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Paul Is Dead (Sixties Hoax)

For my sins I'm still a semi-regular player of first person shooter/grind-fest Destiny. For some reason, while pissing all that Activision money up the wall, Bungie hired Paul/Faul to write a theme song for Destiny.

So fundamentally rubbish it was that it got relegated to only ever being played if you chose to view the credits for the game.

That said, every once in a while as I'm roaming around The Tower social space somebody activates the shuffle play option on the jukebox and the horror of of that tune makes me wish (urban legend or not) the Paul really was dead.

UPDATE: Since Destiny was replaced with Destiny 2 the original Tower social space was blown up and replaced. As a tiny easter egg, as you tried to escape its burning remains, the horror of McCartney's theme can briefly be heard if you stand in the right place.
 
Well, I had to come back and drag all this up again. This is probably a bit sad but I've spent (some of) the last two years taking a serious look at all the evidence for Paul McCartney having been replaced, whether or not he's alive and it looks like there are at least two doubles out there. If you look at his face in 1966 and compare it with photos taken even a year or two later the two men look nothing alike. Bone structure and natural hair parting can't alter spontaneously. Even allowing for shoe height, trouser styles and so on his height and leg length are longer in proportion to the trunk. His ears have attached lobes on some photos, unattached on others. The angle of the nose to the forehead varies, too and this is still almost impossible to do well with plastic surgery. His eyes change colour. One some candid shots on the beach he has six toes then on others, five on one foot.

Young men in the 60's didn't go for nips and tucks like they do now and no one grows in heigt after the age of 24! The whole thing sounds crazy but Italian forensic specialists who wanted to DISPROVE the conspiracy actually found that there is only a 65 - 70% possibility that Paul post 1966 is the original guy. I think he had a twin. Early photos show him sitting next to an almost identical baby sibling NOT Mike McGear who is supposed to be 18 months younger and looks nothing like him.

Something DID happen and I suspect it wasn't pretty.
 
paulfive years.jpg
Barely five years between these head shots.
 
I have always thought of this conspiracy theory as a good thought experiment, nothing more, but two photos of him and his girlfriend Jane Asher makes you think twice. The height difference....

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View attachment 19752 Barely five years between these head shots.
Look at the beaky nose from 1971!!!! Nothing like early Paul!
Thing is, his face is not square on to the camera in the right hand shot. He's doing a Princess Diana: face tilted down but eyes looking up and hence out at you. No wonder the eyelids aren't visible and his nose looks different, his whole face is at a different angle than in the comparison shot.
 
I've just searched Google images using this term: 'paul mccartney and jane asher' and Paul is certainly somewhat taller. My word, Jane was smashing back then and still is now. Elegance personified.
Jane certainly does not look like she's 73. She looks downright amazing.
 
It's amazing to think that a hoax deliberately started in the late sixties is still doing the rounds on the Internet. I'm of course referring to the notion that Paul McCartney in fact died in a car crash in 1967, to be replaced by a lookalike whilst a myriad of "clues" were hidden in subsequent Beatles releases.
This link is as good as any for introduction to the subject, but any search will turn up shedloads of sites.
Snopes deals with it here

The circumstances of death go something like this (it tends to vary):
"PM got into this car wreck early one Wednesday morning at 5 am whilest looking at a pretty meter maid, not seeing the changing traffic lights. He wasn't killed outright, but his car caught fire, a crowd of people stood around, and then he died from head wounds (he lost his teeth and hair). The morning papar came out with an article but was then censored, recalled. Enter William Campbell (winner of PM lookalike contest) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
The "clues" are supposedly hidden in the artwork, lyrics and even playing the final lyrics of "I'm So Tired" from the White Album backwards. People are supposed to have discovered strange phone numbers on album covers (?)and called them. They received replies like "You're getting closer" and "Beware of Abbey Road".
It's been suggested that Paul did indeed die, spiritually, as he was re-born in the ways of the Maharishi. A spiritual rebirth; his old self dying.
Rather than asking the question "Is Paul Dead?" which may go some way to explaining Mull of Kintyre and the Frog Chorus, I think it's in interesting study of how people can manipulate snatches of information to back up a conclusion already reached.



