The Paul is dead clues - why give the game away?

Paul McCartney died on 9 November 1966. He was replaced in The Beatles by a lookalike. The band then peppered their songs and album covers with clues about his death. Hold a mirror horizontally along the middle of the drum on the cover of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and you see the words ‘HE DIE’ separated by an arrow pointing up at Paul. At the end of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever,’ John can be heard saying, “I buried Paul,” (or “cranberry sauce” or “I’m very bored” – the jury is still out.) John mumbles something at the end of ‘I’m So Tired.’ Play it backwards and you hear, “Paul is dead, man. Miss him, miss him, miss him.” (At least, it says that if you want it to. It never made any more sense to me backwards than forwards.) On the cover of Abbey Road, Paul is barefoot. In many cultures, people are buried without shoes, so it’s a clear sign Paul is ready for interment. He has tried to explain this away by saying it was a really hot day, so he slipped his shoes off to try and stay cool. It makes sense. On hot days, I like to walk barefoot on sizzling tarmac. He’s also holding a cigarette – or coffin nail – in his right hand. Everyone knows the real Paul was left-handed. In the background is a Volkswagen Beetle bearing the number plate LMW 281F. The first part is an abbreviation of ‘Linda McCartney weeps.’ Paul and Linda met for the first time on 15 May 1967. As this was after the death of the original Paul, the only one she’d ever known was the replacement, so it’s unclear who she was weeping for. The second part of the number plate indicates that Paul would have been 28 if he’d survived. Paul was 27 at the time of the photo shoot, but The Beatles were interested in Eastern religions, some of which believe we spend the first year of our life in the womb and are one year old at birth.

Some of the clues are born out of over-active imaginations. Others are harder to ignore.

However, if we believe The Beatles did genuinely plant clues about Paul’s death, the question is: why? Why would you engineer an elaborate cover-up and then risk giving the game away? Let’s look at some possible answers to this question.

They were taunting us. A serial killer will sometimes send notes to the police with oblique indications about when and where he’s going to strike next. He likes thinking he’s so much smarter than the police that they can’t catch him even with his help. Were The Beatles doing a similar thing? We’ve swapped out one of the most famous people in the world with a lookalike and you didn’t notice! We even gave you clues and you still couldn’t see it! How dumb are you guys? This would seem rather sick in the circumstances. John Lennon was known for his dry, caustic sense of humour. However, if your best friend and song writing partner has recently died and, for some reason, you’ve had to accept a replacement into your band, it seems odd to turn this into an opportunity to tease people with how clever you are.

They were breaking the news gently. It’s a controversial matter. If you have bad news for someone, is it better to rip the Band Aid and get it over with? I’m not sure. I’ve had relationships that fizzled out. We realised we hadn’t contacted each other in two months so we were probably finished. That was a lot less painful than thinking I was with the love my love only for her to say, “You’re fat, you’re ugly, you smell, and you’re moving out tomorrow.” A big headline announcing ‘PAUL McCARTNEY DIES’ would have caused mass hysteria and possibly even suicides. More than thirty years later, UK suicide rates rose by 17% following the death of Princess Diana. Did The Beatles fear a similar spike and didn’t want a lot of young people’s deaths on their conscience? If the news dripped out slowly through the clues, people would come to terms with his death gradually and so it would have a less dramatic impact on them.

I think the most plausible explanation – and the one I explore in my novel Sing the Dead Man’s Songs – is that The Beatles were forced into the deception. Paul died and a lookalike was put in place against their will. Some sort of threat or blackmail stopped them telling people what had happened directly so they used the clues to reveal the truth surreptitiously. But who would force them into it? A lot of people stood to lose money if Paul’s death became known. The Beatles were a cash cow for EMI records. Other bands had changed line-ups, but the names of John, Paul, George, and Ringo were as famous as the name The Beatles. Would the public accept anyone else in that second spot? A word in John’s ear about possible danger to his wife, Cynthia, or his Aunt Mimi could have secured his co-operation. Even if he continued making music like nothing had happened, respect for his friend’s memory demanded that the truth come out somehow. So he started planting clues. The bigwigs at EMI spent more time studying balance sheets than album covers. But he knew the fans would pore over every inch of them just as they obsessively analysed every second of sound he produced. He found a way of getting the truth out there.

What about you? Do you think the clues are really there or is it just a case of people seeing what they want to see? And if they are really there … why?

The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle – revisited

I was obsessed with punk in 1984. I know I came to that party late, but I was only six when the Sex Pistols played the 100 Club in London and my mum didn’t want to take me. I must have watched The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle more than twenty times during my teens. With one thing and another, though, I hadn’t seen it since. One of my resolutions for the lockdown was to watch all the old videos and get them out the door before the VHS player gives up the ghost. One of these was The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. How would it hold up today?

