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- [00:00]
Ben Bowlin
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning tuning in. Let's hear it for our still Alive Super Producer, Mr. Max Williams.
- [00:39]
Noel Brown
I am still live and guess what? For the second day in a row I am drinking actual coffee.
- [00:45]
Ben Bowlin
You are the walrus. My God, stop it. You are the walrus.
- [00:49]
Noel Brown
I am the eggman. We are all the Walrus. And also guys, the walrus was Paul.
- [00:54]
Ben Bowlin
And that is none other than Mr. Noel Brown. They called me Ben in in this part of the world. Noel, did you know that Paul McCartney died in 1966?
- [01:08]
Noel Brown
I heard tell.
- [01:10]
Ben Bowlin
Heard tell.
- [01:11]
Noel Brown
It's been whispered about for lo these many years. I don't know man. This is very much a good crossover point between the other show. We do stuff that I want you to know in Ridiculous History and that this episode is all about conspiracies. And much being made about the rumors of the Death of Paul McCartney aka the Paul is dead saga. And quite a saga it is is. Quick question. Did he die in an octopus's garden? No.
- [01:39]
Ben Bowlin
Oh no.
- [01:40]
Noel Brown
But he may have been in the shade.
- [01:41]
Ben Bowlin
It's entirely possible he was an active member of a yellow submarine crew. That much we have confirmed. Yes, yes, yes. So look, Paul McCartney is kind of famous. He's a real up and coming musician. Yeah. You may have heard of him as being 1/4 of one of the best pun based musical groups in modern history, the Beatles.
- [02:09]
Noel Brown
Ben, I'm glad you brought that up. I think a lot of people completely space on that or it just never occurs to them the name the Beatles is in fact a pun. It is B E A T L E S And they were part of a scene called Mercy Beat and the Beatnik and all of that kind of stuff. So it's a very clever little in joke there that I think a lot of people miss.
- [02:31]
Ben Bowlin
Hey, I'm the.
- [02:32]
Noel Brown
I definitely did until now.
- [02:34]
Ben Bowlin
No worries. Max. If it, if it may assuage some people's concerns, I am the dumbest person I have ever met. I just recently figured out that Mattress Firm is a play on words.
- [02:49]
Noel Brown
We've talked about this, I think. Yes. Yeah, you've been living with that realization for a minute. But the moment you find out, it's like. It's like the galaxy brain emoji. But yeah, no, just to your point, Ben, if you wanted to be coy about it, did you know that Paul McCartney actually died in 1966? Actually serious to crib from our dear friend and Beatles maniac way beyond enthusiast Jordan Runtog, who's our research associate on this predetermined two parter. Preemptive two parter. The guy who's been out there touring and releasing albums as Paul McCartney for the last, you know, 60ish years or so is apparently according to some anyhow, some sort of doppelganger slash imposter slash body double. A body double. Exactly.
- [03:39]
Ben Bowlin
And Max, if we could get a little bit of dramatic cinematic music, little stuff that I want you to know. Fellow ridiculous historians, it is a little known fact that the surviving Beatles partnered with the British government on a top secret scheme to replace their fallen bassist in the aftermath of a fatal car crash.
- [04:14]
Noel Brown
That's right. And just to be clever about it, because those Beatles were known for their wit, they decided it'd be a lot of fun if they just sprinkled in little drips and drabs pointing to the truth of the conspiracy for their eagle eyed or eared fans to decode.
- [04:31]
Ben Bowlin
Because what better way to really pull off a body double replacement? What better way to keep the secret secret than to do some backmasking.
- [04:43]
Noel Brown
Make it a goof. What if we made it a little goof and fun. Fun game, fun little mad lib for. For. For the. For the fans. That'll be fun for them.
- [04:53]
Max Williams
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- [05:23]
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Ben Bowlin
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Max Williams
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Noel Brown
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- [06:21]
Max Williams
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- [06:26]
Noel Brown
Every morning brings a fresh new energy. And no matter what the day holds, we come to the Today show for all of it. We get the best start to the day because we started together.
- [06:37]
Casey Pegram
Watch the Today show weekdays at 7:00am on NBC.
- [06:45]
Ben Bowlin
You know, Noel, this reminds me of that time you, Max, Casey Pegram and I got together and did the whole JFK thing. And we were like, let's put some little gags in there.
- [06:59]
Noel Brown
Gosh, Ben, I don't remember this. You'll have to remind me. We've been doing this show for a long time. I don't remember the JFK gags.
- [07:06]
Ben Bowlin
Oh, jfk. The president that we conspired to have assassinated.
- [07:10]
Noel Brown
Oh, that was us. That's right. Sorry. Whoops. Coming out soon, though, y'all, Trump released all that paperwork and soon we will be taken to task for our. Our. Our treasonous activities, our shenanigans. Yeah, 100%. And if you're wondering, we just have an amazing skin routine. It's also true.
