklore that Paul McCartney died in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: Is it depicting a funeral?
Speaker 4: It's a good question, I mean, and there's a whole
Speaker 4: thing about him having shoes off. We'll get to. Let's
Speaker 4: just go through some of the other things. This idea
Speaker 4: of a funeral procession, John leading the procession as he
Speaker 4: is wearing white, all white like a priest, while Ringo
Speaker 4: follows behind as a pallbearer or an undertaker, and all
Speaker 4: black Paul bearer. Paul is the third in the procession,
Speaker 4: would be the corpse in the order of operations, that
Speaker 4: is a funeral procession with his eyes closed and barefoot. Allegedly,
Speaker 4: how they bury in Italy or in India or England
Speaker 4: or I don't know about that, guys. I think your
Speaker 4: resultsate Harry there too, and literally out of step with
Speaker 4: the others. He is once again turning his back on life.
Speaker 4: He is not of this mortal plane, you know, he's
Speaker 4: he's two step in in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then of course we're all asking where is George.
Speaker 1: George Harrison is right in drogue. He's taking up the
Speaker 1: rear as the grave digger if you but if you
Speaker 1: look at outtakes of the photo session, because it was
Speaker 1: a photo session, there were multiple photos taken for the album,
Speaker 1: you'll see that in several our buddy Paul Prime is
Speaker 1: wearing sandals, or excuse me, Billy Shears is wearing sandals.
Speaker 1: And word on the street is he ultimately got rid
Speaker 1: of the sandals because it was too hot outside. And
Speaker 1: whether you think this is Paul or fall, someone say
Speaker 1: they are. Paul McCartney spoke in a interview with Life
Speaker 1: magazine in nineteen sixty nine and said, it is all
Speaker 1: bloody stupid. We were wearing our ordinary clothes. I was
Speaker 1: walking barefoot because it was a hot day. And what
Speaker 1: I love about this norm is that you can we
Speaker 1: can tell with direct quotes from Paul McCartney Postscar Crash, allegedly,
Speaker 1: we could tell that he is aware of this theory,
Speaker 1: and at first he's being kind of like a good sport,
Speaker 1: but he seems increasingly irritated with it, and you have
Speaker 1: to wonder, like, how would you feel if people kept
Speaker 1: coming up to you and telling you that you were
Speaker 1: a body double of yourself?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it could probably get all It'd probably be amusing
Speaker 4: for a hot second and then get real tiresome, real quick.
Speaker 4: The photo series, by the way, was taken the day
Speaker 4: Charles Manson he might have heard him order the deaths
Speaker 4: of Sharon Tate and her pals there at the was
Speaker 4: it Clo Drive mansion. And this is directly as a
Speaker 4: result of reading too much into Beatles lyrics. Specifically, the
Speaker 4: one that gets referenced a lot is the song Helter
Speaker 4: Skelter off the White album, So that's much has been
Speaker 4: made of that outside of the Paula's Dead stuff. So
Speaker 4: at this point there is a lot being made of
Speaker 4: the idea that this is early example of outrage surrounding
Speaker 4: the idea of supposed backmasking or satanic messages hidden in
Speaker 4: popular music. So at this point the Beatles are damn
Speaker 4: aware of this outside of just the Paul is Dead thing,
Speaker 4: and are probably pretty pretty on edge about potentially being
Speaker 4: associated with stuff like that. If there was any clever,
Speaker 4: you know, trickery going on, they probably abandoned it for
Speaker 4: Abbey Road.
Speaker 1: Let's just put that out there right now. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: probably stepped it back.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You can also see Paul McCartney smoking a cigarette. That
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention, partially because cigarettes are associated
Speaker 1: with mortality, but also because he's smoking with his right hand.
Speaker 1: So for people who thought Paul Prime had been replaced,
Speaker 1: this was an indication that the purported Paul was a fake.
Speaker 1: And this doesn't even get us to you know, the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Beetle. It's in the background of that Abbey Road
Speaker 1: crosswalk that has disappointed so many tourists when they find
Speaker 1: out it's just a crosswalk on a road. This Beatle
Speaker 1: b E t L E has a license plate. Since
Speaker 1: plate reads twenty eight if so, people are going to
Speaker 1: tell you that twenty eight if means Paul McCartney would
Speaker 1: have been twenty eight years old at the time if
Speaker 1: he lived. That's factually inaccurate. He would have been twenty seven.
