"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 rumour began circulating in 1966, gaining broad popularity in September 1969 following reports on American college campuses. Rumours declined after Life published an interview with McCartney in November 1969.
According to the story, 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.
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.
Beginnings Although rumours that Paul McCartney's health was deteriorating had existed since early 1966, reports that McCartney had died only started circulating in September of that year. The Beatles' press officer, Tony Barrow, recounted this in his book, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Me. Fleet Street reporters started phoning Barrow early in that month, to confirm rumours regarding the Beatle's health and even a possible death, to which he replied that he had recently spoken with McCartney.
For the rest of 1966, the rumour was eclipsed by similar reports that Paul McCartney was working on a solo project and that the Beatles were splitting up, which were backed by their disappearance from the public eye and the postponement of their scheduled tours in late 1966.
In early 1967, the rumour resurfaced in London, this time claiming that Paul McCartney had been killed in a traffic accident while driving along the M1 motorway on 7 January. The rumour was acknowledged and rebutted in the February issue of The Beatles Book. McCartney then alluded to the rumour during a press conference held about the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in May.
The Beatles' producer George Martin once claimed that, during the Beatles' visit to Denver, Colorado, "a number of people pretending to be Beatles" were employed by the promoters of the band's concerts in order to distract the crowds of fans from the real Beatles, while they were exiting a hotel. According to journalist Maureen O'Grady, who wrote about it in the May 1966 issue of RAVE Magazine, such a tactic was used when the Beatles first played in Baltimore, in 1964. As a result, stories began to circulate that the Beatles had sent four lookalikes to perform on stage on one of their American tours. Both Paul McCartney and George Harrison later refuted these claims.
Despite the Beatles dismissing such accusations, they soon began accompanying the notion that McCartney had died. By late 1967, it was further stated that the Beatles had covered up his death by employing a Paul McCartney impersonator to stand in for him. For example, journalist Jay Marks was attending McCartney's engagement party in 1967 when a friend of the band told him that McCartney had been replaced.
By the mid-1960s, the Beatles were known for sometimes including backmasking in their music. Analysing their lyrics for hidden meaning had also become a popular trend in the US. 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.
On 17 September 1969, Tim Harper, an editor of the Drake Times-Delphic, the student newspaper of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, published an article titled "Is Beatle Paul McCartney Dead?" The article addressed a rumour being circulated on campus that cited clues from recent Beatles albums, including a message interpreted as "Turn me on, dead man", heard when the White Album track "Revolution 9" is played backwards. Also referenced was the back cover of Sgt. Pepper, where every Beatle except McCartney is photographed facing the viewer. He is wearing a black badge which appears to read "OPD" (Officially Pronounced Dead). In reality, this badge read "OPP" (Ontario Provincial Police). On the front cover, Starr in a suit looks at the flowered grave, mourning, and McCartney (in a suit) puts his hand on his shoulder. Starr looks sadly down at a tomb shaped like a P, with 4 strings looking like a bass. The front cover of Magical Mystery Tour depicts one unidentified band member in a differently coloured suit from the other three. According to music journalist Merrell Noden, Harper's Drake Times-Delphic was the first to publish an article on the "Paul is dead" theory. Harper later said that it had become the subject of discussion among students at the start of the new academic year, and he added: "A lot of us, because of Vietnam and the so-called Establishment, were ready, willing and able to believe just about any sort of conspiracy."
In late September 1969, the Beatles released the album Abbey Road while they were in the process of disbanding. On 10 October, the Beatles' press officer, Derek Taylor, responded to the rumour 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.
