The Paul is Dead Conspiracy

From student papers to national headlines

It is October of 1969 and you are Paul McCartney spending a relaxing couple of weeks on your Scottish farm. Tired of the unrivalled invasive fame, you are finally taking a breath of fresh air — until a barrage of reporters batter down this safe haven insisting that you prove you are alive. Anyone in this scenario would be bewildered. 

This was not just a short-lived fad either, as it has survived to become one of the most enduring conspiracy theories of recent history, with believers existing in the same sceptical club as those partial to a faked moon landing. Even today as you scroll through the comments underneath any YouTube video about the Beatles, it won’t take long to come across someone claiming that the real Paul McCartney died in 1966. While it is likely that some are satirical, the unrelenting input from channels dedicated to this conspiracy suggests that although Paul McCartney continues to live on as himself, this is not enough to convince everybody that he isn’t an imposter. 

The scene is worth setting to understand just how this baffling rumour could unravel to such international attention. By 1966, the Beatles had caught more hearts, eyes, and ears than anyone prior, and amongst the frenzy that this naturally caused, they decided to stop touring. Suddenly, the publicity machine had withered to a more reclusive existence, coinciding with the sophistication of their album output. Each line to every song became something to be analysed with intensity. Paul crashed a moped while cruising around on the Wirral, leaving him with a broken tooth, a sliced lip, and the subject of rumours about his worsening health. By January of 1967, icy conditions on the M1 had caused many to claim that he had been killed in a car crash. 

And so by 1969, rumours about the well-being — and aliveness — of Paul McCartney had been spinning on the mill for some time. However, this year would bring a new and almighty gust of wind when the Drake University student paper published an article analysing the fatal clues from recent Beatles albums. These hidden messages were uncovered by playing the band’s songs backwards, such as the White Album’s avant-garde track ‘Revolution 9’ in which a slurring “turn me on, dead man” can be heard. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was also littered with clues of Paul’s demise: he faces the opposite way to his bandmates on the reverse cover, fingers point to specific lyrics referring to a car accident, and the ‘OPD’ badge he wears naturally means ‘Officially Pronounced Dead’. These campus rumours reached international attention when student writer Fred LaBour of The Michigan Daily published a review of Abbey Road, highlighting the fresh ‘Paul is Dead’ evidence brought forward by this new album. 

In this article, the official story was set: on a cold night Paul McCartney stormed out of the studio, drove away in his car and wound up dead in a car crash. To shelter the adoring Beatles fans from the heart-wrenching news, the band teamed up with MI5 to find a left-handed bassist lookalike with equal songwriting skill. The winner, and incoming Paul McCartney, was an orphan named William Campbell. Overcome by guilt, the surviving Beatles left clues to vent their sadness at the loss of their dear friend. Like many of the previous albums, Paul stood out on the cover of Abbey Road, going barefoot across that famous zebra crossing with a slightly out-of-step cadence to his stride. 

Believers contented themselves with a reality in which Paul’s family reacted to this replacement with the surprisingly stoic mindset of ‘well, he’s not our Paul but he’ll do!’ True belief defies logic. However, in the counter-cultural era that questioned the facts relayed by the ‘establishment’, the window of plausibility undoubtedly opened wider. Popular music had become synonymous with secret messages, fuelled by the idea that anything with such enormous reach must be spreading a hidden agenda. A perverse reading of the Beatles’ White Album led Charles Manson to believe that the band was in tune with his desire to instigate an apocalyptic race war. Mass influence seems nothing short of scary. 

The theory is a testament to the bizarre reality that disinformation carries. Even in light of LaBour’s confession that he invented many of the clues detailed in his seminal article, the student paper’s publication still has many today claiming that they are not fooled by the deceiving ‘Faul’. 

Has anyone else noticed that [insert famous musician] is looking a little different lately? 

Image from Wikimedia Commons