Speaker 1: It just goes on. People will see the letters LMW
Speaker 1: and say that means Linda McCartney weeps. But honestly, Noel,
Speaker 1: this is that's a little far for me, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, farther even than some of the other
Speaker 4: more slightly plausible ones. And again, you know, with the
Speaker 4: Manson stuff and all of the hullabaloo and the press
Speaker 4: feeding frenzy surrounding that, pretty sure they were not going
Speaker 4: out of their way to hide anything. And whether it
Speaker 4: be the album cover or beyond. And you know, to
Speaker 4: Paul's point about the cover of Abbey Road, and they
Speaker 4: were all wearing their their clothes was despite it looking
Speaker 4: like you know, maybe there was wardrobe for this, I
Speaker 4: can confirm. And anyone that maybe has seen the get
Speaker 4: back not let it be get back. That's what the
Speaker 4: documentaries called. This is kind of how they dressed. Yeah,
Speaker 4: John Lennon around this dime, he wore these very lavish,
Speaker 4: flashy white suits with you know, platform he type shoes
Speaker 4: all the time. He's a super fashionable guy. And George
Speaker 4: warlike bell bottoms and like Denham and stuff. I mean this.
Speaker 4: It absolutely tracks that they just turned up in their
Speaker 4: street clothes and this is the photo they got.
Speaker 1: And speaking of turning things up, let's turn up the
Speaker 1: rumors a little bit. Let's travel in time back to
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. In January of nineteen sixty seven, we
Speaker 1: see that reports of Paul McCartney's death date back years
Speaker 1: before the idea that Paul is dead became a phenomenon.
Speaker 1: There was this rumor he had been killed in a
Speaker 1: car crash on January seventh, nineteen sixty seven, this time
Speaker 1: not an Aston Martin, a Mini Cooper involved in a
Speaker 1: car accident on the M one motorway or highway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was just leaving the Italian job and he
Speaker 4: was driving a little too fast to making his getaway.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The thing is, Paul Prime was not actually in
Speaker 1: the car. It was instead being driven by a guy
Speaker 1: named Mohammed a Hadigit, a Moroccan student, an employee of
Speaker 1: a guy named Robert Fraser who's an art dealer in
Speaker 1: London at the time. Robert Fraser is a close friend
Speaker 1: of Paul McCartney's. You know, no, we've talked about it
Speaker 1: in the past off air. Paul McCartney has always been
Speaker 1: a champion of the arts.
Speaker 4: Right, and we talked about it recently on the Apple
Speaker 4: Versus Apple Computers Versus Apple Records episode about how Paul
Speaker 4: came up with the whole idea of the Apple imagery
Speaker 4: surrounding that record label and that brand from a rename
Speaker 4: of great painting as we know, the famous one with
Speaker 4: the Apple kind of floating in space.
Speaker 1: And to bust the again, to bust the boorish tendency
Speaker 1: of only picking between the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
Speaker 1: That's still that's still something that grinds my gears. Check
Speaker 1: this out, ridiculous historians. Mohammed and Paul and co. Are
Speaker 1: all heading to a party at Mick Jagger's house, so
Speaker 1: they do hang out, yes, so they're not really enemies.
Speaker 1: What we can assume here is that somebody in the aggressive,
Speaker 1: pretty brutal British tabloid press did a license plate check
Speaker 1: and the story spread around the world that Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: was either injured or dead. The rumors were so pervasive,
Speaker 1: and let's keep in mind this is pre Internet. They're
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous that the band itself, the Beatles, go to
Speaker 1: their official fan magazine because of course, they have Beatles
Speaker 1: monthly and they print a denial. We do know that
Speaker 1: Paul did have some car problems at some point.
Speaker 4: Right, But the closest Paul ever came to a full scale,
Speaker 4: you know, motor crash wipeout was in December of nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty five when he was riding his moped late one
Speaker 4: night while visiting Liverpool, their hometown, for Christmas. And he's
Speaker 4: described as refreshed as he's had some adult beverages, some refreshments.
Speaker 1: As they say he got nogged on some eggs.