            The answer is: mixed. Watching it now, I get the impression the filmmakers ran out of usable archive footage halfway through and filled up the running time with scenes that don’t amount to much. To his credit, Johnny Rotten refused to have anything to do with the sequence where the band flew to Brazil to meet train robber Ronnie Biggs. Johnny said he didn’t want to glamourise anyone who’d left a train driver as a vegetable. It’s hard to see what’s added by this sequence – which must have been the most expensive part of the film. The antics on the beach and a boat aren’t funny. The music they made with Biggs ranks low in the Pistols’ canon. ‘No One Is Innocent’ is a series of deliberately tasteless benedictions, asking God’s blessing on Myra Hindley and Nazis on the run. Their version of ‘Belsen Was A Gas’ is the Pistols’ foray into AOR. It even has a saxophone solo, for heaven’s sake. Biggs’s cockney honk does not compare with Rotten’s cackling sneer. It is as ghastly as it sounds.

            This, however, is not my main problem with the film. The story, such as it is, involves Malcolm McLaren explaining how he swindled his way to the top of the record industry, using publicity stunts to promote a group that couldn’t play. I have two issues with this. One, that wouldn’t work. All the marketing in the world won’t help if you don’t have a good product behind it. Does anyone remember Sigue Sigue Sputnik? They were hyped relentlessly in the mid-eighties, but had only limited success because they weren’t a good band. My other issue is that the Sex Pistols could play. Their rendition of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ on So It Goes is one of the most stunning performances ever captured on film. Johnny Rotten is at his snarling best and the band behind him are tight and powerful. The one album they released during their brief lifetime, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, is one great tune after another. It still regularly features in lists of greatest albums of all time. No clever marketing ploys could ever make that happen.

            Despite all this, I still find things to enjoy in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It captures some great songs. It’s often Pythonesque in its mix of bizarre sketches and surrealist cartoons. A woman gives a scathing critique of the band while ants crawl over her face. Guitarist Steve Jones, who’s supposed to be looking for McLaren, gets a vital lead from a talking guard dog. Not everything works, but you never know what’s coming next and that’s enough to keep you watching. The other film Julien Temple made about the band, The Filth and the Fury, is a much more accurate history of the Sex Pistols. It’s also not as much fun.

            My advice about The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle is to watch the first half for the clips but take everything McLaren says with a dustbin full of salt. Skip the scenes in Brazil and the ones of Sid Vicious as Parisian flâneur. Go straight to the closing credits to hear ‘Friggin’ in the Riggin.’’ Yes, the lyrics belong in a rugby club locker room, but the interplay between electric guitar and orchestra make it a great piece of music.

How does American Beauty stand up today?

Please note: this film is more than twenty years old, so I assume you’ve already seen it if you want to, but there are spoilers in this article.

 When American Beauty was released in 1999, it was widely lauded and few people begrudged the five Oscars it took home. It was praised for its appeal to both middle-aged and younger viewers.

It captures the angst of forty-two-year-old Lester Burnham, who wonders if life has any more to offer except work, retirement, and a slow decline towards death. He kicks against inevitability by working out, smoking cannabis, and lusting after his daughter’s pretty friend. At eighteen, his daughter Jane is just as confused and angry about what life has to offer. Her only certainty is that she doesn’t want to be like her parents. She rebels by getting together with Ricky, the weird guy next door, so they can share their love of the morbid and transgressive.

            Watching the film again recently, though, I was struck by how both these plot strands are the fantasies of a middle-aged man. Lester fancies an eighteen-year-old, which is icky but plausible. Where we get into pure fantasy is when she fancies him right back. I’m sure many a man in his forties has sucked in his paunch, combed over the bald patch, and wondered if his daughter’s friends find him attractive. No, they don’t. At best, they think you’re funny; at worst, creepy. An uncomfortable aspect of the film is that the audience is invited to leer along with Lester. In the end, he decides not to take advantage of the young girl, but not before we’ve had a good look at her breasts.

            The story about the two young people smacks of another fantasy, this time about what should have happened in the past. One advantage of being a writer is you can put right the things that went wrong in real life. (When my characters get into arguments, they actually deliver the devastating comebacks that I thought of too late.) You remember the sexy goth girl at school? She wore black eye shadow, listened to the Sisters of Mercy, and wrote poems about the futility of existence. What she should have done was realise you were equally strange and fall into your arms. Somehow, she neglected to do this and went off with the rugby player who listened to Bryan Adams and thought poetry was a bit gay. But in the film, everything goes as it should and the two emo teenagers get together. In some ways, this part is even creepier than the lust-across-generations story. Ricky films Jane without her consent. Instead of taking out a restraining order, she starts a relationship with him. What sort of message does that send?

            For all my issues with this film, I found much to admire in it. It’s well made. No one who’s seen Skyfall will doubt Sam Mendes is a great director. The performances are uniformly excellent. Whatever Kevin Spacey may or may not have done in his private life, there’s no denying the man can act. It was written by Alan Ball, who’s gay. I have to give him credit for so accurately tapping into middle-aged straight men’s wish-fulfilment. His screenplay crackles with good lines: “Today I quit my job. Then, I told my boss to go fuck himself, and then I blackmailed him for almost $60,000. Pass the asparagus.”