Michigan's most unusual rock and roll rumor spread all over the world
The final year of the fascinating and turbulent 1960s had plenty of interesting events related to rock and roll. January of 1969 saw the police in Newark, New Jersey, confiscate 30,000 copies of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Two Virgins” album because its nude cover photo violated the state’s pornography laws. Later that month, the Beatles gave their last public performance on the roof of Apple Records in London.
February 3rd marked the tenth anniversary of the tragic plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.
March of 1969 saw Jim Morrison of the Doors tried and convicted of exposing himself in front of a crowd of 10,000 at a concert in Miami.
Three weeks later, John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their first Bed-In for Peace in Amsterdam.
In July, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was found dead at the bottom of his Cotchford Farm swimming pool. A week later, David Bowie released his single, “Space Oddity,” in conjunction with the moon landing.
Disciples of cult leader Charles Manson murdered five people in Los Angeles, including actress Sharon Tate, on August 8th. The murderers had written the titles of two Beatles’ songs, “Piggies” and “Helter Skelter” in their victim’s blood at the crime scene.
On August 15, the Woodstock Music and Art Festival opened in Bethel, New York. Over 400,000 people saw performances by the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Janis Joplin and many others.
In September, John Lennon returned his OBE medal in protest of the British government’s involvement in events in Biafra and their support of U.S. troops in Vietnam. Later in the month, the Beatles released their acclaimed “Abbey Road” album.
The Rolling Stones staged the notorious concert for approximately 300,000 people at California’s Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969. Eagerly anticipated as being the ‘Woodstock of the West,’ it was marred by violence, including a stabbing death and three accidental fatalities, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.
Michigan also provided some newsworthy stories in 1969. The first involved a rumor that started in Michigan asserting that Beatle Paul McCartney had died in a car accident three years earlier and the other Beatles had hatched an elaborate scheme to cover it up by bringing in a look-alike musician to secretly take McCartney’s place in the band. In addition, they had placed clues regarding Paul’s death in their song lyrics, and on their recordings and album covers.
It differed from previous rock and roll rumors such as Ricky Nelson having leukemia or Bob Dylan dying after a motorcycle accident. The McCartney death rumor had the earmarks of a hoax but it also had hidden clues that offered proof that it was true.
The timing of the Paul is dead rumor was important. The Beatles had stopped performing live with the conclusion of their U.S. tour in the summer of 1966. In the fall of that year, the band began concentrating only on recording. They utilized intricate studio production techniques and ushered in the psychedelic movement with a batch of new recordings that would contain many of the clues to Paul McCartney’s rumored death.
It was also an era of very limited entertainment news. There were only three TV networks in the United States, no entertainment gossip shows, no cell phones or text messaging, and no internet to quickly access information and send messages and pictures. The rumor was also tied to a rite of passage for many people in the late 1960s – sitting around in small groups, getting high, and listening to and discussing rock music.
There appeared to be four ways that people looked at the rumor.
1.) Paul McCartney was dead. The rumor was true, and the Beatles were the only artists creative and powerful enough to pull it off.
2.) It was an elaborate and somewhat gruesome psychedelic hoax dreamed up by the Beatles, most likely by John Lennon.
3.) It was a hoax perpetuated by the Beatles’ record company (EMI/Capitol) to sell more albums.
4.) It was all coincidental. Fans were seeing and hearing things that had no connection to actual events.
Although the source of the rumor in Michigan is a little unclear, some cite a song by Terry Knight called “Saint Paul” as setting the stage. Knight’s solo career on Cameo-Parkway Records had achieved only limited success and, in 1968, he traveled to England and met Paul McCartney with the hope of being signed to the Beatles’ new Apple label.
Despite being unable to negotiate a contract with Apple, Knight was very impressed with McCartney and wrote a song about him on the flight beck to America. In 1969, Knight secured a producer’s contract with Capitol Records which also allowed him to release his own songs as a solo artist. His first release was “Saint Paul,” a five-minute tribute to McCartney that contained several melodies from well-known songs by the Beatles.
“Saint Paul’s” cryptic lyrics did not mention death, but lines like “You knew all along something had gone wrong” or “Did Jesus really talk to you or did you put us on?” were interpreted by some fans as clues. Knight’s recording was only a minor hit nationally, peaking at # 114 on Billboard on June 28th; but because of Knight’s popularity in Michigan, it made the Top 40 on WKNR in Detroit as well as other AM radio station surveys in the state.