- [07:29]
Ben Bowlin
It's. That's. That is also true.
- [07:31]
Noel Brown
Is that related? Well, well, I mean. I mean, yeah. That's how we did this in the 60s. And we're still young and vibrant here in 2025. Ah, yes, of course. Cerave. It's a hell of a drug.
- [07:42]
Ben Bowlin
Vibrant, at least.
- [07:43]
Noel Brown
So great. I have to tell.
- [07:45]
Ben Bowlin
Look, we're pointing out already some of the fun and fascinating rabbit holes of this particular pop culture beetle holes of this particular pop culture conspiracy. Now, our new researcher, good friend of ours, good friend of the show, Jordan, as you said, no, he's super into this. We want to start at the beginning. So we tease the idea that the actual Paul McCartney. Let's call him Paul Prime.
- [08:20]
Noel Brown
Sure. I like that.
- [08:22]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah. All right. So, Paul Prime. Take us there, Noel. It's just before midnight, November 8, 1966.
- [08:31]
Noel Brown
That's right. A little place called Abbey Road, really famous crosswalk. You might have seen in some imagery with some folks crossing the street there. The Beatles are hard at work at this studio when Paul McCartney gets into quite the row as the Brits call it with fellow beetle Ringo Starr. He was the drumming, the drummy one.
- [08:52]
Ben Bowlin
He's not even the best drummer in the Beatles for John Boy.
- [08:55]
Noel Brown
They say that. They do say that. And not to on Ringo too too much, but there is a lot of chatter and scuttlebutt from various session musicians who have played in and around the Beatles over the years who basically say that he didn't play any of the drums. And I'm just saying like there are definitely Ringo defenders and we've certainly seen him play live at like the Let It Be Live on the Roof thing and various clips from the Ed Sullivan show is the dude was a fine drummer and had a vibe.
- [09:24]
Ben Bowlin
He's an unplugged session.
- [09:26]
Noel Brown
Sure. You know, he definitely has a style and I'm a fan of that style, but it is, it's another conspiracy entirely. This idea that Ringo didn't really play.
- [09:36]
Ben Bowlin
Beatles records might have been an optic higher but.
- [09:40]
Noel Brown
But he was a good looking lad. It's not a real. He was the funny one. I mean they were all pretty funny but in the movies he's the real goofy one.
- [09:47]
Ben Bowlin
I would agree that he is a very specific looking person. That's very true. But I also agree, I also agree, NOEL, that Paul McCartney and John Lennon were often seen as the sort of dynamic duo of the Beatles when it came to songwriting. George Harrison got shortchanged often and Lennon.
- [10:13]
Noel Brown
McCartney is the famed writing credit on all that Beatles stuff.
- [10:18]
Ben Bowlin
Right, exactly. And those two guys didn't always get along, but when they did they made some amazing timeless music. As you were saying, Paul McCartney, according to the theory, has a real. Oh, what'd you say, Row? I love it, I love it.
- [10:37]
Noel Brown
A real punch up, real dust up.
- [10:39]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, yeah, yeah. An aggressive hullabaloo with Ringo Starr. And the funny thing is no one knows the specifics of whatever this discord may have been. The story goes that McCartney is very upset, he's very in his feelings, as we would say in modern parlance, and he just ghost out of the recording session. He's slamming doors, he speeds off. It is super sick Aston Martin because they're already rich by this point. And it's a rainy night in England, not a rainy night in Georgia.
- [11:17]
Noel Brown
A night in England, basically.
- [11:18]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, yeah, it's a regular night in England, which is a rainy night in Georgia. And at some point during that ride he loses control of his car, he swerves off the road, but he's been driving so far and so fast that now he's in rural England. And there are a ton of things to add to this. The story goes that whatever transpired, this Aston Martin hits a stone fence like a wall at top speed. And the accident is so bad that Paul McCartney, legendary member of the Beatles, loses his head, is decapitated, is pronounced dead on Wednesday morning on November 9, 1966.
- [12:12]
Noel Brown
Yeah, you know, there's a little tongue in cheek action going on here from our buddy Jordan. He wrote a lot of this as though this were the Queen's honest truth. And we're going to approach it, you know, as. As if, as a thought experiment, as if this were indeed possible.
- [12:29]
Ben Bowlin
Let's play with it.
- [12:30]
Noel Brown
I think we should. So let's take all this as read. Paul McCartney has been flung from his Aston Martin and, you know, severely mangled, decapitated even. And he is discovered by the police, who pretty quickly realize who they've got on their hands. They quickly phone up the British Secret Service, MI5, who allegedly hold an emergency meeting with the surviving Beatles and their management team. All of these folks together in some sort of skiff, one would imagine, decide that we must protect the public. Right, because no one can know.
- [13:07]
Ben Bowlin
MI5 is like law and order SVU. They have nothing going on except this one case.