Growth On 12 October 1969, a caller to Detroit radio station WKNR-FM told disc jockey Russ Gibb about the rumour and its clues. Gibb and other callers then discussed the rumour on air for the next hour, during which Gibb offered further potential clues. Two days later, The Michigan Daily published a satirical review of Abbey Road by University of Michigan student Fred LaBour, who had listened to the exchange on Gibb's show, under the headline "McCartney Dead; New Evidence Brought to Light". It identified various clues to McCartney's alleged death on Beatles album covers, particularly on the Abbey Road sleeve. LaBour later said he had invented many of the clues and was astonished when the story was picked up by newspapers across the United States. Noden writes that "Very soon, every college campus, every radio station, had a resident expert." WKNR fuelled the rumour further with its two-hour programme The Beatle Plot, which first aired on 19 October. The show – which has been called "infamous", a "fraud" and a "mockumentary" – brought enormous worldwide publicity to Gibb and WKNR.
The story was soon taken up by more mainstream radio stations in the New York area, WMCA and WABC. In the early hours of 21 October, WABC disc jockey Roby Yonge discussed the rumour on-air for over an hour before being pulled off the air for breaking format. At that time of night, WABC's signal covered a wide listening area and could be heard in 38 US states and, at times, in other countries. Although the Beatles' press office denied the rumour, McCartney's atypical withdrawal from public life contributed to its escalation. Vin Scelsa, a student broadcaster in 1969, later said that the escalation was indicative of the countercultural influence of Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, since: "Every song from them – starting about late 1966 – became a personal message, worthy of endless scrutiny ... they were guidelines on how to live your life."
WMCA dispatched Alex Bennett to the Beatles' Apple Corps headquarters in London on 23 October, to further his extended coverage of the "Paul is dead" theory. There, Ringo Starr told Bennett: "If people are gonna believe it, they're gonna believe it. I can only say it's not true." In a radio interview with John Small of WKNR, Lennon said that the rumour was "insane" but good publicity for Abbey Road. On Halloween night 1969, WKBW in Buffalo, New York, broadcast a programme titled Paul McCartney Is Alive and Well – Maybe, which analysed Beatles lyrics and other clues. The WKBW DJs concluded that the "Paul is dead" hoax was fabricated by Lennon.
Before the end of October 1969, several artists had exploited the phenomenon by releasing records based on 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 "Saint Paul" by Terry Knight, which had been a minor hit the previous June and was subsequently adopted by radio stations as a tribute to "the late Paul McCartney". A cover version of "Saint Paul" by New Zealand singer Shane reached the top of that nation's singles charts. According to a report in Billboard magazine in early November, Shelby Singleton Productions planned to issue a documentary LP of radio segments discussing the phenomenon. In Canada, Polydor Records exploited the rumour in their artwork for Very Together, a repackaging of the Beatles' pre-fame Hamburg recordings with Tony Sheridan, using a cover that showed four candles, one of which had just been snuffed out.
Premise
Many versions of this theory have arisen since its initial exposure to the public, but most proponents of the theory maintain that, on 9 November 1966 (or 11 September), McCartney had an argument with his bandmates during a recording session and drove away in anger. While distracted by a meter maid ("Lovely Rita"), he failed to notice the change in traffic lights ("A Day in the Life"), crashed, and was decapitated ("Don't Pass Me By"). A funeral service for McCartney was held, featuring eulogies from Harrison ("Blue Jay Way") and Starr ("Don't Pass Me By"), followed by a procession (the front cover of Abbey Road), with Lennon as the priest officiating his funeral and burying him (the alleged "I buried Paul" statement in "Strawberry Fields Forever"). To spare the public from grief, the surviving Beatles replaced McCartney with the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. This scenario was facilitated by the Beatles' recent retirement from live performance and by their choosing to present themselves with a new image for their next album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which they began recording later that month.
In LaBour's telling, the stand-in was an "orphan from Edinburgh named William Campbell" whom the Beatles then trained to impersonate McCartney. Others contended that the man's name was Bill Shepherd, later altered to Billy Shears, and the replacement was instigated by Britain's MI5 out of concern for the severe distress McCartney's death would cause the Beatles' audience. In this latter telling, the surviving Beatles were said to be wracked with guilt over their actions, and therefore left messages in their music and album artwork to communicate the truth to their fans.