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Paul Is Dead (Sixties Hoax)

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Anonymous

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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?
 
Surely George is the one for reincarnation?

And what's the odds on Ringo going next, leaving the 'dead' one releasing albums, opening art shows, etc.?

And re-reading DD's post, since when did meter maids work at 5 a.m.?

Hidden messages in music - wasn't there a court case in the US a few years back that cited a Judas Priest album?

As for classical stuff, J Whitehead's yer man.....
 
"I buried Paul" is actually "Cranberry Sauce."

That makes a lot more sense.
 
So your trying to say they didn't sacrifice him to Lord Satan, to gain popularity and immense
amounts of wealth, just like how Zeppelin sacrificed John to gain favor with the dark side,
and various other bands at the time. Have you heard that one??

BTW. Paul is the walrus.
 
On the front of the Abbey Road album, there was supposed to be some singificance attached to the fact that Paul was wearing black and barefooted (singifying a corpse or some equally specious theory).

Carole
 
... and the license plate of the car on the left (i think) reads <28 IF>, that is <paul would be 28 if he were still alive>...
 
Hidden messages in music go way back, though lots of them can
be discerned by the eye rather than the ear.

J. S. Bach is a happy hunting ground for message hunters, though
many of the messages refer to obscure matters of Lutheran
theology.

One of the oddest (and so far unsolved) questions concerns the
way Tchaikovsky laid out the melody in the last movement of the
Pathétique Symphony. The tune is invisible on the page but only
emerges in performance as the parts cross each other.

More recently there has been a great deal of controversy regarding
the music of Shostakovitch. Was he sending secret dissident
messages against the Soviet regime? Some writers have suggested
a detailed numerological code but as nobody at the time held the
key, it would seem a wasted effort.

As for Paul McCartney, he has been creatively dead for years. Why
can't he just stop bothering the world with reminders that he
didn't leave them begging for more? :rolleyes:
 
Don't apologise, Garrick; those post couple of posts were some of the most intriguing I've ever read here. Concerning musical codes, is this a reasonably new theory? The reason I ask is that I've never heard of it, nor considered it; yet, it seems almost obvious, once it's been pointed out as possibility.
 
Absolutely, not off topic at all Garrick. I welcome any other additions.
 
Much as I love the mysteries of music, these matters boil down to
the question of communication. Authors and composers have often
produced works with many levels of esoteric and exoteric meanings.

The Satanic Rock controversy depended on the notion of young people
being brainwashed by subliminal messages which were speeded up or
played backwards on tape.

In the classical field, some arcane compositional techniques seem to
be used as way of filling the agony of the blank page. The ear has no
way of decoding the elaborate number symbolism in Bach's
Klavierübung III or the Musical Offering. Even when the patterns have
been pointed out, any meaning as such is elusive.

Garrick's mention of Beethoven is interesting. The movement he mentioned
always seems to me to sound like it has a buried programme in which a
Revolutionary anthem bursts into a civilized gathering and causes
division and embarrassment. The Australian composer Derek Strahan has
suggested that the Prometheus theme, which Beethoven used frequently
had a special meaning related to esoteric Freemasonry of a progressive kind.

I have long suspected that many landmark works of Art have a special meaning
for initiates. Meanings which are half revealed in critical works written by
a Brotherhood of sorts. But it is a subject which by its nature is impossible
to prove and likely to produce accusations of obsession or So what? :rolleyes:
 
Only three

And I heard somewhere that if you play 'the Brotherhood of Man's' jaunty hit 'Save all your Kisses for Me' backwards it plays the message 'Go on - make a cup of tea; you know you deserve it!'
Or something like that. It might have been 'Satan sucks
MESSAGE EDITED BY FORTEAN TIMES ERM... STAFF
 
James Whitehead said:
Even when the patterns have
been pointed out, any meaning as such is elusive.
Which might suggest it's just a pattern - a kind of Rorschach audio (or sheet music equivalent) which hints at hidden meaning but may have been produced by chance? Isn't music itself one giant pattern, pleasing to the brain which desires some kind of order from chaos? In other words, has there been a "proven" hidden message within musical codes?
 
