Paul is dead
Proponents perceived clues among elements of Beatles songs and cover artwork; clue-hunting proved infectious, and by October 1969 had become an international phenomenon.
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.
[2] 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,[3] which were backed by their disappearance from the public eye and the postponement of their scheduled tours in late 1966.
[4] 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.
[16][nb 1] 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.
[19] 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.
[20][21] 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.
[24] On 22 October, the day that the "Paul is dead" rumour became an international news story,[25] McCartney, his wife Linda and their two daughters travelled to Scotland to spend time at his farm near Campbeltown.
[35] 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.
"[16] WMCA dispatched Alex Bennett to the Beatles' Apple Corps headquarters in London on 23 October,[36] to further his extended coverage of the "Paul is dead" theory.
[38][nb 2] 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.
[46] 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.
Pepper recording session and drove off angrily in his car, then, distracted by a meter maid ("Lovely Rita"), failed to notice that the traffic lights had changed ("A Day In The Life"), crashed, and was decapitated ("Don't Pass Me By").
[16] Others contended that the man's name was Bill Shepherd,[52] later altered to Billy Shears,[53] and the replacement was instigated by Britain's MI5 out of concern for the severe distress McCartney's death would cause the Beatles' audience.
[54] 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.
[33] On 21 October 1969, the Beatles' press office again issued statements denying the rumour, deeming it "a load of old rubbish"[63] and saying that "the story has been circulating for about two years – we get letters from all sorts of nuts but Paul is still very much with us".
As in his and Linda's segment in the Beatles' promotional clip for "Something", which the couple filmed privately around this time, McCartney was unshaven and unusually scruffy-looking in his appearance.
[68] In Winn's description, the family portrait used for Life's cover shows McCartney no longer "shabbily attired", but "clean-shaven and casually but smartly dressed".
[73] Titled McCartney, and recorded without his bandmates' knowledge,[74][75] it was "one of the best-kept secrets in rock history" until shortly before its release in April 1970, according to author Nicholas Schaffner, and led to the announcement of the Beatles' break-up.
[80] In one telling, this theory contended that the album had been recorded in late 1966 but then mislaid until 1975, at which point Lennon, Harrison and Starr elected to issue it in McCartney's memory.
[83] Schaffner said that, given its origins as an item of gossip and intrigue generated by a select group in the "Beatles cult", "Paul is dead" serves as "a genuine folk tale of the mass communications era".
[17] He also described it as "the most monumental hoax since Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast persuaded thousands of panicky New Jerseyites that Martian invaders were in the vicinity".
[12] MacDonald groups it with the "psychic epidemics" that were encouraged by the rock audience's use of hallucinogenic drugs and which escalated with Charles Manson's homicidal interpretation of the White Album and Mark David Chapman's murder of Lennon in 1980.
[85] Among sociological studies, Barbara Suczek recognised it as, in Schaffner's description, a contemporary reading of the "archetypal myth wherein the beautiful youth dies and is resurrected as a god".
[17] Psychologists Ralph Rosnow and Gary Fine attributed its popularity partly to the shared, vicarious experience of searching for clues without consequence for the participants.
They also said that for a generation distrustful of the media following the Warren Commission's report, it was able to thrive amid a climate informed by "The credibility gap of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, the widely circulated rumors after the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations, as well as attacks on the leading media sources by the yippies and Spiro Agnew".
[17] American social critic Camille Paglia locates the "Paul is dead" phenomenon to the Ancient Greek tradition symbolised by Adonis and Antinous, as represented in the cult of rock music's "pretty, long-haired boys who mesmerize both sexes", and she adds: "It's no coincidence that it was Paul McCartney, the 'cutest' and most girlish of the Beatles, who inspired a false rumor that swept the world in 1969 that he was dead.
"[86] "Paul is dead" has continued to inspire analysis into the 21st century, with published studies by Andru J. Reeve, Nick Kollerstrom and Brian Moriarty, among others, and exploitative works in the mediums of mockumentary and documentary film.
[53][87][nb 6] Similar rumours concerning other celebrities have been circulated, including the unsubstantiated allegation that Canadian singer Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by a person named Melissa Vandella.
[88][89] In an article on the latter phenomenon, The Guardian described the 1969 McCartney hoax as "Possibly the best known example" of a celebrity being the focus of "a (completely unverified) cloning conspiracy theory".
