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- [00:00]
Ben Bolton
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man, the myth, the legend, our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
- [00:40]
Max Williams
Top. We were talking beforehand trying to figure out when it is and I had forgotten this. On April 20, 2025 will be four years I've been on ridiculous history. The first episode I edited, Dr. T.W. stallings, the One Man's Corvid Hating quest to make Oklahoma literally eat crow. It didn't. It cut off. I click into it.
- [01:05]
Noel Brown
But yeah, we love cor here. Well, we should have brought you some flowers or a cupcake or something. Congratulations.
- [01:12]
Ben Bolton
Cupcakes or like a basket of crows.
- [01:15]
Noel Brown
It could be. We could. I'm sure we could find a way to serve you a cupcake, Max. Surely there's a condition approved cupcake of some.
- [01:22]
Max Williams
There's actually muffins and stuff cupcakes there.
- [01:25]
Noel Brown
What is a muffin if not a healthy cupcake?
- [01:28]
Max Williams
Or what is a cupcake if it's not an unhealthy muffin or actually healthy for the soul muffin.
- [01:33]
Ben Bolton
Right, right. And again, you'll get your basket of crows once accounting approves. So, folks, we couldn't be more excited to join with you for our continuing exploration of Paul Is Dead, courtesy of our research associate, Jordan Noel. How you feeling?
- [01:55]
Noel Brown
Good, great. Jubilant. All you need is love, baby. Peace and love. Peace and love always. That's what Ringo says nowadays. He's all about peace and love. But back in the day, he knew how to throw some punches and potentially was responsible for Sir Paul McCartney running out of Abbey Road Studios and driving like a bat out of hell in his Aston Martin, which led to his untimely demise, at which point a plot was cracked or hatched by MI5, the British secret Service and the Beatles themselves being complicit in covering up Paul's death and replacing him with a Canadian doppelganger by the name of Billy Shears. And then later they regretted it and decided it was only fair, since they couldn't come out and speak about it openly, to just sprinkle in some little tidbits that fans could decode to let them know that Paul was dead. I don't understand. To what end, but you know, it's a fun story, that's for sure. And we're entering part two of it in terms of the albums and said clues sprinkled therein.
- [02:57]
Ben Bolton
That's an excellent recap by none other than Mr. Noel Brown. They call me Ben Bolton. This is part two of Paul is Dead which folks spoiler may well be a three part series because we've got so much stuff to get to off air. We were hobnobbing a bit and Noel, you brought up a great point that maybe we should go album by album at Juncture.
- [03:30]
Jordan Noel
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- [04:00]
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- [04:59]
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- [05:01]
Noel Brown
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- [05:02]
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- [05:05]
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Noel Brown
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Jordan Noel
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- [05:50]
Ben Bolton
Paul Prime According to the Tale Dies is decapitated in a car accident in 1966. Let's go to the White Album. When was that? 1968. Right. So now Billy Shears is already Paul Prime's body double.
- [06:09]
Noel Brown
But before we do that, Ben, there was one really cool tidbit that we referenced and I think is worth mentioning for the song Strawberry Fields Forever, one of the Beatles most famous jams. Lovely little mellotron flutes there at the beginning we talked about the idea that John Lennon, in his grief, was somehow responsible for burying Paul McCartney, Paul Pryme's mangled corpse in a shallow unmarked grave in Strawberry Fields, Salvation army park there in Liverpool. And supposedly there are tons of little hints to this occurrence, buried, unintended, intended, whatever. In the song Strawberry Fields Forever, there's a giant Son of Music sound collage fade out at the end where you can hear John saying, what Sounds like I buried Paul, Though it has been determined that he was actually saying cranberry sauce. But you know, let me hear what you want to hear, like you said. And it's a little bit more apparent on an outtake version of the song that you can find on the Beatles Anthology, which is pretty cool. Paul later explained that's John's humor. John would say something totally out of sync like cranberry sauce. If you've seen the Let It Be recording documentary multi part series that came out on Disney that Peter Jackson put together, you can really see John Lennon's wry wit on full display where he's always changing the lyrics to songs and making little goofs. So Paul characterized it as saying, if you don't realize that John's apt to say something like cranberry sauce when he feels like it, then you start to hear a little funny word there and you think, aha. As another example, during a day in the life, you can hear him saying Sugar Plum Fairy. Sugar Plum Fairy. But Ben, you teed up the White Album, which is. It's hard to pick a favorite. It's like stars in the sky. But the White Album is when you start hearing the Beatles kind of beginning to go their separate ways. And they have kind of each of their own personalities represented much more fully on this album, where you really start to hear each of them kind of have their own songs. Glass Onion is an incredible song.