- [13:15]
Noel Brown
It'll cause pandemonium. Whatever the opposite of Beetlemania is.
- [13:19]
Ben Bowlin
Beetle phobia.
- [13:21]
Noel Brown
Well, it would just be a real, A real show. And then people are going to tear themselves apart and each other. We have to protect the peace.
- [13:31]
Ben Bowlin
Yes. We have to protect the beats. They decide that. Well, the idea is they conspire and they say, okay, what is the most straightforward way to preserve the Beatles and to preserve the public and national security and peace of mind for music fans around the world. And they say, obviously the least complicated thing is to totally lie about the fact that Paul McCartney is dead and to replace him with a body double and swear multiple people to secrecy for the entirety of their lives.
- [14:11]
Noel Brown
Who we already have on hand, by the way.
- [14:13]
Ben Bowlin
Who we already have on hand.
- [14:15]
Noel Brown
Now that's not too much of a stretch. The Beatles were certainly famous enough and recognizable enough that it's possible they had body doubles already. But that's the thing that we've talked about on stuff they don't want you to know. Where there are cases, I think one that comes to mind specifically is with some Middle Eastern royal families. And if I'm not mistaken, like the Hussein's, they had a stable of body doubles.
- [14:42]
Ben Bowlin
That's correct.
- [14:43]
Noel Brown
And if I'm not mistaken, there's a film called like the Devil's Something or other. The devil's double or something like that. And it's about Hussein was, I believe, one of the most brutal of the two brothers, Uday and Koussi, and his body double and doppelganger. And it's just someone that would stand in, that would kind of, you know, throw people off the scent, et cetera.
- [15:05]
Ben Bowlin
The devil's double.
- [15:06]
Noel Brown
Thank you. That's right. So we know this is a thing that is done. Maybe it makes a little more sense in politics, but I mean, man, John Lennon was assassinate. The Beatles were influential on a political level. Paul was on a lot of lists, you know.
- [15:23]
Ben Bowlin
Absolutely. And speaking of being on a lot of lists, I'll say it, I know people don't love to hear it. Catcher in the Rye is a good novel.
- [15:36]
Noel Brown
I think so too.
- [15:36]
Ben Bowlin
It's a good book. It's ruined by the fans, just like Rick and Morty. But it's a good book and it doesn't turn you into an assassin. We should probably do a series on that as well. Anyway, it's just. Dude, it is laughable to me the idea that MI5, an organization that is multitasking, if nothing else, would cook up this mousetrap level like Rube Goldberg conspiracy. Instead of going public, we'll just replace the physical person with another person and we'll trust everyone to not reveal the secret. So we have to ask cuibono, who benefits? The idea here is that the band, the Beatles, and hence the British government, they want this unparalleled run of highly lucrative music to continue. Cause at this point to your notion of the Beatles becoming a piece of state power, I think that's bigger than Jesus. According to John Lennon himself, they were historically probably taller.
- [16:57]
Noel Brown
Absolutely true. We can't confirm the figures there. But to what we were talking about earlier, I mean, the Beatles were so incredibly beloved, especially in their homeland of the United Kingdom. Perhaps there was some concern that there could be a rash of unalivings, to use the parlance of our time, with young distraught Beatles super fans taking the most brutal and worst action in the face of losing their beloved Paul.
- [17:29]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, because we have to understand, folks, at this point, people have defined their Persona like they have made the. They've defined their Persona as the Beatles. It becomes the North Star in their moral orientation. So to lose a single Beatle may prompt a wave of very damaging acts. So the story goes, the powers that be find a guy from Canada that they may have already had in their roster. His name, William Shears Campbell.
- [18:13]
Noel Brown
Billy to his friends, Billy Shears has entered the chat. He'd apparently won a Paul McCartney lookalike contest. That's a great way to find a good double.
- [18:25]
Ben Bowlin
And there were certain respect a thing.
- [18:28]
Noel Brown
Probably not. And, well, you know. But the Beatles certainly were famous enough that there were likely many lookalike contests.
- [18:35]
Ben Bowlin
So MI5 preparing the whole time.
- [18:39]
Noel Brown
Unclear. But it did apparently require a little bit of plastic surgery to push him truly into full on Spitting Image Paul territory so that he could be unnoticed in group photos.
- [18:53]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, the story goes, he's a few inches taller than Paul Prime. And this is maybe why the band stopped touring around this time. They thought the Beatle Maniacs would notice the difference live. And I want to know if it's okay. I'd like to take a moment and shout out Matt Frederick from stuff they don't want you to know. Matt and I got super duper into this many years ago and we filmed some weird videos that you can still see on YouTube and I'm not sure how well they aged, but I really appreciate Jordan's research here because it calls into. We're speaking to a conspiracy theory that still holds true for some people today. Dude, at the time, like 1966, 1967, the theory is the surviving Beatles, George, John and oh, Ringo. You like how it's always oh and Ringo, they felt super guilty about this massive conspiracy. And word on Abbey Road, word on the street is that John Lennon in particular is a little bit het up about this.