McCartney’s death rumor probably gained momentum during the summer and had spread to Michigan college campuses by the fall. There was no mention of the rumor on the radio or in print until it was revealed on Russ Gibbs’ popular Sunday afternoon radio show on WKNR-FM on October 12, 1969.
Gibb would commonly open the phone lines at WKNR and talk with music fans, and his program generated a large listening audience. On October 12, he got a call from Tom Zarski, an Eastern Michigan University student, who told Gibb about the McCartney death rumor. When Gibb expressed doubt, Zarski asked him to play John and Yoko’s experimental “Revolution 9” from the Beatles’ “White Album” backwards as proof.
The repeated phrase of “Number 9” sounded very much like “Turn me on dead man” when played in reverse. This got Gibb’s attention as did the fact that McCartney has nine letters and that his supposed death occurred on November 9, 1966. There were a host of other clues as well that seemed to support the idea that Paul McCartney had been killed in an auto accident, and Gibb played some of the other Beatles’ songs that contained clues on the air that afternoon.
Fred LaBour, a University of Michigan student and writer for the The Michigan Daily, had been listening to Gibb’s radio show. Two days later, he wrote a review of the Beatles’ new “Abbey Road” album and included the Paul McCartney rumor in his review. It caused a sensation on campus and sold out three printings of the edition. Not long after, the rumor was published in other newspapers as well and it quickly spread around the country.
Russ Gibb and WKNR saw a ratings bonanza and hit the rumor story hard all week. Gibb called Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ press secretary, who told him that Paul was alive and on a holiday with his wife Linda. Gibb and two other WKNR DJs then traveled to England, and the station presented a two-hour special on the rumor the following Sunday, October 19th, and they repeated it on October 26th.
Not everyone believed the rumor, of course, but some took it very seriously. Apple Records in London was contacted by a New York DJ, and they characterized the tale as “a load of horseshit”. That didn’t stop music lovers from searching for clues, however, and the rumor caused a spike in the sale of Beatle albums. The month of October 1969 would turn out to be the best month in Beatles’ sales history as fans not only bought the new “Abbey Road” album, but also “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Magical Mystery Tour,” and the “White Album” to look and listen for clues.
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the first album recorded after Paul’s rumored death, was a good place to start. The famous cover had a wealth of clues. Paul was the only Beatle holding a black instrument, and black was a symbol of death. Above Paul’s head is an open hand, a gesture thought to be often used at funerals. Some thought the placement of the drum head represented Paul’s gravestone, and that the flowers spelling BEATLES represented the plot. In addition, if a small mirror was placed in the center of the drum, a bizarre message appears: 1 ONE IX HE DIE (translation: November 9 He Die).
Then there was a left-handed bass, Paul’s instrument, made of flowers and placed on the grave. If that was not enough, the Shirley Temple doll on the right of the cover had a model of Paul’s white Aston- Martin car that he was driving on the fateful night on its lap and what appears to be a bloody driving glove next to it.
“Sgt. Pepper’s” was the Beatles’ first gatefold album cover, and on the inside was a large photo of the group in their colorful band costumes. Paul McCartney was the only Beatle with a black patch on his sleeve. The O.P.D. letters were thought to stand for ‘Officially Pronounced Dead.’
In the photo of the band on the back cover, Paul was only Beatle with his back turned. The lyrics of the album’s songs are also printed there. George Harrison’s finger was pointing directly at “Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock as the day begins,” the time that Paul was thought to have died in the accident. The lyrics to the album’s final song, “A Day In The Life,” gave more details about the fatal accident: “He blew his mind out in a car. He didn’t notice that the lights had changed.”
The next Beatles album, “Magical Mystery Tour,” contained the soundtrack of the band’s 1967 television film on one side and a collection of singles released in 1967 on the other. There were also a number of clues that fed into the death rumor on some of those songs.
The soundtrack side featured two important clues. If George Harrison’s “Blue Jay Way” was played backwards, his vocal sounded something like “Paul is very, very bloody. Paul is bloody.” The final song is Lennon’s psychedelic masterpiece, “I Am The Walrus.” Snippets from a radio production of Shakespeare’s King Lear were inserted into the song’s fadeout that included the lines “Bury my body” and “Oh, my untimely death.” Were they also referring to McCartney’s death?
