I miss very few things about the 1960s. I was too young for Vietnam and too old for Elvis, and the Beatles didn't capture my interest until after the release of The White Album in 1968. After that, I was hooked.
In 1969, just prior to the rollout of their penultimate album, Abbey Road, a strange rumor began to circulate among Beatelmaniacs. It gained prominence on the campus of my alma mater, Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. A journalism student wrote a piece for the student newspaper in September, carefully listing all the "clues" that proved conclusively that Paul McCartney was dead, that he had died in a car crash in 1966 and been replaced by a lookalike. The "clues " had been circulating among hardcore fans for a couple of years. But after a DJ publicized the student newspaper article on a Denver radio station, all hell broke loose.
One of those clues cited the White Album's "Revolution Number Nine" track. If you play it backwards (and were told beforehand what to listen for), you can clearly hear one of the Beatles saying, "Turn me on, dead man."
The rumor/conspiracy theory swept the planet. Each new iteration of the tale added context and "new" information. British intelligence helped perpetrate the cover-up of Paul's death by feeding stories to the press. The lookalike who replaced Paul was the winner of a "Paul McCartney Lookalike Contest" who was trained by the other Beatles in how to act like Paul.
The list of "clues" kept growing, and the hysteria became a cultural phenomenon. No denials from the Beatles camp or McCartney himself could quench the fires of conspiracy.
In addition to “Revolution 9” on the White Album, Beatles fans pointed to several other clues about Paul McCartney’s death from the band’s discography.
For example, “Strawberry Fields Forever” contains a backward message that seems to say: “I buried Paul.” And “I’m So Tired” appears to have yet another backward clue which says: “Paul is dead. Miss him, miss him, miss him.”
Plus, fans had plenty of new material to sort through — The Beatles had released Abbey Road just a few weeks before the “Paul Is Dead” theory blew up.
Believers in the theory fixated on the Abbey Road album cover itself. They claimed the imagery evoked a funeral procession.
Lennon, dressed in white, represented the priest. Starr, in black, portrayed an undertaker. While Harrison, wearing full denim, suggested a gravedigger. And McCartney, out of step with the others, not wearing shoes, and eyes closed, was clearly meant to represent his own death.
Perhaps the Democrats were telling themselves, We could create this kind of interest in our "Trump is dead" claim.
Not a chance. The "Paul is dead" hysteria transcended culture, politics, and mass media unlike any other similar phenomenon except perhaps Orson Welles' 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. I recall Beatles fans gathering in small groups, going over other albums, endlessly looking for "clues." A cottage industry of conspiracy promoters hastily wrote books on the clues. Major magazines like Time and Life wrote feature articles on the pop culture phenomenon.
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The "Trump is dead" meme will never achieve the level of interest that gripped the "Paul is dead" theory fans in the late 1960s and early 70s. Even in the 21st century, the theory inspires examination.
"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. Writing in 2016, Beatles biographer Steve Turner said, "the theory still has the power to flare back into life." He cited a 2009 Wired Italia magazine article that featured an analysis by two forensic research consultants who compared selected photographs of McCartney taken before and after his alleged death by measuring features of the skull. According to the scientists' findings, the man shown in the post-November 1966 images was not the same.
It goes without saying that some of the same elements that led to the "Paul is dead" hysteria are present in the "Trump is dead" meme. Most notably, those who believe the "Trump is dead" theory, like those who believed the "Paul is dead" nonsense, lack the requisite gray matter to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
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