- [20:27]
Noel Brown
For sure. He's distraught, he's beside himself. Sure, he and his buddy Paul had some dust ups themselves over the years. You know, I mean, they're both creative and musical geniuses vying for kind of being the best in the best band in the world. Of course there were going to be some differences of opinions and some sparring of egos and all of that good stuff. So, yeah, I mean, they were again, Lennon McCartney is iconic. The songs that they wrote together were absolutely greater than the sum of their parts. The songs they wrote more on their own. If you wanted to get into more White Album territory, you start to really see their individual personalities emerge. But John's feelings are, needless to say, very complicated, you know, and he's dealing with the stages of grief. Not only was he missing his dear friend and songwriting partner, but also was deeply traumatized after apparently being asked to bury McCartney's decapitated body in an unmarked grave at Strawberry Fields, Salvation army park there in Liverpool, where they had played together. They were, after all, childhood friends, boyhood friends. Strawberry Fields forever, indeed.
- [21:38]
Ben Bowlin
So to help clear the conscience of the three surviving Beatles, again, the story goes, MI5, who apparently had nothing else to do, they said, guys, go with this plan. And the Beatles conspired themselves. So there's a conspiracy within a conspiracy. The three remaining Beatles say we are going to let the troops truth out, but like Emily Dickinson, we're going to tell the truth slant. We're going to put clues to McCartney's death in this car accident through our songs and albums. We're never going to come out and absolutely explicitly say we participated in killing 25% of our own band. Instead, we're going to release Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
- [22:43]
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- [24:13]
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- [25:21]
Noel Brown
Yeah, banger of a record.
- [25:22]
Ben Bowlin
Fantastic. It's really good. I really like it.
- [25:25]
Noel Brown
Actually quite good. A lot of people do. The Beatles are one of those bands that for the longest time when I was younger I sort of dismissed because they were too popular. You know, I think we've all been there as music nerds. But then I had my own kind of come to Beatles moment where I organically heard the right Beatles at the right time and had my personal relationship with the Beatles from that. And it was not Sgt. Pepper's, it was the previous album, Magical Mystery Tour. I like that it was very Sgt. It's like Sgt. Pepper's light. It's a little bit less successful I think, as a whole album experience. But man, fool on the Hill.
- [26:07]
Ben Bowlin
It's Proto Peppers.
- [26:08]
Noel Brown
I am the Walrus, of course. Very Proto Peppers.
- [26:11]
Ben Bowlin
And I also, I appreciate you bringing up this point because there is something I never quite understood. I think it's a manufactured rivalry amid fandom. There are people who will attempt to hold what they see as an interesting conversation by asking you to choose between the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. Right. I think it's fine to like both. I don't understand this weird Highlander philosophy.
- [26:43]
Noel Brown
I don't either. And I don't think that is relevant at all today. At the time though, there was certainly a div, maybe a divide. But also they were just vying for the same audience and they were both like at a certain level of fame. And I saw a great clip where some journalists.
- [26:58]
Ben Bowlin
I do think it's relevant though.
- [26:59]
Noel Brown
Well, okay, we can get back into that. But I saw a real cool clip with a vintage clip of Mick Jagger being asked, you know, if they were if the Rolling Stones were better than the Beatles. And he quite diplomatically, you know, the sort of shrugged the question off and really said that what they were doing is completely different than what the Beatles were doing. And I think that's the truth. I've always thought of the Stones as more of a hard rockin hard living kind of live band. And they certainly have their 60s psychedelia, kind of Her Majesty's satanic request and all of that. But to me the Beatles make better records and the Rolling Stones have always been a real rippin live band.
- [27:42]
Ben Bowlin
But do you see what I'm saying? It's a false dichotomy.
- [27:45]
Noel Brown
It's a false equivalent for sure. But what I mean is today. Yeah, of course you can like both. But I think what it might reveal about the Answerer is whether they're more into studio tricks and like psychedelic kind of records or if they really like a hard rocking kind of band, you.
- [28:01]
Ben Bowlin
Know, I mean Pepsi, Coke, you know, do what you want, it's like soda.
- [28:06]
Noel Brown
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- [28:11]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, yeah. Do you like MI5 or do you like this? FBI Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This releases in 1967. Let's walk through some of the purported hints at Paul's death. So just to recap, right now we're in a situation in the story where an MI5 has sworn the Beatles and all associated entities to secrecy. Paul McCartney is dead. We've substituted a Canadian for Paul McCartney. We're no longer touring, the Beatles are against MI5 and they're moving subtly to let the world know that their best friend is dead. This brings us to the floral guitar.