Although Lennon sings “I Am The Walrus,” the listing on the album cover contains the statement “No you’re not!” from Little Nicola, one of the film’s characters. The walrus was said to be a symbol of death in Viking mythology, and some felt that the statement had something to do with the cover photo of the band members disguised in animal costumes. One of the Beatles was dressed in a black walrus outfit and was pictured below the other three. On closer inspection, it does not appear to be Lennon. The Beatle in the upper right, in a bird costume, was wearing Lennon’s signature glasses. Clue finders believed that McCartney was dressed as the walrus in black, and a lyric from “Glass Onion,” a Lennon song from the following year’s “White Album,” seemed to confirm it.
Searchers also uncovered what were considered to be two more important clues among the hit singles. Near the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” John Lennon said what sounded like “I buried Paul.” Then, during the fadeout of “All You Need Is Love,” Lennon can be heard saying “Yes, he’s dead.”
The inner section of the album’s gatefold cover, also featured a collection of color photos from the Magical Mystery Tour film. In the photo from the “I Am The Walrus” sequence, McCartney is the only Beatle not wearing shoes, and the rather strange illustrations on Ringo’s drum head appeared to spell ‘Love the 3 Beatles.’
In addition, the photo of the production number from “Your Mother Should Know,” shows Paul McCartney, once again, different from the others. He was sporting a black carnation while the other three Beatles had red ones. Finally, in another skit from the film, McCartney appeared as an army recruiter with the ominous sign ‘I Was’ at the front of his desk.
“The Beatles” a.k.a. “The White Album” was the band’s release from the fall of 1968. Besides the ‘Turn me on dead man’ clue from “Revolution 9,” John Lennon’s lyrics to “Glass Onion” seemed to support the suspicions surrounding McCartney’s connection to both the “I Am The Walrus” song, the “Magical Mystery Tour” album cover photo, and the rumor itself: “I told you about the walrus and me – man. Well, here’s another clue for you all; the walrus was Paul.”
Although the double album had a plain white cover, it included portraits of the Beatles inside as well as a poster that presented two important clues. One was a passport photo of Paul McCartney that some believed was really a photo of his look-alike, a person that Fred Labour had identified as William Campbell in his Michigan Daily review. The other was a photo of McCartney with skeletal-like hands reaching out for him from behind. This picture was thought to represent death reaching out for Paul.
The cover of the new “Abbey Road” album also fueled the ‘Paul is dead rumor’ in a major way. The photo of the Beatles on a zebra crossing in front of the Abbey Road studio has become one of the most famous and imitated images in rock and roll history, and it provided a wealth of clues for rumor theorists.
The photograph was interpreted by some as the showing the Beatles walking out of a cemetery in a funeral procession. George Harrison, in denim, represented the gravedigger. McCartney, out of step with the others, was the barefoot corpse. Ringo Starr, dressed in black, was the undertaker, and John Lennon, dressed in white, represented the minister.
The fact that McCartney was holding his cigarette in his right hand was also considered an important clue because the real Paul was left-handed. The vehicle registration plate on the Volkswagen parked nearby was also significant. The LMW was thought to stand for ‘Linda McCartney weeps’ – her reaction to being married to an imposter rather than the real Paul McCartney. The plate’s 281F number, misread as 28IF, was interpreted as meaning that McCartney would have been 28 had he lived. This last clue was completely off-base because Paul was only 27 at the time of the photo and the release of the album.
“Come Together” was the # 1 single released from the album, and its lyrics also offered clues. “He say one and one and one is three” was another indication that there were only three “real” Beatles. In addition, the lyric “Come together right now over me” was thought to be a call for the other three Beatles to meet over Paul’s grave.
Despite denials by everyone at Apple Records, as well as John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul’s brother, and many others in England, the rumor would just not go away. Life magazine decided to investigate, and they managed to get a tip as to how to find McCartney’s isolated farm in Scotland.
McCartney had purchased the property as a refuge to get away from the pressure and constant scrutiny that came with being a Beatle. He was understandably unhappy to find photographers trespassing on his property, and he swore and threw water on them, all of which was captured on film. Fearing the photos would damage his image, he apologized and agreed to a short interview along with photos with his family. Interest if the rumor began to decline after the real Paul McCartney appeared on the cover of the November 7th issue of Life.
For more than five decades, the Paul is dead rumor/hoax/conspiracy has become part of rock and roll history. It’s also important to remember that it first became a big news story in Michigan, and that it is the state’s most memorable connection to the Beatles.