- [08:17]
Ben Bolton
Ooh, wait, can we spend a second here on that pronunciation? Because I think it's important what you're saying. Cranberry sauce. Iberry Paul. It's like House of Lords, house of Paul. 100%, yeah. You know, I also have to point out, with respect to our research, Associate Jordan Runtoch, that if this theory is true, it is not Paul prime later explaining this. It is Billy Shears.
- [08:48]
Noel Brown
That's right, Billy Shears. Yeah, yeah. AKA Paul Fall. Right. Faux Paul. Yeah. So let's jump right into the White Album with the song Glass on you.
- [08:58]
Ben Bolton
Yeah, it's all about this pivotal line. Here's another clue for you all. The walrus was Paul. And for proponents of the Paul is dead theory, the guy who replaces Paul prime is seen wearing a walrus costume on the COVID of Magical Mystery Tour a year earlier in 1967. So if you ask armchair folklorist and speculators, they will tell you that the walrus is a mythical symbol of death in certain cultures. Issue is, nobody really seems to be able to agree on which cultures find a walrus as a symbol of death.
- [09:51]
Noel Brown
I've never really heard that one. Certainly not on the tarot card or anything. I've never really thought of the walrus as being a harbinger of death. I think it's also important to mention we're going to get more into this, I think, in part three. But at this point, the discourse around Paul is dead is heavy in the press, and they're getting asked about it a lot, and they are absolutely fed up with it. So they're honestly at a certain point starting to play into it for their own amusement and also as a little middle finger to all the folks that they perceive as being dumb dumbs asking about this stuff and the press bugging them about it. So him saying, and here's another clue for you all. He says it with some stank on it in the song Very kind of almost sneeringly, the walrus was Paul. So it's definitely John Lennon's very punk kind of snotty sensibility coming out in his delivery of that line.
- [10:44]
Ben Bolton
Yeah. And we can dissect this a little bit. If you go to the Michigan Daily Shout out to Michigan by Fred labor, you'll see a claim that walrus is the Greek word for corpse. Sorry, Fred, that is not true. Diplomatically put. You could see the Chicago Sun Times noting that the walrus is the Viking symbol of death. You can see the Washington Post speculating that it's a symbol of death for modern indigenous communities. They used a word we're not going to use. And we see a lot of people sort of passing around this idea of walrus as a symbol of mortality. And the. As you dive into it, what you'll find is there's really no supporting evidence. People were looking for Connections that may not actually exist. But I love that you're bringing up Glass Onion because, you know, it's up to interpretation. Perhaps a glass onion refers to the glass topped coffins of yesteryear that allow mourners to look inside. It's a whole bag of badgers. It's a pickle.
- [12:11]
Noel Brown
Yeah. And the song, I mean as a whole is John Lennon just striking out against the whole Paul is dead thing. So if you want to read it as more clues, you're kind of missing the point of what the song is about in the first place. There's references to tons. It's very self referential. I told you about Strawberry Fields. You know, the place where nothing is real. Well, here's another place you can go like straight to hell where everything flows like lava, you know, he's talking to the press, looking through the bent back tulips to see how the other half lives. Looking through a glass onion. It's just about seeing what you want to see. Let's say he says, I told you about the fool on the hill. I tell you, man, he's living there still. Well, here's another place you can be. Listen to me. I mean, it's the whole point of the song Glass Onion is John Lennon saying, you guys are barking up the wrong onion here.
- [13:07]
Ben Bolton
Yeah, yeah. You're crossing the wrong Abbey Road. And if we were to summarize perhaps the metacognitive state of John Lennon at this point, we would have to go to I'm so Tired. At the very end of I'm so Tired you can hear Lenin doing some proper backmasking, which we are huge fans of. If you play this apparently ostensibly incoherent mumbling at the end of the song from Lennon, then you will hear the line, Paul is a dead man. Miss him, Miss him. Supposedly.