Speaker 4: I think it's probably true. And he flipped himself straight
Speaker 4: over the handlebars and landed right on his face and
Speaker 4: shipped a tooth in the process, and he was seen
Speaker 4: by a doctor who sewed him up. And this incident
Speaker 4: actually inspired a line about a drunken doctor in the
Speaker 4: song Rocky Raccoon, which is another personal favorite, really fun song.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, I always thought I always thought that the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about the Lennon McCartney partnership is that Lenin
Speaker 1: is a beast at lyrics and Paul is a beast
Speaker 1: at instrumentation and composition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I don't know's I'm a big fan
Speaker 4: of both of their lyrics. But you're right. John is
Speaker 4: definitely more of a rocker and a little bit more
Speaker 4: known for his sardonic wordplay, and Paul has definitely thought
Speaker 4: of as being more of the studio wizards and the
Speaker 4: kind of you know, arranger of the two of them.
Speaker 4: I agree with you completely.
Speaker 1: So, Noel, could you take us to the first known
Speaker 1: printed reference to this theory that Paul McCartney is dead?
Speaker 4: Sure thing? It appeared in the septem number seventeenth, nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty nine issue of The Times Delphic, which was a
Speaker 4: student newspaper at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, of
Speaker 4: all places. Okay, so not the UK. No. No. A
Speaker 4: nineteen year old egelid eared fan Tim Harper wrote an
Speaker 4: article with the headline is Beatle Paul McCartney Dead, wherein
Speaker 4: he details the quote distinct possibility that McCartney may indeed
Speaker 4: be insane, freaked out, or even dead. Examining a lot
Speaker 4: of the clues and album arts lyrics that we have mentioned.
Speaker 4: He though, he I mean, I'm sorry I took him
Speaker 4: as a fan, but he says here he didn't own
Speaker 4: a Beatles record, and he talked with others about the
Speaker 4: known rumor which has already already been making I guess
Speaker 4: its rounds in certain beatnik kind of hipster circles. Very interesting.
Speaker 4: But he decided to kind of make a little bit
Speaker 4: of an oral account of a lot of these things
Speaker 4: that were already kind of known in the scene. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he is.
Speaker 1: Clearly a student right into a deadline. And he gets
Speaker 1: word of this from his editor and I love this name,
Speaker 1: d'Artagnan Brown. Are you guys related.
Speaker 4: I wish I want to change my name in this
Speaker 4: sick name.
Speaker 1: So d'Artagnan Brown, the editor of the Times Delphic, says,
Speaker 1: all right, I've heard these rumors. He's talking to Tim Harper.
Speaker 1: He says, Tim, Buddy, I've heard these rumors throughout the underground,
Speaker 1: the counterculture, you know, crying of Lot forty nine, kind
Speaker 1: of underground. I went to California and people are saying
Speaker 1: that Paul McCartney is dead and has been replaced by
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of Canadian, some kind of Canadian
Speaker 1: that's a good name for something, of course. So all right,
Speaker 1: the story goes pre internet viral, and Tim Harper comes
Speaker 1: out very quickly after the story takes off, and he says, look,
Speaker 1: I'm satirical. I'm a student writing for fun. This so
Speaker 1: called Expose eight is for you know, shuffles and giggles.
Speaker 1: He specifically says it was just a joke. I was
Speaker 1: the first one to put it all together. And he's
Speaker 1: talking to the Chicago Sun Times when he says this
Speaker 1: in October of nineteen sixty nine. He says, I knew
Speaker 1: when I wrote the story that it wasn't true, but
Speaker 1: I think the horse left the barn at that point,
Speaker 1: well for sure.
Speaker 4: And like I mean, like I was saying, it really
Speaker 4: is just sort of an oral account, you know, of
Speaker 4: all of these different sort of pieces of hippie folklore
Speaker 4: that had been making the rounds during a time when
Speaker 4: because of the debacle of the Vietnam War and just
Speaker 4: wide rife, discontentments and distrust of the government that folks,
Speaker 4: we're a lot more willing to believe in these types
Speaker 4: of conspiracy theories than maybe in generation's past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and imagine you are this kid, you are Tim Harper.
Speaker 1: You write something that is essentially an onion article, you know,
Speaker 1: and now on article there we go, and now the
Speaker 1: press is picking this up, broadcast radio is picking this up.
