My twin sister Jean and I caught up with the “Paul is Dead” phenomenon when it was picked up by WKBW in Buffalo, NY. The rumor got traction when Roby Yonge on WABC (about which there is more here) in NYC got himself fired for promoting the idea that Paul McCartney had been killed.
The audio player below has an aircheck of Yonge from October 21, 1969. Part 1 starts with his first mention of the speculation that Paul McCartney was dead, and part 2 ends with the moment he was replaced on the air by Les Marchak.
Yonge, working the overnight shift, was fired for breaking format, as it’s called in the radio biz. But ‘KBW followed ABC’s lead by running with the story, presenting every single alleged clue, in a heavily-promoted special presentation. I didn’t believe it, but I learned a valuable lesson about how easily people can be misled into believing something that is completely untrue when conjecture is presented as fact.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/pauldead.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/pauldead2.mp3]One of the clues was the infamous “turn me on dead man” that was heard when “Revolution 9” was played backwards. Here is the first minute of the track, presented backwards, followed by the opening seconds with George Martin and Apple Corps publicist Derek Taylor apparently having a disagreement.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/Revolution9.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/GeorgeMartin.mp3]
Oh, and Boss! Our local AM station still does its programming live in the morning — WIEZ out of Lewistown. Actually, it’s both AM and FM (WMRF) running at the same time, with the two disc jockeys running back and forth between rooms. I had to go there to deliver something for Molly’s school and actually watched them in action once. The only hateful thing about these stations (some of the nicest folks around) is the three endless hours of Rush Limbaugh from noon till three. We can’t get too many stations in here because we’re smack-dab in the middle of a valley between two very long mountain ranges.
One of the Boston TV networks had the HOKIEST “courtroom-style” shows debating the topic. Maybe it was Channel 56; I can’t remember. We even lowered ourselves down to their level and watched THAT. We groaned through the whole thing!
Of course I remember this. I even remember the two of you making a point of sitting down to listen to the follow up show about the whole thing. I think I sat there with you for most of it, because you both seemed so excited about it. Oddly enough, my memory places this event in the livingroom in Norwalk, but that can’t be right because we had just moved to Acton a month before! So yes, fickle memory can play tricks on all of us from time to time.
I didn’t have time to listen to all of the radio show sequences, but I’m amazed by some stark contrasts with radio today:
(1) A LIVE DJ who’s doing his own programming in real time
(2) On AM no less! Of course this was before FM became big.
(3) The nature of the evidence is so incredibly flimsy and such a stretch, it could only have been cobbled together by adolescents with an obsession and too much time on their hands–as indeed it was. It was the (supposed) adult who gave it traction, as you point out. I suspect the college kids who put this whole theory together were looking for an explanation that they could live with for why the Beatles weren’t touring any longer, when they’d never gotten a chance to see them in concert.
(4) Also, only adolescents could have believed that the Beatles, of all ridiculously busy people, could have taken the time to lay such an elaborate trail of clues through so many albums–including the cooperation and duplicity of their cover artists. Especially if Paul really had been dead! The Beatles would have needed some serious stand-in musicians who would also have been involved in the cover up.
Ah well. Innocent times! And time now to get ready for work. (I was trying to check my email via webmail, but the server was down so I stopped by here instead.)
D’oh! That’s right! I always get that bass-ackwards. I keep thiinking somebody thought it was “Cranberry Sauce,” but then John said it was “I’m very bored.” The Queen of Trivia’s crown is slipping!
As is revealed in the session tapes from “Strawberry Fields,” what was interpreted as “I buried Paul” was in face what John always claimed it was — “Cranberry Sauce”!
I honestly think that the “weirdness” of the whole “Paul is dead” conspiracy theory thing really caught my imagination in the same way UFOs and aliens still do today. Do I believe any of it? NAH! Not for a second, but it’s a lot of fun to think, “What if? Of course, we all know now that “I buried Paul,” was really, “I’m very bored.” “Turn me on dead man” Is “number nine” in reverse. I mean, deadman, rebmun? see what I mean? And don’t forget John singing “Well here’s another clue for you all: the Walrus was Paul!” on “Glass Onion!”