As a side issue, are hidden messages in music a relatively new phenomenon? Have certain classical pieces also been deemed subversive in some way?

This rumour was even the basis for a batman story in a comic book as I remember it ---the story featured a group with very simular circumstances to the rumour ,and with characters who resembled the Beatles ,but it featured a twist at the end . The character representing Paul turns out to be the original ,and alive ,but the rest of the group died in an accident and were replaced by lookalikes
 
This rumour was even the basis for a batman story in a comic book as I remember it ---the story featured a group with very simular circumstances to the rumour ,and with characters who resembled the Beatles ,but it featured a twist at the end . The character representing Paul turns out to be the original ,and alive ,but the rest of the group died in an accident and were replaced by lookalikes

Batman Vol 1 #222 June, 1970

https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Batman_Vol_1_222

4hS0MKi.jpg
 
I've lost myself in the Paul is dead myth for most of this year. I started very skeptically but have kind of been drawn in. I see lot of bullshit around it being posted - a lot of stuff that isn't a core part of the mythology (conspiracy?) which only serves to discredit it. It's easy to poo poo something if you'r willing to swallow the deliberate disinformation or some of the wilder stuff that gets posted.

My line is pretty much as presented in this video - not 100% but near enough. Everytime i think it's just a silly story I see more stuff that only makes sense if the main elements of Paul is Dead is true.

Anyway - I've been mocked for talking about this. I assume that the FT forums is a little more tolerant than the average - though of course I don;t expect people to just take mine or anyone else's word for it, i do expect a certain level of research and analysis before commenting.

 
I've lost myself in the Paul is dead myth for most of this year. I started very skeptically but have kind of been drawn in. I see lot of bullshit around it being posted - a lot of stuff that isn't a core part of the mythology (conspiracy?) which only serves to discredit it. It's easy to poo poo something if you'r willing to swallow the deliberate disinformation or some of the wilder stuff that gets posted.

My line is pretty much as presented in this video - not 100% but near enough. Everytime i think it's just a silly story I see more stuff that only makes sense if the main elements of Paul is Dead is true.

Anyway - I've been mocked for talking about this. I assume that the FT forums is a little more tolerant than the average - though of course I don;t expect people to just take mine or anyone else's word for it, i do expect a certain level of research and analysis before commenting.


4 hours? I haven't got the time to watch that - can't you give us the gist? I mean he has been seen on a few occasions since the Beatles. Or is that a replacement?

Puts me in mind of the 'Stevie Wonder isn't really blind' theory.
 
4 hours? I haven't got the time to watch that - can't you give us the gist? I mean he has been seen on a few occasions since the Beatles. Or is that a replacement?

Puts me in mind of the 'Stevie Wonder isn't really blind' theory.
i could but it would probably take me longer than 4 hours. I've watched it over weeks, a bit at a time.

and yeah - a replacement. in fact there's good evidence they all used doubles at the height of their fame - when being a Beatle was near a 24/7 job. I've seen a clip somehwere on a US tour of a John Lennon in civvies talking to a John Lennon on stage with a guitar during a concert. So I guess they used look alike actors as doubles - a lot of celebs and politicians have done this, especially when they feel threatened as the Beatles did on their last US tour.

So the fake Paul (or Faul) was one of the paid McCartney doubles (there were more than one, maybe 3 or 4 - and I swear I can see the differences now having stared at the photos for long enough), but also had musical talent, enough to be a Beatle it seems.

and appraently there were two main fake Pauls post 1966, street Paul who looked much more like him but had no talent, and musical Paul who could write and play but didn't look so much like Paul and had to have surgeries over years.

The break up was due to John having a near mental break down over Paul, and not really liking the replacement at all. In fact none of them did. So they fell out - it was basically a rift between the original Beatles and the new Paul replacement.

And dead Paul songs appeared from likes of Rolling Stones, Donovan, even Elton John in the 70s after Lennon supposedly confided in him. (Grey Seal being the best example, grey seal instead of the walrus.)