- [29:07]
Noel Brown
Yeah, for sure. Can we also just say this presupposes that the Beatles were kind of arm twisted into doing this, you know, that they were. Or that they had like buyer's remorse after the fact. They're like, wait a minute, we really shouldn't have done that. We should honor our friend Paul by like. We can't come right out and say it, but let's hide some clues. And where we're first going to dissect some of the purported clues that you mentioned is in the COVID art, very famous, iconic cover art of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And admittedly there's a lot going on on there. It's this cool collage kind of situation. The Beatles all in their brightly colored marching band outfits posing in front of a kind of a marching band style drum that bears the name of the album sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And then Beatles spelled out, which is funny too, by the way. There was a period where I think they've always just been Beatles. There's no the in most of the depictions of their name. But a lot of people just call them the Beatles. But they are Beatles, kind of like battles or idols or Radiohead. Anyway, on this album cover is supposedly hidden quite a few clues. And we start with, as you mentioned mention, Ben, the floral guitar. If you're looking at it right now, it is. You almost wouldn't clock it for what it is. But underneath beetles spelled out in flowers is what appears to be a guitar shaped plot of yellow flowers, kind of with a little long neck, let's call it. And then a circle of yellow flowers within that are some purple and it looks like some more like leafy kind of fauna. And then it's got these kind of three string looking things stretched out across them. And it is often referred to as a P because you could look at it and immediately be like, okay, that's a letter P on its side. To me it looks more like a guitar that you might see like made into a flower arrangement or like a pinata or something like that.
- [31:05]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, people believe this P is. Or folks of your mind, right, from your perspective believe this P does look like a left handed guitar. And folks will say that's fitting because Paul McCartney was the only southpaw in the, in the Fab Four. And if you read these tea leaves from that perspective, you will start to count the number of stems. If you count the stems and think of them as strings, perhaps on a bass guitar you will see that rather than four strings like on your conventional bass, there are only three stems strings. Perhaps a reference to the three living members of the Beatles. Sure, why not? I know, I know, it's too far. I'm being very Charlie Day with a red string, as is my remit. But. But as we know as history has proven, this album cover, and this aspect of this cover was meant to be a guitar to symbolize a stringed instrument. Apparently though, if you get into it, this was designed by a delivery guy who got a last minute call to bring just whatever flowers were available at his shop. You know, he was a floral arranger and improviser. So you know, like everybody else in the area, this guy knew about the Beatles and he didn't have every flower in the world to work with. So he took what he had and he fashioned them into a guitar. So is that a conspiracy? Was the floral arrangement guy also part of MI5? Doubt it.
- [33:06]
Noel Brown
Maybe might have been their flower guy. Well, we already mentioned the drum in the center where the actual name of the album is printed in kind of cool, circusy letters. Sergeant Pepper's across the top, kind of following the curve of the top of the drum. Lonely hearts in the middle, and club band on the bottom, also making up the second half of that circle. And another interesting theory pertaining to some clues being deliberately hidden here. If you hold a mirror up to the words lonely heart written across the center of the bass drum, you will supposedly get a secret message. Ben, it sounds like.
- [33:45]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, let me hold up a mirror here. Okay, walk me through this.
- [33:49]
Noel Brown
What do you see?
- [33:51]
Ben Bowlin
Well, I don't want to spoil it. Okay. If I'm not looking at a mirror reflection, I'm seeing I, O, N, E, I, X, he. And then what do you call those? Those equal or.
- [34:11]
Noel Brown
Yeah, greater than, less than, I don't know what you call me.
- [34:14]
Ben Bowlin
And then die.
- [34:16]
Noel Brown
Yeah. I. Is that. And is I N E X. Is that some sort of Latin? Is that even a thing? Let's see. It is not. It is just referencing Paul is dead. Paul is dead. Clues. So when arranged as I, one, I, he die. Okay, here we go. The image suggests a date. 11, 9 or November 9, 1966, which is supposedly when Paul died. There are diamonds between the words he and die which point directly at the image of Paul on the COVID And it's a weird one for sure.
- [34:54]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah.
- [34:54]
Noel Brown
But yeah, I've actually run into this problem myself when I was in Berlin and it was during COVID and I had one of those dog eared vaccine cards and I was rejected from an event because of the discrepancy between the way American dates are printed and European dates are printed here. Yeah, we do month, day, year, and there they do the year first.
- [35:24]
Ben Bowlin
Right. So it would be the difference between say, April 10, 2025 and 10 April 2025.
- [35:32]
Noel Brown
That's right. I mean, I spoke incorrectly. It is exactly right. Day, month, and then year rather than month, day. So in English style, the date would actually read September 11th. Yep. Also a little weird. Let's move on to the. There is a toy car depicted on this image that may be intended to reference the Aston Martin that crashed and supposedly killed young Paul McCartney.
