Turn Me On Dead Man: Four & a Half Decades of Rumours About the Death of Sir Paul McCartney
Written by Jason Daniel Baker
Saturday, 08 March 2014 04:00
The myth is not merely one of the most twisted ones in rock ‘n’ roll history but of all popular culture over almost the last 50 years. Supposedly Paul McCartney died at 5 AM on Wednesday, November 9th, 1966 in London driving home in his custom-made Austin Healey Mini Cooper to his house on Cavendish Avenue from an all night recording session at nearby EMI Studio (now called Abbey Road Studio). The story goes that he was decapitated in a car accident.
The other Beatles were then allegedly coerced into burying McCartney in secret and welcoming a lookalike McCartney impersonator from Scotland sometimes identified as William or ‘Willie’ Campbell, William Shears Campbell, Billy Shears and William Sheppard and nicknamed ‘Faul’ (as in an amalgam of ‘fake’ and ‘Paul’). The police and media were also in on it.
Supposedly his life after November 9th, 1966, including his marriages to garish debutantes and his erratic, often flaccid solo music, was actually that of a clever and ruthless imposter who looked, sounded and acted exactly like the real Paul McCartney. The real Paul McCartney never wrote the most memorable work for which he is lauded. Nor did the genuine Paul ever split up the Beatles. That was…This other guy.
How does an absurd myth like this come together and gain traction and why does it persist? Let’s see if we can work it out.
McCartney himself had once been in an accident riding a moped in Liverpool on Boxing Day 1965 but only suffered a chipped tooth and a scar on the left side of his upper lip. He grew a mustache to cover the scar while it healed but he delayed getting a filling for the tooth hoping no one would notice. Of course fans did notice in 1967 promotional videos for ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’ that he looked a little different and speculated why.
A close friend of Lennon and McCartney was Guinness heir Tara Browne. Browne was a playboy/socialite who was tight with the Rolling Stones too. For a while he and McCartney were inseparable. In fact Browne was riding with McCartney during his moped accident in December 1966. Browne himself died in a car accident on December 18th, 1966 in London driving his Lotus. Identified as ‘a friend of Paul McCartney’ in news reports about the crash, some people may have been confused.
The beginnings of the actual death rumor are to be found on January 7, 1967 when it began to circulate across London that McCartney had been killed in a car accident. There was a car accident and it was kept hush-hush. It involved McCartney’s car. But a Moroccan student and hipster hanger-on named Mohammed Hadjij was the driver and though injured he certainly didn’t die.
So we have three accidents over roughly a year. The first one actually involves McCartney and he suffers noticeable injuries. The second one – the only fatal one – involves McCartney’s friend, one who bore more than a striking resemblance to him and was riding with him during the first one. The third one involves McCartney’s car but an injured driver that wasn’t McCartney. If one hears about all three in passing without getting the full picture interpretation can vary and mutate via word of mouth.
Word got out on Fleet Street – the media hub of London of what had happened involving McCartney’s car on January 7, 1967 but full details were sparse. The story mutated despite insistence of Beatles employees that Paul McCartney was alive and well. It would have dissipated completely if McCartney had made a public appearance. But he, like the other Beatles wanted some alone time around then. The fans couldn’t understand why they didn’t want to tour.
Why the Beatles had become so reclusive had to do with the chaos of their 1966 world tour which had included their nightmare stop in the Philippines that had resulted in their being attacked by fans over a misunderstanding. Traumatized by that event and various others, overexposure, lack of privacy and in the process of plotting a new musical direction which would result in their best music they needed time to themselves.
The Beatles might have been more proactive with the media had they known the fiction that would result over time. But there was a lot of fiction circulating about them. They were handicapped by the fact that as rational adult human beings they couldn’t see how or why the ‘Paul is dead’ fable would persist anymore than the other gossip which had not. Ignoring it hoping it would go away didn’t work.
The rumor not only didn’t die, it spread across the Atlantic into the United States. The mainstream press followed journalistic guidelines and didn’t publish any speculation but people were talking. The underground press had no such compunctions about publishing speculation and the story lingered for years. Again if McCartney had shown himself publicly conjecture might have been quashed.