Speaker 1: He goes from LA to Chicago, speaking on a Baker's
Speaker 1: dozen of radio stations for ten bucks. By the end
Speaker 1: of September, there are tabloids in the UK that pick
Speaker 1: up the story. Ultimately Tim Harper, who has always been
Speaker 1: on it about you know, the satirical nature of his
Speaker 1: original article. Ultimately, Tim Harper says, there were there was,
Speaker 1: to your point, Noll, a convergence, a nexus of factors
Speaker 1: in the culture that helped this rumor spread and empowered
Speaker 1: it because of Vietnam, because the common American member of
Speaker 1: the public was recognizing the threat of people in power,
Speaker 1: the establishment. People were cynical, they were disillusioned, They were
Speaker 1: ready willing and able to believe in quote unquote alternative facts.
Speaker 4: Correct the Warren Commission, of course, creating what has historically
Speaker 4: been referred to as a credibility.
Speaker 1: Gap, because we see right now in this milieu, we
Speaker 1: see that there are genuine conspiracies being on covered by
Speaker 1: the public. We know co Intel pro is real. We
Speaker 1: know that the US government is conspiring to do all
Speaker 1: sorts of shenanigans. We know that the British government and
Speaker 1: other European governments are doing the same. So if you're
Speaker 1: the average person hearing the radio. Is it too crazy?
Speaker 1: Is it too crazy to think that just maybe Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney might be dead.
Speaker 4: No, no, it's not, although, you know, in retrospect, pretty ridiculous.
Speaker 4: That's why we're here, folks. But no, at the time,
Speaker 4: there was out of that. Okay, let me walk that back.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm confused, because the Beatles represent everything that
Speaker 4: is in opposition to the establishment, though they have gotten
Speaker 4: so so popular and successful that maybe there was a
Speaker 4: certain souring to them that maybe would yield a little
Speaker 4: distrust or treat them as a corporate entity. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I wasn't there, but I am curious as to how
Speaker 4: that same conspiracy, conspiratorial thinking would apply to your favorite
Speaker 4: counterculture band, because the assumption there would be the Beatles
Speaker 4: were in on this, and I just find that interesting
Speaker 4: and a little bit antithetical to the idea of them
Speaker 4: being you know, these you know, kind of rebel rousers.
Speaker 4: That to the point we made earlier, I think the
Speaker 4: last episode were often targeted by the governments, you know.
Speaker 4: John Lennon of course himself was assassinated and was treated
Speaker 4: as a political personality because of his ability to speak
Speaker 4: truth to power. So that part of it confuses me
Speaker 4: a little bit.
Speaker 1: M hmm, yeah. Same. And going to the radio aspect
Speaker 1: of the mass communication, we know that the I wouldn't
Speaker 1: quite call it hysteria, but the purported credibility of the
Speaker 1: poll is dead. Theory awesomes. On twelve October nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: an anonymous individual calls into the radio show on Detroit's WKNR.
Speaker 1: It's a radio show hosted by the legendary Russ Gibb,
Speaker 1: and this anonymous individual is over the moon to tell
Speaker 1: Russ that he is very upset over rumors that Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney has died and has been further replaced by an impostor.
Speaker 1: Our buddy, Russ Gibb, Let's.
Speaker 4: Just be honest.
Speaker 1: He has no clue who this guy is. He has
Speaker 1: no clue what the guy is talking about, and so
Speaker 1: he keeps him on the line because it's great radio,
Speaker 1: and he's saying, all right, will tell me more of
Speaker 1: these clues, and this person, whomever they may be, introduces
Speaker 1: the American public to some of the clues that we
Speaker 1: explore in part one of this series as well as
Speaker 1: the beginning of this show.
Speaker 4: All Right, he has n't spin the records backwards live
Speaker 4: on air. Yes, compelling because it's dude who is kind
Speaker 4: of a square, a bit of one, you know, who's
Speaker 4: not familiar with this stuff, sort of in real time
Speaker 4: being like huh, well that's weird. Yeah, Just so.
Speaker 1: I love that description, you know, And we're experiencing great
Speaker 1: radio because we're learning with Russ Gibb in real time.
Speaker 1: The phone lines at wk NR go absolutely off the hook.
Speaker 1: We're talking pandemodium. GiB later speaks with Billboard in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen and he says, the whole thing just exploded. The
Speaker 1: phones were ringing off the hook. People were calling with
Speaker 1: their own clues. It was non stop. So now we
Speaker 1: see a feedback loop. The conspiracy is feeding it's self.
Speaker 4: M m yeah, the calls coming from inside the house.