The existence of esoteric strands in say the late works of Bach -
those composed during his involvement with the very curious
Mizler Society - has been often demonstrated. Friedrich Smend's
1950 study found a special significance in the canon triplex fragment
which appears in the famous Haussmann portrait. He suggested that
the fourteen notes of its canonic parts relate by gematria to Bach's
own name. ie BACH (2+1+3+8) = 14 and J. S. Bach (9+18+14) = 41.

Counting notes, rests or bars in various works, he found many such
fingerprints. Yet these inaudible structures cannot be said to be the
real meaning of the pieces. Just a treat for the scholar?

[The above is adapted from "A note on numerology" which is printed
at the end of Malcolm Boyd's Master Musicians volume on Bach.]

Problems arise also when deciding the scope of any symbolism. There
is no doubt that the key Eb having three flats was associated with
Freemasonry in Mozart's music. Three-four time also had associations.
But is that also true of Johann Strauss? also a Mason - if so, maybe the waltz
conquered the world by stealth. :eek:
 
Sir Paul is on a Palace concert party shortly (BBC1).

I don't think they'd allow dead people to entertain the Royals - not the done thing, dontcha know?
 
Dark Detective said:
Which might suggest it's just a pattern - a kind of Rorschach audio (or sheet music equivalent) which hints at hidden meaning but may have been produced by chance? Isn't music itself one giant pattern, pleasing to the brain which desires some kind of order from chaos? In other words, has there been a "proven" hidden message within musical codes?

On a tangent... I thought that this little snippet may make an interesting footnote in this discussion which I must say I have found fascinating reading. Anyhoo, a tiny piece on the esoteric hidden within popular music.

Included on the sleeve notes of the CD "My Generation - The best of the Who"

Baba O'Riley by the Who (opening track on the album "Who's Next")

Quote from Pete Townsend:-

"This was a number I wrote while I was doing these experiments with tapes on the synthesizer. Among my plans was to take a person out of the audience and feed information - heigh, weight, autobiographical details - about the person into the synthesizer. The synthesizer would then select notes from the pattern of that person. It would be like translating a person into music. On this particular track I programmed details about the like of Meher Baba and that provided the backing for the number."
 
Richard Stilgoe's beard is nothing more than a quantam ripple, created by repeatedly playing the chorus to his hit TV show theme, "Life Stilgoe's on" (that's still goes on). Try it yourself. I've managed to play it in such a way as to give myself bushier, more masculine eye brows.
 
Re: JW's notes on Bach:

In Germany, the note we refer to as 'B flat' is/was called 'H', and so JS would include the sequence B natural, A natural, C natural, B flat as a sort of 'signature'
 
Paul McCartney's double

I've heard the UL that Paul McCartney died and was replaced by an exact lookalike and soundalike, but can't find anything on snopes.

Can anyone provide any detail?
 
There was a big thing at the end of the 60's when the Beatles were on the verge of splitting up. Paul was supposed to be dead and replaced with a double. Plenty of 'clues' were pointed out, such as on the cover of the Abbey Road album Paul is barefoot which is supposed to be a hindu (?) symbol of death. Also, at the end of one of their songs (can't remember which one) John is supposed to be saying 'I buried Paul' over and over.

Could be true, because since then Mr McCartney has displayed none of his hitherto prodigious musical and songwriting talent :D
 
Subject fairly comprehensively explored on this thread

[Emp edit: Threads merged and link removed]

Includes some good links and one to the area in snopes that you are looking for. Can't remember/Be bothered to look if it covers much about his double specifically but I seem to recall it does.
 
It then kinda devolves/evolves into hidden messages in music. quite fascinating but not entirely on topic... so the first few posts might be of more interest.
 
The University of Minnesota actually had a class on
the Beatles and popculture... the night they had
the "Paul is Dead" lecturer, they had to hold class in
the Performing Arts center, since no classroom
could hold the crowd! I actually got credits for finding
another "Paul is Dead" clue that the lecturer "missed"!
(I have no idea now what it was, so don't bother asking!)

TVgeek
- with his WAYYY too liberal arts education
 
27

Do you guys have any theories on why so many music personas die at the age of 27??

ex. Hendrix,Joplin,Morrison,Cobain,Robert Johnson,allegedly Paul,and various others.

Coincidence or is there something more to it??
 
Do you guys have any theories on why so many music personas die at the age of 27??

I remember something concerning that bloke from the Manic Street Cleaner.....er,.... Preachers disappearance saying that that time in the late 20's is the most common time for men to commit suicide.
 
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