- [36:01]
Ben Bowlin
Correct. On the far right of the album cover, you'll see what could be a white Aston Martin, the same vehicle Paul McCartney was driving when he had his fatal crash. If you look closely, you can see what appear to be small flames shooting from the Windows. You will also run into any number of theorists who say that the art of the car shows a bloody interior to the right.
- [36:37]
Noel Brown
You can't even see it.
- [36:38]
Ben Bowlin
Where is it? They're reading tea leaves, man.
- [36:41]
Noel Brown
Well, I don't see the car. I'm trying to look. I've got a pretty big blown up image of Sgt. Peppers. Where are you seeing it?
- [36:46]
Ben Bowlin
On the far, far right of the album cover, there's a doll, and the doll has a small car in its lap.
- [36:54]
Noel Brown
Oh, yeah.
- [36:56]
Ben Bowlin
Really? Yeah, you gotta zoom in.
- [36:58]
Noel Brown
Hold on. Zoom in. All right, well, carry on, Ben, while I try to find this.
- [37:02]
Ben Bowlin
To the right of the doll, there's a driving glove. Is it covered in blood? We gotta bust this myth real quick, Paul. Well, Paul McCartney did have an Aston Martin. It's a DB6. It's an amazing car. I love. You know, I still got my car stuff. DNA here. Aston Martin's are pretty cool, and The Aston Martin DB6 is pretty cool. The issue is Paul McCartney's Aston Martin DB6 was not white. It was green. And as our pal Jordan points out, the things that people are calling flames or blood are probably just red fabric from the doll's dress. But let's explore this album cover in more depth. Actually, let's get past the COVID Let's go to the gatefold slide.
- [38:07]
Noel Brown
That's right. In the gatefold sleeve, there's an image of Paul wearing a patch on his left arm that looks like it bears the initials opd, which supposedly, according to this theory, stands for Officially Pronounced Dead, which I believe is the British equivalent of DoA, which we would say here in the States. However, in reality, what it actually says is opp, which stands for Ontario Provincial Police, which is also interesting considering that the supposed Paul doppelganger is from Canada. That's not mentioned here, but I just thought I'd bring that up. McCartney actually talked about this in a 1969 article for Life magazine written by John Neary, referring to all of this hullabaloo, by the way, which we're gonna start to hear the Beatles themselves weighing in on, saying, it is all bloody stupid. I picked up the OPD badge. In Canada, it was a police badge.
- [39:03]
Ben Bowlin
And the conspiracy continues. If you check out the back cover of the album, you will see that Paul, or as our research associate Jordan likes to call him, Fall, is the only beetle with his back to the camera. This apparently symbolizes how Paul has turned his back on life.
- [39:28]
Noel Brown
It's a bit of a stretch, yeah.
- [39:30]
Ben Bowlin
I mean, but also, if you're covering up a death. Are you really going to slide these things in? Is it really a case of like the Beatle, the remaining beatles silently protesting MI5?
- [39:47]
Noel Brown
That is the theory.
- [39:50]
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- [42:30]
Ben Bowlin
Again.
- [42:31]
Noel Brown
If we flip the album over, looking at the back cover, there are lyrics printed on the back cover as well, which was a first in rock and roll history. Apparently, right above Paul's head are the words without you from the title of George Harrison's song, Within you without yout, which was on, I believe, Rubber Sole Harrison can be seen pointing at the words from She's Leaving Home, which was, I think, on Revolver. No, within youn, without yout and She's Leaving Home. Or on Revolver. Wednesday morning at 5:00 as the day begins. Those are from that song. This is supposedly at the time of Paul's fatal accident. Five o'clock Wednesday morning.
- [43:09]
Ben Bowlin
All right. Yes, yes. November 9th or 9th November 1966 was a Wednesday. Thing is, our buddy Paul prime lived around the corner from Abbey Road. It's a eight minute walk, two minute drive if you've got a cool Aston Martin. So if this guy storms out of this recording session just a hair before midnight on the previous Tuesday, then what was he doing for five fricking hours? Why did he end up so far from home? Did he go to a club? Did he, you know, was he doing some like Three Card Monty on the streets? Did he meet a woman, try to take her back to her place somewhere outside of the London area?
- [44:00]
Noel Brown
Well, that was a theory that we didn't mention at the top, that supposedly he may, or he may have picked up a hitchhiker who could well have caused the accident by freaking the F out when she realized who was giving her a lift.
- [44:15]
Ben Bowlin
Right, right. The shades of Chappaquiddick. So the point is, the timeline doesn't quite add up and I want to give a quick shout out to a lot of people who are not from the UK who have gone viral with their disappointment over visiting Abbey Road. I don't know if you saw the news, Noel, but there are a ton of people, honestly, Americans, sorry, folks, who had these big dreams about visiting Abbey Road and they love the Beatles and they get really disappointed when they realize Abbey Road is literally just, it's a road.
- [45:00]
Noel Brown
Well, no, it's a studio.