- [13:50]
Noel Brown
Yeah. And we referenced this in our live show with Stuff They Don't Want yout know, that we did in Brooklyn as part of On Airfest recently, which is actually gonna come out as an episode in the Stuff They Don't Want yout To Know. Feed soon the lovely Justin Richmond from Broken Record on the live show as a guest. And we talked about these different messages and had a little game where we played things backwards and tried to figure out what they were supposed to be saying and then sort of like, you know, played them forwards and talked a little bit about the history behind each of those examples. And the Paul is dead man. Miss him? Miss him is one of the ones that we reference. And that's really where in many ways, the whole kind of Paul is dead as a concept, that is what is being referenced is that very, very clip so much like cranberry sauce in Strawberry Fields. It's just an example of him just kind of riffing and speaking kind of random gibberish. He was a huge fan of the incredible character actor and artist Peter Sellers and a show that I'm not familiar with. He apparently had a radio career in kind of satire and had a show called the Goon show, which is a surrealist radio series that would do things like that, like make up kind of, you know, nonsense language, which I'm a fan of. And I got to check out the Goon Show. I don't know.
- [15:06]
Max Williams
It.
- [15:07]
Ben Bolton
Goon meant a very different thing back then to Goon Revolution.
- [15:12]
Noel Brown
Yeah, yeah. The Goon Squad is something very, very different today. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
- [15:17]
Ben Bolton
Shout out to Leonard Peltier in that regard. Let's talk about Revolution Number nine. Would you describe that as a sound collage?
- [15:28]
Noel Brown
Yeah. It's again, like, I used the term music concrete, which refers to a style of tape, magnetic tape manipulation that was sort of spearheaded and developed in France around the same, I think, era as, like, Dadaism was starting to become very popular in art, in the art world. And it is a way of taking a medium and using it incorrectly, more or less. I mean, that term is sort of relative, I guess. But, you know, you're taking pieces of tape, splicing them together, recording bits of stuff off the radio, like John did in I Am the Walrus with that King Lear bit. And Revolution no. 9 is them taking this to kind of a further extreme. It is a sound collage with lots of backwards voices and different clips. Sounds like something you might hear on a Pink Floyd record as well. Very, very psychedelic bits of chatter. Things like the. A voice saying his voice was low and his eyes were high and his eyes were closed. Paul died. My fingers are broken and so is my hair. But a thing like that, like my fingers are broken and so is my hair, is a perfect example of kind of da da nonsense. You know, there's a wonderful band out of Athens, Georgia, called the Olivia Tremor Control, which is an absolute nonsense phrase. And this is very similar to that.
- [16:49]
Ben Bolton
I think the. The thing that stands out the most to proponents of the Paul is dead theory is the number nine. Number nine refrain. It repeats at the beginning. And depending upon your ears, you may hear Turn me on, dead man. Turn me on, dead man. When it's played in reverse again, your interpretive mileage may Vary, Yeah, but a.
- [17:18]
Noel Brown
Big part of music concrete and this type of sampling, plunderphonic type of music creation, a lot of it's just about taking a sound object and manipulating it. And the intent. It usually isn't about intent. It's about like taking something that already exists and twisting it around. So number nine, postmodern literature. A million percent, Ben. Exactly right. But like number nine. Number nine. That's what the guy's saying. It's very clear. So, yeah, okay, when you flip it backwards, it maybe sounds a little bit like, you know, turn me on Deadman. Turn me on Deadman. But clearly the source material was number nine. And I don't know who is saying that. I don't know the history of that part or if that's something they grabbed off of radio broadcast or what. But I think they were just fascinated by the cadence of it and the sound of it to the point where they made that the name of the song. And Revolution, of course, is a song in and of itself. You say you want a revolution, so this is like almost like a weird artsy remix of that in concept. But I don't know that there are any bits of actual. The actual song revolution in Revolution Number nine. It's just them being pretty da da, which I think is awesome.
- [18:29]
Ben Bolton
And again, we're seeing that at this point when Revolution number nine hits the airwaves, people are already primed to think that Paul is dead. So they're actively looking for stuff that confirms that pattern.
- [18:47]
Unknown
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- [19:48]
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- [20:59]
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- [21:01]
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- [21:12]
Ben Bolton
So now we're returning to something we talked about in our first episode in this series, Abbey Road. It is a road.