Speaker 4: As you like to say, Ben, it's true. Is an
Speaker 4: absolute self fulfilling prophecy burrows of sorts, the snake eating
Speaker 4: its own tail. And this really was kind of the
Speaker 4: moment where, uh, these theories and this kind of concept
Speaker 4: of Paul is dead began to go wide. And I
Speaker 4: think this is, with that in mind, a good place
Speaker 4: to pause for this episode, and we're gonna pick it
Speaker 4: back up with the last part in this three part series,
Speaker 4: Paul is Dead. The rumors surrounding the untimely demise and
Speaker 4: cover up of Beatle Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1: That's right, folks, we are doing an on purpose three barter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: look at us somewhat. Call our families, tell them we
Speaker 1: have real jobs.
Speaker 4: Okay, tell them okay.
Speaker 1: First and before we go, you know, uh her own
Speaker 1: super producer, mister Max Williams, who we shout out at
Speaker 1: the beginning and end of the show, has something close
Speaker 1: to his heart to share, apparently related to the Beatles.
Speaker 4: Maxos to his lonely heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Max, are you Paul McCartney?
Speaker 2: Actually funny enough?
Speaker 3: I am to a Southpaw and I played bass, so
Speaker 3: the like second base I ever got?
Speaker 2: All right, I used to play bass.
Speaker 3: I don't play much anymore, but second base I ever
Speaker 3: got back in middle school was a violin bass style.
Speaker 3: It was modeled off of the bass that Paul McCartney
Speaker 3: very much liked.
Speaker 1: So all right, that's enough proof for us many.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, so yeah, that was actually very much a thing.
Speaker 3: And you know, especially back then when access to musical
Speaker 3: equipment was sometimes pretty hard, you really got like two
Speaker 3: choices of left handed basses that like, you know, you
Speaker 3: would open in the magazine and you'd flip through and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. Now you can get great instruments from
Speaker 3: you know, places like Sweetwater, which I'm they're not paying
Speaker 3: us to do this.
Speaker 2: I am just dropping that name.
Speaker 3: And they do give us candy.
Speaker 4: It's their thing. They're a bunch of sweeties. We're talking
Speaker 4: about the Huffner style based Is that what you're talking about, Matt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just one last sweet Water loving
Speaker 2: thing that all of our equipment is provided by Sweetwater
Speaker 2: and they're not paying us to.
Speaker 1: Say they are, but they do give us candy. You've
Speaker 1: got a story from the Williams Dynasty.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: We also while we're doing this, we want to shout
Speaker 1: out your biological brother Alex Williams, who is the composer
Speaker 1: for this show. But Max, what's on your mind? What's
Speaker 1: been sitting with you?
Speaker 3: So in the Williams Dynasty, I've taken this color like
Speaker 3: that one of you know, we we all like our hobbies,
Speaker 3: and we our hobbies changing changing stuff. In the last
Speaker 3: like two or three years, my mother has gotten really
Speaker 3: into a lot of Beatles stuff. She's been a Beatles
Speaker 3: fan for a very long time. And you know, now
Speaker 3: one of the things she does is she's trying to
Speaker 3: get a lot of better words as much Beatles stuff.
Speaker 2: Well there's still.
Speaker 3: Time, you know, there's two of them alive, still in
Speaker 3: their in their eighties. But so like one thing she
Speaker 3: did last year, maybe two years ago now, she saw
Speaker 3: Ringo and his band when it came to Atlanta. And
Speaker 3: what I love, though, is, uh, I've gone to the
Speaker 3: age where I can kind of hit my dad with
Speaker 3: some good logic. Papa Williams is definitely a He's a
Speaker 3: very pragmatic person, especially when he's the fiscal ideas. And
Speaker 3: I don't want to say how expensive going to see
Speaker 3: Ringo Stars touring band at the Fox Theater in downtown
Speaker 3: Atlanta was, but it was a lot. And I kind
Speaker 3: of just looked at him and said, yeah, but when's
Speaker 3: the next time you can see this, right, And He's like,
Speaker 3: that's good, that's good logic. And you know, I've told
Speaker 3: you guys, I like to travel and see shows and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. I think it's a very rewarding thing
Speaker 3: to do. I just truly do love it. But that's
Speaker 3: the transition was my mother discovered they had a Beatles
Speaker 3: themed in Las Vegas, of course, but not only did
Speaker 3: they have it, but that it was ending very soon,
Speaker 3: like a month before she noticed it, and she was
Speaker 3: trying to convince my dad, her husband, to let's take
Speaker 3: some time off and go. And obviously the tickets to
Speaker 3: go see Ringo start very expensive. Fly to Las Vegas
Speaker 3: and see Circle with like a month's notice, incredibly expensive.