- [45:02]
Ben Bowlin
Well, they go to Abbey Road, the Road, and they're disappointed to find that it's a road.
- [45:08]
Noel Brown
Well, then they're not doing their homework because the people that would actually be Beatles fans Would visit the studio and the famous crosswalk in front of the studio. Abbey Road, as a road I'm sure is long, like Peachtree Road here in Atlanta.
- [45:22]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah, I'm just. I'm exercising empathy for the people who saw the crossw. And it's just a crosswalk.
- [45:28]
Noel Brown
Well, yeah, I mean, sure, the Beatles aren't there anymore. This looks like a crosswalk in the. In the photography. I'm not sure what these people are expecting, but fair enough. Ben, I appreciate you exercising empathy for these folks, and I hope they didn't, you know, book their whole trip just to be disappointed by a crosswalk, so. Oh, by the way, I made a stupid. Speaking of not being a proper Beatles fan, whatever that means, Magical Mystery Tour totally comes after sergeant Pepper. So it is not proto sergeant Pepper. It is sergeant Pepper's proto Magical Mystery. In many ways, I actually like Magical Mystery better. But we're gonna get to that record momentarily. But first, let's talk about getting a little help from our friends. I sang the line at the very top of the show when we mentioned our pal from Canada, Billy Shears. That is the character that Ringo Starr is basically playing in the narrative that is Sgt. Pepper's Lonely. The loose narrative of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He is meant to be this singer named Billy Shears, and they introduce him. The track prior to With A Little Help from My Friends kind of ends with this big fanfarish introduction of Billy Shears. And then he sings, what would you think? You know, the one. So the idea being that this was very much a reference to William Billy Shears Campbell. But, you know, your mileage may vary.
- [46:57]
Ben Bowlin
As our research associate Jordan says, you can also look into. Okay, so the juicy thing with these kind of theories is always going to be the lyrics. If you go to a day in the life, there is, according to proponents of the Paul is Dead theory, an entire verse that recounts the moments of Paul Prime's crash when he blew his mind out in a car after he didn't notice that the lights had changed and that the crowd had gathered at the scene and had seen his face before. This is obviously followed by the line quote, nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords. And for people who are hearing what they want to hear, a little bit of Audio Paradelia, they will say it sounds as though John Lennon is saying, not House of Lords, but House of Paul, House of Pole.
- [48:01]
Noel Brown
I could hear that.
- [48:02]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah.
- [48:03]
Noel Brown
When you say it with a British accent like that.
- [48:05]
Ben Bowlin
Again, as Jordan notes, your interpretive mileage may vary. In fact, dare I say it, we all love an historical rabbit hole, a conspiratorial rabbit hole. Dare I say this kind of. Of reasoning can be its own sort of magical Mystery tour.
- [48:28]
Noel Brown
Sure, yeah. And that's where we are now, 1967, with the release of Magical Mystery Tour, which also has a pretty cool psychedelic album cover. Let's pull that one up. I can't even remember what it looks like. Let's see. Magical Mystery Tour. Oh, yeah, of course, it's got the Beatles dressed as walruses, kind of posing with their arms. We got. Well, I'm sorry, they're not all walruses. The walrus was Paul. One of them's a walrus in the front with his arms out. And then in the back we've got ourselves a chicken, a rabbit, and it looks to be a hippopotamus. And I don't remember, we've got George as the chicken, it seems, because that's the only one where you can actually see the face and I see a little mustache in the style of what George would have worn in those days. But I'm sure we can confirm who was who, because there's also a pretty incredible film of Magical Mystery Tour and it's like a music video for every song and. And that's what got me into the Beatles, was seeing that film, which is really neat and a lot of people don't know about it, but it's pretty cool. So I would highly recommend checking it out. But Magical Mystery Tour is Rainbow Letters, the top. We've got the names of all of the songs and continue at the bottom. I think we've got side one on the top, Magical Mystery Tour with Fool on the Hill, Flying Blue Jay Way, Your mother should know, I am the Walrus. And then side two, Hello, Goodbye, Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane. Some big ones on here too. Baby, you're a rich man and all you need is love. But somewhere hidden in there, the COVID of Magical Mystery Tour, which features the Beatles name spelled out in stars in the rainbow kind of font. You can apparently read it upside down or possibly in a mirror, and it reveals a telephone number. And supposedly, when dialed, or when a person dials this number on Wednesday morning at 5:00, the time of Paul's alleged crash, they are able to receive further secret information about Paul's death.
- [50:30]
Ben Bowlin
Oh, like what?
- [50:31]
Noel Brown
Well, the voice on the line would apparently say, you're getting closer before hanging up. So that's not really much information at all.