There's way way more to it too. And different versions vary, but in my view all the credible ones agree on the important bits - and disagree on some of the detail.

Anyway I'm not sure me talking about it carries any weight - the evidence is in those videos. It's there anyway of anyone feels the need to watch it.
 
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It is the conspiracy theory which just keeps giving. While, yes, it's pretty unlikely to be true, it does have a fair few examples which support the plausibility of it. But eventually I start to feel like the actual Beatles may have been in on the joke, and some of what we know as supporting clues might be very deliberate red herrings. :)

There is also part of us which probably doesn't want to think of the creative prowess of Lennon & McCartney not having aged so well. That modern day McCartney is just so naff that *surely* it would be better if he had stopped making music earlier on. Not something which everybody agrees with, but everyone's tastes are different.

I still maintain that had we not lost Lennon when we did he would not be the icon we now see him as. He'd probably have aged into a somewhat belligerent and out of touch old grandpa, who would have been seen as far less relevant or profound by the turn of the 2000s. He's have been seen as a little too preachy by the generation of late 1990s, and beyond.

Still I can't utterly refute Paul is Dead. Much of it it too much a matter of circumstance and coincidence, sure. But the rfact that we're even still talking about it decades after it was first posed as a theory surely has to prove there must be something more to it. Even if that something turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by people close to The Beatles themselves...
 
Well it's a safe bet Paul never went to the moon.

The longevity of the Paul is Dead nonsense is an indication of the silly crap that people will believe, and little more. We know who started it and why, we know the Beatles, creative and playful sorts they were, played along a bit and had some fun with it. We know there is zero credible evidence it was based on anything real. We know that if proof of it existed, someone would have cashed in (big time) long ago. It's a waste of electrons.

It's easy to assume what or who John might have become, but if you look at how he changed during his 40 years, I wouldn't want to bet on where he'd be now. A lot of his solo work was really good, but you don't hear it anywhere really. Yes, he might have been the original Bono, but then look what Paul is up to these days. John had the talent and the resources to do whatever he wanted to. I don't think it's fair to assume he'd have been a slave to some immutable law of entropy. He died in his prime.

I recently watched a video of Paul inducting John into the R&R Hall of Fame. It's a damn fine tribute and a moving few minutes to watch. What he said about his last contacts with John is very interesting too. Anyone who spends any time on the hoax silliness needs to watch that a couple of times.
 
Hold on a second, browsing a site earlier this evening I came across this t-shirt. Notice there are 2 Pauls and an absent Ringo. Something's going on here. o_O
paul.jpg
 
It is the conspiracy theory which just keeps giving. While, yes, it's pretty unlikely to be true, it does have a fair few examples which support the plausibility of it. But eventually I start to feel like the actual Beatles may have been in on the joke, and some of what we know as supporting clues might be very deliberate red herrings. :)

There is also part of us which probably doesn't want to think of the creative prowess of Lennon & McCartney not having aged so well. That modern day McCartney is just so naff that *surely* it would be better if he had stopped making music earlier on. Not something which everybody agrees with, but everyone's tastes are different.

I still maintain that had we not lost Lennon when we did he would not be the icon we now see him as. He'd probably have aged into a somewhat belligerent and out of touch old grandpa, who would have been seen as far less relevant or profound by the turn of the 2000s. He's have been seen as a little too preachy by the generation of late 1990s, and beyond.

Still I can't utterly refute Paul is Dead. Much of it it too much a matter of circumstance and coincidence, sure. But the fact that we're even still talking about it decades after it was first posed as a theory surely has to prove there must be something more to it. Even if that something turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by people close to The Beatles themselves...

Agreed re: Lennon. When he was killed, I was very young and did not know who he was or that he had been in the Beatles. Hearing his songs on the radio at the time, though, I was slightly puzzled as to why people were lauding his genius, because it all sounded very blah to me. It took me several weeks before I understood he had been in the Beatles, so then it made a bit more sense!

I don't believe the "Paul is dead" theory, BTW. People's faces change as they grow older, but their eyes never do, and his eyes and eyebrows are just the same. What's more, they are very distinctive.
 
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