- [21:23]
Noel Brown
The studio.
- [21:24]
Ben Bolton
Cross work.
- [21:25]
Noel Brown
The records. Yeah. The ride.
- [21:28]
Ben Bolton
Yes, yes, yes. The experience. Abby rode the album, not to be confused with the studio, nor with the crosswalk, nor with the street, nor with the Ride. It comes out in 1969 and this delivers arguably the most well known clue in the conspiracy or folklore that Paul McCartney died in 1966. Is it depicting a funeral?
- [22:01]
Noel Brown
It's a good question. I mean, there's a whole thing about him having shoes off. We'll get to. Let's just go through some of the other things. This idea of a funeral procession. John leading the procession as he is wearing white, all white like a priest. While Ringo follows behind as a pallbearer or an undertaker in all black. Paul Pallbearer, Yeah. Paul is the third in the procession would be the corpse in the order of operations. That is a funeral procession with his eyes closed and barefoot. Allegedly how they bury bodies in Italy or in India or England or. I don't know about that, guys. I think your results may vary there too. And literally out of step with the others. He is once again turning his back on life. He is not of this mortal plane. You Know, he's. He's two stepping in the afterlife.
- [22:57]
Ben Bolton
Yeah. And then, of course, we're all asking, where is George? George Harrison is right in Drogue. He's taken up the rear as the grave digger. If you. But if you look at outtakes of the photo session, because it was a photo session, there were multiple photos taken for the album. You'll see that in several. Our buddy Paul prime is wearing sandals. Or, excuse me, Billy Shears is wearing sandals. And word on the street is he ultimately got rid of the sandals because it was too hot outside. And whether you think this is Paul or fall, someone say they are. Paul McCartney spoke in a interview with Life magazine in 1969 and said. Said it is all bloody stupid. We were wearing our ordinary clothes. I was walking barefoot because it was a hot day. And what I love about this, Noel, is that we can tell with direct quotes from Paul McCartney post car crash, allegedly. We could tell that he is aware of this theory. And at first he's been kind of like a good sport, but he seems increasingly irritated with it. And you have to wonder, how would you feel if people kept coming up to you and telling you that you were a body double of yourself?
- [24:31]
Noel Brown
Yeah, it could probably get old. It'd probably be amusing for a hot second and then get real tiresome real quick. The photo series, by the way, was taken the day Charles Manson, he might have heard of him, ordered the deaths of Sharon Tate and her pals there at the. What was it? CF Yellow Drive mansion. And this is directly as a result of reading too much into Beatles lyrics. Specifically, the one that gets referenced a lot is the song Helter Skelter off the White Album. So much has been made of that outside of the Paul is dead stuff. So at this point, there is a lot being made of the idea that this is early example of outrage surrounding the idea of supposed backmasking or satanic messages hidden in popular music. So at this point, the Beatles are damn aware of this, outside of just the Paul is dead thing, and are probably pretty. Pretty on edge about potentially being associated with stuff like that. So if there was any clever trickery going on, they probably abandoned it for Abbey Road. Let's just put that out there right now.
- [25:44]
Ben Bolton
Yeah, they probably stepped it back. You can also see Paul McCartney smoking a cigarette that got a lot of attention, partially because cigarettes are associated with mortality, but also because he's smoking with his right hand. So for people who thought Paul prime had been replaced, this was an indication that the purported Paul was a fake and this doesn't even get us to the Volkswagen Beetle. It's in the background of that Abbey Road crosswalk that has disappointed so many tourists when they find out it's just a crosswalk on a road. This Beetle B E E T L E has a license plate. The license plate reads 28 if. So people are going to tell you that 28 if means Paul McCartney would have been 28 years old at the time if he lived. That's factually inaccurate. He would have been 27. It just goes on. People will see the letters LMW and say that means Linda McCartney weeps. But honestly, Noel, this is. That's a little far from. You know what I mean?
- [27:12]
Noel Brown
Yeah, for sure. Farther even than some of the other more slightly plausible ones. And again, you know, with the Manson stuff and all of the hullabaloo and the press feeding frenzy surrounding that, pretty sure they were not going out of their way to hide anything. And whether it be the album cover or beyond, and to Paul's point about the COVID of Abbey Road, they were all wearing their clothes despite it looking like maybe there was wardrobe for this I can confirm. And anyone that maybe has seen Get Back, not Let it be Get Back. That's what the documentary is called. This is kind of how they dressed. Yeah, John Lennon, around this time, he wore these very lavish flashy white suits with, you know, platformy type shoes all the time. He's a super fashionable guy. And George wore like bell bottoms and like denim and stuff. I mean, this I. It absolutely tracks that. They just turned up in their street clothes. And this is the photo they got.
