Magazines have begun to note the 40th anniversary of the
Paul is Dead rumor (although they're two months early... the rumor began to circulate widely in September 1969).
Contact Music managed to get a quotation from McCartney about the rumor. He claims to still be laughing it off. But interestingly, he also get the details wrong about how the rumor started:
MCCartney's barefoot appearance in the photo [on the cover of Abbey Road] sparked wild rumours the rocker had died in a car crash - and the 67 year old admits he still has to reassure some fans he's not an impostor.
He explains, "The idea was to walk across the crossing, and I showed up that day with sandals, flip-flops. It was so hot that I kicked them off and walked across barefooted, and this started some rumour that because he's barefooted, he's dead. I couldn't see the connection.
McCartney barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road was one of the major clues that fueled the rumor, but it didn't spark the rumor. The event that really launched the rumor was when Detroit DJ Russ Gibb played the song "Revolution Number Nine" backwards on his show and claimed to hear the words "Turn me on, dead man."
There's been several books and a number of scholarly articles written about the Paul is Dead rumor. I wonder if McCartney has ever read them.
Comments
At least the rumor doesn't seem to have hurt McCartney's career. In this, he's been much luckier than Thomas A. Harris, the author of "I'm OK, You're OK." A few years after this extremely popular book on how to be happy and mentally healthy was published, rumors circulated that Dr. Harris had comitted suicide. He found that the widespread conviction that he was dead seriously affected his ability to get speaking engagements and book contracts. Harris sued some of the propagators of this rumor, but by the time he really died (I think), in 1995, he hadn't managed to convince the general public that he never killed himself.
While it is possible to do the same now with sound files on a computer (ever try to spin a CD backwards?), I can't recall hearing anything lately about those "secret messages" that used to be rampant on that old vinyl.
Lennon's song Glass Onion, also from the White Albulm, contains the lyric: "Here's another clue for you all/ The Walrus was Paul".
Whilst healing, Paul stayed away from the media, which led there to be plenty of speculation on what was really going on and if Paul was alive or dying.
One reporter stormed the grounds of Paul's estate for an interview, and Paul got very angry at him and ordered him to leave. As the reporter began to leave, Paul changed his mind, apologized and allowed an interview. This abrupt changing of his mind, plus his behaviour, caused as much speculation as anything else.
The main result of all this, besides the rumors of Paul having died and been replaced with a lookalike, was Paul's lip was cut in the accident, necessitating growing a moustache to cover it up, followed by the rest of the band doing so, then the Sgt. Pepper look, and finally, people growing their hair all long and becoming hippies.
*nods his head in a knowing kinda way*