The original "Paul is Dead" radio airchecks...

[nightcat]

Two famous broadcasts referred to by R. Gary Patterson, available to listen to in their entirety... and they're absolutely free to boot!


WABC, New York. October 21, 1969. Just before 2:00 AM. (http://musicradio.computer.net/images/robylast.ram)

A couple of days before this broadcast, DJ Roby Yonge was speaking with some college students in the midwest who'd tipped him off to a rumor that was being passed around universities in Michigan. Intrigued, he did some digging. With only a few weeks left on his WABC contract and having already made the decision to leave New York, Roby went public with it on his very popular show. WABC, a 50,000 watt clear channel station had MILLIONS of listeners all over the country at night. This is the moment that brought the "Paul is dead" clues to the public at large and got the ball rolling. In this clip, Roby goes through the rumours and clues and then ~poof~ Les Marchak is on and Roby is history!

Several days later, on Halloween night 1969, WKBW, Buffalo, ran this hour-long "expose" production regarding the rumors:

"WKBW: Paul is alive and well...or IS he?" (http://www.reelradio.com/gifts/pmwkbw69.html#pmwkbw69)

This is the full hour-long special AS IT AIRED in '69. It's a radio classic on a par with "War of the Worlds".

Listen to these, and, if you like them, I will post more vintage airchecks in the future! Do you have a favorite radio personality from days gone by that you'd love to hear again? Chances are there are airchecks available... let me know and I'll put them up here as I find them! :)

[Sean]

Yes. I actually heard this live when it was happening. Everyone i know were putting their Beatles albums on turntables and forcing them to play backwards looking for reverse messages. We were even discussing it in class. Even the teachers were interested.
To this day, none of the remaining Beatles ever admitted to this being a hoax.

[nightcat]

If nothing else, the "hidden backwards messages" craze inspired by this mystery made the manufacturers of phonograph stylii very wealthy! All of a sudden all of us born after WWII were sticking our turntables in neutral and fingering the platters backwards, stopping, going back and replaying anything that sounded like a clue over and over again... a very good way to quickly fatiuge the cantilever that supports the diamond. An afternoon of clue-seeking would mean a trip to the hi-fi store and, shortly thereafter, the record store to replace the copies you'd just scratched beyond playability...

The Beatles have remained mum about this! Oddly quiet, though there are two possible references made by Lennon and McCartney that only serve to deepen the mystery. Gary Patterson cites a passing comment Lennon made in an interview shortly before his assassination. While not referring directly to this mystery, Lennon told the interviewer that the Beatles always put "clues" in their songs that people who were "turned on" would get. Paul McCartney (or "Faul"... or "William Campbell" depending on what you believe) told a writer that, regarding the 1995 song "Free As A Bird", they'd "put a lot of clues in it, like in the old days....".

[Captain Kundalini]

For me, the "Paul Is Dead" hoax continues to amuse me to no end.
When I first heard my first clue from "Strawberry Fields Forever", I was absolutely astonished. If you listen to it, it sounds like John is saying "I buried Paul", which in England is a way of saying, "I went to Paul's funeral."
Listening to an edited version of the last few seconds of the song with just Ringo playing drums, you can hear that John is actually saying "Cranberry Sauce (http://www.captkundalini.com/Sounds/CranberrySauce.mp3)". (He was that bored.)
It was thought that "Billy Shears" was the name of Pual's double on "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The cover of "Sgt Pepper" (both front and back) have clues. One the back, George is pointing to the first lyric of "She's Leaving Home" which goes,
"Wednesday morning at five o'clock". This is alledgedly the time that Paul had the car accident. On the back cover, Paul had his back to the camera. As to why, this is open to speculation. Soem say that it is indeed "Billy Shears" or William Campbell before his surgery to make him look more like Paul. Others say that it is actually Mal Evans, a long time friend of the Beatles and their Road Manager during their touring days. The theory was that Mal stood in for Paul because Paul was late to the photo shoot.
On the inner sleeve, Paul is wearing a uniform which has a patch saying OPD which, according to the rumors, meant that Paul was Officially Pronounced Dead. It actually stood for "Ontario Police Department".
There are several clues on the front cover: The letter "P" arranged in flowers with three strings (as opposed to four for a bass guitar). There is also the wax figures of the Beatles all dressed in black and looking as if they're in mourning. The hand over Paul's head is an Indian symbol of Death or a blessing from a priest before interrment of the body in the grave.

[Dark Skies]

Thanks for posting those links Nightcat...those broadcasts were something I'd never heard before.

I rather enjoyed the whole PID thing. So many clues that eventually lead nowhere but people still follow the trail looking for something definitive. I think it's all quite clever on the Beatles behalf, yes I believe they did all this on purpose, to amuse and confuse the public at large. And I still say it's not cranberry sauce but I buried Paul. I've ran that thing through my recording software and stripped it down and that's what I still hear!! Anyway, thanks again for posting those links. Now if I can just find some Bob Crane stuff I'd be happy.

[Captain Kundalini]

Thanks for posting those links Nightcat...those broadcasts were something I'd never heard before.