- [28:09]
Ben Bolton
And speaking of turning things up, let's turn up the rumors a little bit. Let's travel in time back to 1967. In January of 1967, we see that reports of Paul McCartney's death date back years before the idea that Paul is dead became a phenomenon. There was this rumor he had been killed in a car crash on January 7, 1967. This time, not an Aston Martin, a Mini Cooper involved in a car accident on the M1 motorway or highway.
- [28:51]
Noel Brown
Yeah, he was just leaving the Italian Job and it was driving a little too fast to making his getaway.
- [28:56]
Ben Bolton
Yeah, yeah. Thing is, Paul Pry was not actually in the car. It was instead being driven by a guy named Mohammad Hadija, a Moroccan student, an employee of a guy named Robert Frazier, who's an art dealer in London at the time. Robert Fraser is a close friend of Paul McCartney's. You know, Noel, we've talked about it in the past off air Paul McCartney has always been a champion of the arts.
- [29:27]
Noel Brown
Right. And we talked about it recently on the Apple vs Apple computers vs Apple records episode about how Paul came up with the whole idea of the Apple imagery surrounding that record label and that brand from a Rene Magritte painting, as we know, the famous one with the apple kind of floating in space.
- [29:47]
Ben Bolton
And to bust the. Again, to bust the boorish tendency of only picking between the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, that's still something that grinds my gears. Check this out. Ridiculous. Historians Mohammed M. Pol and co. Are all heading to a party at Mick Jagger's house. So they do hang out. Yes. So they're not really enemies. What we can assume here is that somebody in the aggressive, pretty brutal British tabloid press did a license plate check and the story spread around the world that Paul McCartney was either injured or dead. These rumors were so pervasive. And let's keep in mind this is pre Internet. They're so ubiquitous that the band itself, the Beatles, go to their official fan magazine because of course, they have Beatles Monthly and they print a denial. We do know that Paul did have some car problems at some point.
- [31:01]
Noel Brown
Right. But the closest Paul ever came to a full scale, you know, motor crash wipeout was In December of 1965, when he was riding his moped late one night while visiting Liverpool, their hometown, for Christmas.
- [31:18]
Ben Bolton
And he's described as refreshed.
- [31:20]
Noel Brown
Yeah, as in he's had some adult beverages, some refreshments, as they say.
- [31:25]
Ben Bolton
He got nogged on some eggs.
- [31:27]
Noel Brown
I think that's probably true. And he flipped himself straight over the handlebars and landed right on his face and chipped a tooth in the process. And he was seen by a doctor who sewed him up. And this incident actually inspired a line about a drunken doctor in the song Rocky Raccoon, which is another personal favorite. Really fun song.
- [31:48]
Ben Bolton
Yeah. I always thought that the interesting thing about the Lennon McCartney partnership is that Lennon is a beast at lyrics and Paul is a beast at instrumentation and composition.
- [32:05]
Noel Brown
Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I'm a big fan of both of their lyrics. But you're right. John is definitely more of a rocker and a little bit more known for his sardonic wordplay. And Paul is definitely thought of as being more of the studio wizards and the kind of, you know, arranger of the two. Two of them. I agree with you completely.
- [32:23]
Ben Bolton
So, Noel, could you take us to the first known printed reference to this theory that Paul McCartney is dead?
- [32:33]
Noel Brown
Sure thing. It appeared in the September 17, 1969 issue of the Times Delphic, which was a student newspaper at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, of all places.
- [32:44]
Ben Bolton
Okay, so not the UK.
- [32:46]
Noel Brown
No, no. A 19 year old eagle eyed eared fan, Tim Harper, wrote an article with the headline is Beatle Paul McCartney de wherein he details the quote, distinct possibility that McCartney may indeed be insane, freaked out or even dead. Examining a lot of the clues and album arts lyrics that we have mentioned. He though, I'm sorry I took him as a fan. But he says here he didn't own a Beatles record. And he talked with others about the known rumor, which has already been making, I guess, guess it's rounds in certain beatnik kind of hipster circles. Very interesting. But he decided to kind of make a little bit of an oral account of a lot of these things that were already kind of known in the scene.