Speaker 3: And I kind of him and I were just talking
Speaker 3: about it, and I can't say it to him. It's
Speaker 3: just like, I mean, the Beats aren't getting any younger,
Speaker 3: neither of y'all. It's just like, this seems like a
Speaker 3: thing where if you want to see this thing, this
Speaker 3: is gonna be the only time. I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 3: trying to say you have to do it, but if
Speaker 3: this is what you guys want to do, they're not
Speaker 3: gonna get another chance.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I'm a big.
Speaker 3: Believer that the reason why we don't have money is
Speaker 3: we use money to pursue the things that we love
Speaker 3: and we find it interesting. And long story short, they went,
Speaker 3: oh good bold.
Speaker 4: I didn't make it. I didn't make it. I was there.
Speaker 4: I even stayed at the hotel where the thing was happening,
Speaker 4: and I just didn't end up getting to go for
Speaker 4: a couple of various reasons. And now I think it's done.
Speaker 4: But I remember when that first hit. I'm a huge
Speaker 4: circ fan. The soundtrack is a really neat artifact for
Speaker 4: Beatles fans in and of itself because it was actually
Speaker 4: remixed and remastered from original Beatles recordings by George Martin,
Speaker 4: their producer's son, whose name is escaping me. But it's
Speaker 4: like kind of a mash up of a lot of
Speaker 4: different Beatles music, but it's like from the original tapes
Speaker 4: and by you know, and with oversight from George Martin
Speaker 4: himself and his son Niles. I want to say Giles
Speaker 4: perhaps anyway doesn't but it's a really cool record. You
Speaker 4: can still buy that, and it's a fun listen on
Speaker 4: its own.
Speaker 3: The Love soundtrack, and yeah, and just to wrap this up,
Speaker 3: one of my favorite parts of this story is, you know,
Speaker 3: obviously my mom had an amazing time, but who also
Speaker 3: had an amazing time, my dad, So I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's one of these things is that, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I know how much my mom loves the Bills, So
Speaker 3: I wanted to just think this sendto one of these
Speaker 3: episodes I'm having.
Speaker 2: I hope everyone enjoyed this whole story time.
Speaker 1: I think we all did. And thank you for Sharon Max.
Speaker 1: I'm getting some pretty intense deja vu.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Look, as we have alluded to in the past, my
Speaker 1: name has not always been depending on where we're at,
Speaker 1: Greg is the Vegas persona and like Noel, did not
Speaker 1: get the opportunity to to see to see this performance.
Speaker 1: So it's awesome that the Williams dynasty made it over.
Speaker 1: We want to thank you super producer, mister Max Williams,
Speaker 1: your brother Alex Williams, who composed this slap and bop.
Speaker 1: We also want to thank Ringo and Sir Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: for tuning into the show. And you know what, we
Speaker 1: don't reference it often because we've made our piece, but
Speaker 1: Sir McCartney, thanks for sorting out that Sheryl Crow stuff
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 4: We owe you one man. Mmmm yeah, yeah, he's a
Speaker 4: good guy. That Paul or whatever Paul Paul for Paul
Speaker 4: oh right right, right, depending you know whatever, whatever, Faul
Speaker 4: Prime Fall.
Speaker 1: Whomever you may be, thank you for supporting our show.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to aj Bahama's Jacobs. I can't believe that
Speaker 1: guy is so cool. Yep, he's a good dude for sure.
Speaker 4: And also to Jonathan Strickland, the quisitor, who is less
Speaker 4: of a good due when he's in that persona, but
Speaker 4: a real good due when he's just regular old Jonathan's track.
Speaker 1: He's fine. Eight out of ten.
Speaker 4: Thanks to you, Ben, This has been great. Really excited
Speaker 4: to come back and talk a bit more in our
Speaker 4: final installment of the series about the Beatles themselves. We
Speaker 4: hinted at that all along the way and they did
Speaker 4: not hold back.
Speaker 1: And you have to ask yourself at this point, ridiculous historians,
Speaker 1: will it actually be us?
Speaker 4: Or will we be replaced? Dunk dun, dun. Let's see
Speaker 4: you next time.
Speaker 1: Books.
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.