- [50:38]
Ben Bowlin
Right, right. Yeah, it reminds me of oh, that film A Christmas Story, where that poor kid put so much time into getting the decoder ring that just tells you spoiler to drink more Ovaltine. Jordan points out that there's a major flaw in this purported clue to the Paul is dead theory. There's an issue of Rolling Stone that publishes on 29 November 1969, and they point out it's not clear what this purported phone number is supposed to be. There's no telling what city this phone number number originates from. There's no area code, so there's no way of knowing. We want to give flowers, not yellow flowers, to the journalist Philip Norman. Philip Norman is the author of an early Beatles biography, Shout. And Norman finds that one of these phone numbers actually belonged to a journalist for none other than the Guardian. And this poor journalist got hammered with phone calls from Beatles fans who were convinced that Paul McCartney was dead. Folks, you are in media. Rest with us. We are down the rabbit hole, or the walrus hole, officially, which sounds a little bit dirty, but I'm going to keep it. Walrus hole. Amazing.
- [52:08]
Noel Brown
Yeah, it's pretty gross.
- [52:10]
Ben Bowlin
So I would say gross and amazing. We tease something that is like a common memento concept for any fan of the Paul is dead conspiracy. It is the lied I am the Walrus. Noel, before we wrap part one, could you break this down for us?
- [52:32]
Noel Brown
Well, I'm goo goo gachub. I am the walrus. See, I am the eggman as well. I am the walrus. Goo goo kachoo kachoo. I thought it was cuckoo kachoo for the longest time. I think I'm probably not alone in that, but it is indeed goo goo gajoob. The song I Am the Walrus alone could practically be an episode unto itself, because I mean so. And there are references to this in a later Beatles album as well. In the song Glass Onion on the White Album, the Walrus was Paul, but I Am the Walrus was a John Lennon composition. It is meant to be psychedelic, impressionistic, you know. Again, according to the conspiracy theorist depiction of McCartney's death, all the way down to a repeating two note pattern in the intro itself, much similar to a two to siren sound that you would hear from emergency vehicles in Britain at the time. And according to our Gary Patterson in his book, the Walrus was the great Beatle Death Clues. Paul suffered his fatal car crash after this fallout squabble with Ringo or potentially with some other bandmates who might have been in the mix and left the studio in a rage on a stupid Bloody Tuesday. Which is a line in I am the Walrus. The refrain I am crying is John apparently grieving Paul's passing. And then there are pretty little policemen waiting for the van to come, supposedly referring to the police who arrived at the scene of Paul's fatal crash, but were paid to Keep Silent by MI5. And, you know, with the Beatles being complicit. The remaining Beatles.
- [54:14]
Ben Bowlin
Yeah. And there are further notes or purported clues you can find in these lyrics, especially with some back masks masking, which we love on this show and on stuff they don't want you to know. The song ends with a live BBC broadcast of a scene from King Lear with characters saying, bury me, bury my body and oh, untimely death. Here's the quick skinny, here's the hot cheese and straight seahorse teeth. John Lennon taped that clip off the radio one night and he just dug the vibe of it, how it fit with the song. And so, as we understand, it's John's intention to put a bunch of nonsensical imagery into the lyrics to confuse fans who have traveled a bit too far. He had. John Lennon had a school friend named Pete Shotten who was a rapper as a firsthand witness when John Lennon was writing some of these lyrics. Pete Shotton goes on to craft a memoir. And according to his writing, when the song is finished, his buddy, his school chum, John Lennon, turns to him and says, let the work that one out. Thank you for beeping me, Max. We have so much more to get to. I believe this is going to be a series, Noel. We've got to go further.
- [55:52]
Noel Brown
We sure do. The clues hidden in the entire Beatles catalog of albums alone is gonna be two parts. And then we're going to get into more about the kind of Beatles as celebrities, as public figures acknowledging all of this stuff. Jordan is nothing if not thorough, to quote the Big Lebowski. And we really appreciate your work on the Jordan and we're looking forward to getting into all of them. Looks like it might be a three parter, possibly four. We'll see. But for now we're gonna take a break and come back with part two of the Paul is dead clues hidden in the Beatles albums later this week.
- [56:32]
Ben Bowlin
Big, big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams. Big thanks to our research associate, Jordan. Jordan, you know we're fan of your work. Jordan is a kick ass journalist and we really appreciate his time and expertise. Big thanks as well to, of course, AJ Bahamas Jacobs, AKA the Puzzler. Just wrote back to Bahamas and he's super down. If we can if we can get him in for one last job.
- [57:00]
Noel Brown
100%. Huge thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the quizzter AJ Bahamas, the puzzler Christopher Osciotes and he's Jeff Coates here in Spears it.
- [57:09]
Ben Bowlin
And of course where would we be without our own in house composer, the legendary Alex Williams who made this slap and bop indeed.
- [57:19]
Noel Brown
Very Beatles esque actually if you think about it. We'll see you next time folks for part two of the Beatles Paul is Dead conspiracy theories as hidden supposedly or not in the Beatles albums. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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