- [33:34]
Ben Bolton
Yeah, he is clearly a student writing to a deadline. And he gets word of this from his editor. And I love this name, D'Artagnan Brown. Are you guys related?
- [33:47]
Noel Brown
I wish. I want to change my name though. That's a sick name.
- [33:50]
Ben Bolton
So D'Artagnan Brown, the editor of the Times Delphic says, all right, I've heard these rumors. He's talking to Tim Harper, he says, Tim buddy, I've heard these rumors throughout the underground, the counterculture crying of Lot 49, kind of underground. I went to California and people are saying that Paul McCartney is dead and has been replaced by, you know, some kind of Canadian. Some kind of Canadian, that's a good name for something.
- [34:25]
Noel Brown
Of course.
- [34:26]
Ben Bolton
So, all right, the story goes pre Internet viral and Tim Harper comes out very quickly after the story takes off and he says, look, I'm satirical. I'm a student writing for fun. This so called expose is for, you know, shuffles and giggles. He specifically says it was just a joke. I was the first one to put it all together. And he's talking to the Chicago Sun Times when he says this In October of 1969, he says, I knew when I wrote this story that it wasn't true, but I think the horse left the barn at that point.
- [35:10]
Noel Brown
Well, for sure. And like I was saying, it really is just sort of an oral account, you know, of all of these different sort of pieces of hippie folklore that had been making the rounds during a time when, because of the debacle of the Vietnam War and just wide rife discontentment and distrust of the government that folks were a lot more willing to believe in these types of conspiracy theories than maybe in generations past.
- [35:43]
Ben Bolton
Yeah, and imagine you are this Kid, you are Tim Harper. You write something that is essentially an Onion article, you know, and now Glass Onion article. Yeah, there we go. And now the press is picking this up. Broadcast radio is picking this up. He goes from LA to Chicago, speaking on a baker's dozen of radio stations for 10 bucks. A balancing work, family and education isn't easy. But American Public University makes it possible.
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Noel Brown
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Ben Bolton
By the end of September. There are tabloids in the UK that that pick up the story. Ultimately, Tim Harper, who has always been honest about the satirical nature of his original article. Ultimately, Tim Harper says there was, to your point, Noel, a convergence, a nexus of factors in the culture that helped this rumor spread and empowered it. Because of Vietnam, because the common American member of the public was recognizing the threat of people in power. The establishment people were cynical, they were disillusioned, they were ready, willing and able to believe in, quote, unquote, alternative facts.
- [39:31]
Noel Brown
Correct. The Warren Commission, of course, creating what has historically been referred to as a credibility gap.
- [39:39]
Ben Bolton
Because we see right now, in this milieu, we see that there are genuine conspiracies being uncovered by the public. We know COINTELPRO is real. We know that the US government is conspiring to do all sorts of shenanigans. We know that the British government and other European governments are doing the same. So if you're the average person hearing the radio, is it too crazy, is it too crazy to think that just maybe Paul McCartney might be dead?
- [40:14]
Noel Brown
No. No, it's not. Although, you know, in retrospect, pretty ridiculous. Hey, that's why we're here, folks. But no, at the time there was. I don't. Okay, let me walk that back. That's why I'm confused. Because the Beatles represent everything that is in opposition to the establishment. Though they had gotten so, so popular and successful that maybe there was a certain souring to them that maybe would yield a little distrust or treat them as a corporate entity. I don't know. I wasn't there. But I am curious as to how that same conspiracy conspiratorial thinking would apply to your favorite counterculture band. Cause the assumption there would be that the Beat were in on this. And I just find that interesting and a little bit antithetical to the idea of them being these kind of rebel rousers that, to the point we made earlier, I think in the last episode, were often targeted by the government. John Lennon, of course, himself was assassinated and was treated as a political personality because of his ability to speak truth to power. So that part of it confuses me a little bit.