I rather enjoyed the whole PID thing. So many clues that eventually lead nowhere but people still follow the trail looking for something definitive. I think it's all quite clever on the Beatles behalf, yes I believe they did all this on purpose, to amuse and confuse the public at large. And I still say it's not cranberry sauce but I buried Paul. I've ran that thing through my recording software and stripped it down and that's what I still hear!! Anyway, thanks again for posting those links. Now if I can just find some Bob Crane stuff I'd be happy.

Actually, the Beatles didn't start it at all. The story originally started in 1966 in a University newspaper, but it didn't really catch fire until a DJ by the name of Russ Gibb who worked at a Detroit radio statin called WKNR, broke the story.

The story regarding Paul McCartney's so-called 'demise' begins back on Wednesday November 9th, 1966. Due to the 2-album contract deal that they had with EMI, they had decided to release a compilation album (later to be called 'Oldies… but Goldies'). This was done because the group was too busy working on a project for a concept album that would later hit the shelves with the title 'Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band'. However, things weren't going smoothly, and being the perfectionist that he was, Paul was getting increasingly angry over a particular song of his that he couldn't quite get to sound right.

The session rang long into the night, and ended in a blaze of fireworks. An arguement broke out between Paul and the others and after some heated words Paul stormed out of the studio. The time was just before 5am.

During the time that the group was in the studio, the sky had begun to cloud up and when the group left Abbey Road Studios it was raining pretty heavily. Paul got into his white Austin Healey car and drove off in the rain. During his travel he noticed a woman walking on the pavement, and seeing that she was cold and miserable, he pulled up alongside her and offered her a lift. At first, the woman (who it transpired was called Rita) did not know who the person was driving the car, but when it dawned on her she went hysterical; grabbing him and pulling him in a fan-frenzy.

This inevitably caused Paul to lose control of the car. He sped through a red light and his car rammed into a yellow lorry causing it to flip and smash into a telegraph pole. Rita survived and managed to get out of the vehicle and turned to try and rescue Paul, but the car caught fire and Rita was forced to back off. Paul's fingers were broken and so he couldn't pull the handle that would open the car door and ensue his escape. He was trapped inside, and nobody in the already gathering crowd could do anything until the fire engines came to extinguish the blaze. They duly came and tried to put out the fire, but suddenly the car exploded, decapitating the trapped victim. Paul was dead at 5am on Wednesday 9th November, 1966.

The crowd that had turned up to see what was going on was oblivious as to whom they were watching. They all thought that he looked familiar, but since his hair was burnt off in the fire they couldn't tell for sure. Later, it also transpired that identifying the Paul using dental records would be impossible since all of his teeth were knocked out during the crash.

A local reporter had been following Paul from when he left Abbey Road, and so saw the whole tragic accident. When Paul had been removed from the car and taken to hospital, He immediately went back to where he worked at wrote an article for that morning's newspaper. During this time, the police had run a number-plate check on the car and discovered who the driver was. Shocked, they immediately contacted Brian Epstein with the news so that he could handle the situation and decide what to do next. Frightened that a newspaper may have discovered who was in the crash and subsequently write a story about it, Brian phoned up all the local newspaper printers to see what the main headline was to be. When he found the newspaper that was to print the story, he bribed them into stopping the press and to destroy the copies that had already been printed. Then Brian's next step was to bribe the policeman who had done the number-plate search. His plan was to give himself time so that the situation could be discussed with the group and all the possible options contemplated.

The rest of the group were shocked, and contemplated disbanding in respect of their friend. However, it was counter-argued that the Beatles were at the top of their creative peak, and that they were tied to too many agreements and contracts to end it, so the decision was made to stay together. Then the problem came up as to how they were going to fill in the bass player spot. This would prove tricky. If a new person appeared in the line-up then fans would be hysterical over the demise of 'The Cute Beatle' and would be angry over the groups choice not to let this information public. There was only one option - replace Paul with a look-a-like to take over.

Finding a look-a-like was difficult, but was possible under the guise of an innocent looking 'Paul Look-a-like' competition that was judged by people who were unaware of the overall seriousness of their task. The eventual winner of the competition was a person called William Campbell, and just after he had won reports of his mysterious disappearance began appearing on local news. William Campbell lived in Ontario, Canada and worked for the Ontario Provincial Police. He had disappeared because he was no longer William Campbell - he was Paul McCartney.

Although William looked a lot like McCartney, there were a small number of imperfections that needed to be eradicated. Amongst these improvements the top lip had to be fattened up a little, but there was a doctors error which left a scar. The eyebrows were also worked on. At the end, the new McCartney was pretty much indistinguishable from the old McCartney, and it was only then that the group were beginning to believe that their plan would work.

But there were other problems. William spoke with a Scottish accent, and so he had to undergo speech therapy to give him the trademark Liverpudlian accent. He was also right handed and so had to literally swap hands! He could already play bass guitar, and so in the studio he could play however he liked. However, in public and in music videos he'd have to mime whilst playing left handed.

In the end, the new McCartney could have fooled anyone, and in reality it did - several billion fans to be precise!