- [41:30]
Ben Bolton
Bit, yeah, same. And going to the radio aspect of this, the mass communication, we know that the. I wouldn't quite call it hysteria, but the purported credibility of the Paul is dead theory blossoms. On 12 October 1969, an anonymous individual calls into the radio show on Detroit's wknr. It's a radio show hosted the legendary Russ Gibb. And this anonymous individual is over the moon to tell Russ that he is very upset over rumors that Paul McCartney has died and has been further replaced by an imposter. Our buddy Russ Gibb. Let's just be honest, he has no clue who this guy is. He has no clue what the guy is talking about. And so he keeps them on the line because it's great radio. And he's saying, all right, well, tell me more of these clues. And this person, whomever they may be, introduces the American public to some of the clues that we explored in part one of this series as well as the beginning of this show.
- [42:54]
Noel Brown
Right. He has him spin the records backwards live on air, which is compelling because it's dude who is kind of a square bit of one who's not familiar with this stuff, sort of in real time being like, huh, well, that's weird.
- [43:10]
Ben Bolton
Yeah, just so I love that description, you know, and we're experiencing great radio because we're learning with Russ Gibb in real time. The phone lines at WKNR go absolutely off the hook. We're talking pandemonium. Gibb later speaks with Billboard in 2019 and he says the whole thing just exploded. The phones were ringing off the hook. People were calling with their own clues. It was nonstop. So now we see a feedback loop. The conspiracy is feeding itself.
- [43:49]
Noel Brown
Yeah, the call's coming from inside the house. As you like to say, Ben, it's true. Is an absolute self fulfilling prophecy. Anura Burroughs of the snake eating its own tail. And this really was kind of the moment where these theories and this kind of concept of Paul is dead began to go wide. And I think this is with that in mind, a good place to pause for this episode. And we're gonna pick it back up with the last part in this three part series on Paul is dead. The rumors surrounding the untimely demise and cover up of. Of beetle Paul McCartney.
- [44:28]
Ben Bolton
That's right, folks. We are doing an on purpose three partner. Yeah, look at us. Someone call our families, tell them we have real jobs, we're okay.
- [44:42]
Noel Brown
Tell them we're okay first.
- [44:44]
Ben Bolton
And before we go, you know our own super producer, Mr. Max Williams, who we shout out at the beginning and end of the show, has something close to his heart to share. Apparently related to the Beatles. Max.
- [45:01]
Noel Brown
Close to his lonely heart.
- [45:02]
Ben Bolton
Yeah. Max, are you Paul McCartney?
- [45:05]
Max Williams
Actually, funny enough, I am too a southpaw and I played bass. So the like second bass I ever got, or I used to play bass, I don't play much anymore, but second bass I ever got back in middle school was a violin bass style. It was modeled off of the bass that Paul McCartney very much liked.
- [45:23]
Ben Bolton
So, all right, that's Enough proof for us, man.
- [45:25]
Max Williams
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that was actually, actually very much a thing. And you know, especially back then when access to musical equipment was sometimes pretty hard, you really got like two choices of left hand basses that like, you know, you would open in the magazine, you'd flip through and stuff like that. Now you can get great instruments from, you know, places like Sweetwater, which I'm. They're not paying us to do this. I am just dropping that name in there. Speak so highly of them.
- [45:50]
Ben Bolton
They do give us candy whenever we get everybody candy. That's true.
- [45:54]
Noel Brown
It's their thing. They're a bunch of sweeties. We talking about the Huffner style base? Is that what you're talking about, Matt?
- [46:00]
Max Williams
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just one last sweet water loving thing, that all of our equipment is provided by Sweetwater. And they're not paying us to say this, they're saying, I'm a fan.
- [46:09]
Ben Bolton
But they do give us candy. You've got a story from the Williams dynasty. We also, while we're doing this, we want to shout out your biological brother, Alex Williams, who is the composer for this show. But Max, what's on your mind? What's been sitting with you?
- [46:26]
Max Williams
So in the Williams dynasty, I've, I've taken this call.
- [46:29]
Ben Bolton
There we go.
- [46:30]
Max Williams
I like that way. One of you know, we, we all like our hobbies and we, our hobbies are changes, changing stuff. In the last like two or three years, my mother has gotten really into a lot of Beatles stuff. She's been a Beatles fan for a very long time and you know, now one of the things she does is she's trying to get lack of better words as much Beatles stuff. Well, there's still time. You know, there's two of them alive still in their, in their 80s. But so like one thing she did last year, maybe two years ago now, she saw Ringo and, and his band when it came to Atlanta. And what I love though is I've gone to the age where I can kind of hit my dad with some good logic. Papa Williams is definitely a. He's a very pragmatic person, especially when to fiscal ideas. And I don't want to say how expensive going to see Ringo Starr's touring band at the Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta was. But it was a lot. And I kind of just looked at him and said, yeah, but when's, when's the next time you can see this, right? And he's like, that's good, that's good logic. And you know, I've told you Guys, I. I like to travel and see shows and stuff like that. I think it's a very rewarding thing to do. I just truly do love it. But. And that's the transition was my mother discovered they had a Beatles themed Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. Of course, love, but not only did they have it, but that it was ending very soon, like a month before she noticed it. And she was trying to convince my dad, her husband, to let's take some time off and go. And obviously the tickets to go see Ringo Starr, very expensive. Fly to Las Vegas and see Cirque du Soleil with like a month's notice. Incredibly expensive. And I kind of. Him and I were just talking about it. I kind of said it to him. It's just like, I mean, the Beals aren't getting any younger. Neither are y'all. It's just like this seems like a thing where if you want to see this thing, this is going to be the only time I'm like, I'm not trying to say you have to do it, but if this is what you guys want to do, you're not, not going to get another chance. And so I'm a big believer that the reason why we have money is we use money to pursue the things that we love and we find interesting. And long story short, they went, oh, good.
- [48:48]
Noel Brown
Yeah, I didn't make it. I didn't make it. I was there. I even stayed at the hotel where the thing was happening and I just didn't end up getting to go for a couple of various reasons. And now I think it's done. But I remember when that first hit. I'm a huge Cirque fan. The soundtrack is a really neat artifact for Beatles fans in and of itself because it was actually remixed and remastered from original Beatles recordings by George Martin, their producer's son, whose name is escaping me. But it's like kind of a mashup of a lot of different Beatles music, but it's like from the original tapes and by. And with oversight from George Martin himself and his son Niles. I wanna say Giles, perhaps. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but it's a really cool record. You can still buy that. And it's a fun listen on its own. The love of soundtrack and.
- [49:36]
Max Williams
Yeah. And just to wrap this up, one of my favorite parts of this story is, you know, obviously my mom had an amazing time, but you know who also had an amazing time? My dad. So I don't know, I. It's one of these things that, like, you know, I know how much my mom loves the be, so I wanted to just sneak this into one of these episodes I'm having. So I hope everyone enjoyed this little story time.
- [49:56]
Ben Bolton
I think we all did. And thank you for sharing, Max. I'm getting some pretty intense deja vu. You know, look, as we have alluded to in the past, my name is not always Ben. Depending on where we're at, Greg is the Vegas Persona and like Noel did not get the opportunity to see this performance. So it's awesome that the Williams dynasty made it over. We want to thank you, super producer, Mr. Max Williams, your brother Alex Williams, who composed this slack. We also want to thank Ringo and Sir Paul McCartney for tuning into the show. And you know what? We don't reference it often because we've made our piece, but Sir McCartney, thanks for sorting out that Sheryl Crow stuff for us. We owe you one, man.
- [50:52]
Noel Brown
Yeah, yeah, he's a good guy, that Paul. Or whatever. Paul Fall. Faux Paul.
- [50:57]
Ben Bolton
Oh, right, right, right.
- [50:58]
Noel Brown
Depending, you know, whatever, whatever.
- [50:59]
Ben Bolton
Paul Prime Fall. Whomever you may be, thank you for supporting our show. Thanks also to AJ Bahamas Jacobs. I can't believe that guy is so cool.
- [51:11]
Noel Brown
Yep, he's a good dude for sure. And also to Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzter, who is less of a good dude when he's in that Persona, but a real good dude when he's just regular old Jonathan Strickland.
- [51:19]
Ben Bolton
He's fine. Eight out of ten.
- [51:21]
Noel Brown
Thanks to you, Ben. This has been great. Really excited to come back and talk a bit more in our final installment of this series about the Beatles themselves. We hinted at that all along the way, and they did not hold back.
- [51:31]
Ben Bolton
And you have to ask yourself at this point, ridiculous historians, will it actually be us or will we be replaced? Dun dun dun.
- [51:42]
Noel Brown
I'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Unknown
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