Beatles fans who subscribe to the theory and other conspiracy-minded people who buy in are generally known as ‘Cluesters’ and they have discovered hundreds of indicators illustrating their belief. The first serious ‘Cluesters’ were to be found in the Midwestern United States in late summer 1969. Specifically they were university students in Indiana, Iowa and Michigan. Researching and publishing speculation about their theory in student publications they then began pestering disc jockeys with it.
Detroit singer Terry Knight released the ‘Saint Paul’ single in Spring 1969 which seemed to be about Paul McCartney’s death and its cover-up by the other Beatles.
Popular disc jockeys like Russ Gibb and Roby Yonge picked up the narrative and passed it on to listeners in October 1969, mere weeks after the release of ‘Abbey Road’ discussing at great length, in detail all of these so called clues. The story going around picked up steam in Fall 1969 having spread around the world and in late October BBC Radio 4 sent a crew to Paul’s farm in Kintyre, Scotland to try to suss it out. Life magazine sent their own in November that same year.
The rumor had evolved that the McCartney impersonator was from Scotland because he sometimes did a bad Scottish accent (possibly imitating people who lived around his farm) in jest. Was the BBC film footage of an unshaven, disheveled and unamused Paul the result of a news crew catching the Scots doppelganger in an unguarded moment in his real habitat? Or was the wealthy rock star so desperate to get peace and quiet alone with his wife and two children that he had found a dilapidated mudbucket of a farm where he thought nobody would bother him?
Cluesters prefer the former explanation to the latter. My sense is that this was their way of coping with the fact that McCartney was becoming his own man. His scruffy appearance was a huge contrast to the clean-shaven, formally-dressed young mop top they had been introduced to in the early half of the decade. They weren’t used to seeing him without the other Beatles. Footage which should have conclusively proven McCartney was alive instead suggested the opposite to some.
When the band broke-up – less than six months after disc jockeys took the silly hoax public the rumor/theory was convenient for those looking for answers just as it had been when fans wanted to know why, after summer 1966 the band didn’t want to tour. But these are things for deranged people quite possibly, even probably, under the influence of hallucinogenics. The hoax was perpetrated by thousands of pranksters and still is to this day.
There will always be people who fall for it just like there will be people who can’t resist getting in on the fun and even adding their own bit to it. Beyond that it gets very convoluted and even perhaps a little eerie when you know there are people who swear this is all truly indicative of the grisly death of a popular international star and a cover-up by the band as well as some very powerful forces in media and law enforcement.
Clues Found In/On The Singles
‘Lady Madonna’ lyric ‘Wednesday morning papers didn’t come’ is an allusion to the day of the week and time of day Paul is said to have died. Cluesters think the line refers to media complicity in a cover-up of the death.
Supposedly, when played backwards, Paul sings ‘he’s dead’ and ‘I’m a phony’ in the single ‘Hey Jude’ (released August 1968).
Clues Found In/On ‘Yesterday and Today’ 1966
The original cover for the album, a hallmark of poor taste, showed the band dressed in white butcher smocks with bloody slices of meat and decapitated baby dolls. Paul, seated in the middle flanked by John on the left and Ringo on the right has an incredulous smile. Each of his bandmates are smiling too. George, standing behind Paul, has an evil kind of conspiratorial grin. Ringo’s smile is partly a cringe. John’s smile is a fake, contemptuous smirk.
The album was released in North America in June 1966 by Capitol Records. Understandable criticism caused Capitol to replace the cover with a second one (replacing an original is becoming a familiar theme isn’t it?). The second cover shows the band around an open, overturned travel trunk. Paul is seated inside it. John is seated on top i.e. the left side of the trunk. Ringo stands to the right appearing to be holding the lid. George stands at the back. If you turn the cover on its side it looks like Paul is in a coffin.
Capitol issued a recall of hundreds of thousands of copies with the original grisly butcher cover. Some were destroyed. Most were repackaged with the new cover pasted over top. The Cluester interpretation is predictable – that Paul is dead, that George, at the back of both pictures behind the others was behind it. It doesn’t matter that the album’s release predates the November 9th, 1966 – the day the real Paul supposedly died…Especially if the hypothetical death was premeditated murder made to look like an accident after months of planning.
As for the music ‘Drive My Car’ is on the album. Use your imagination with that one. ‘Yesterday’ is on the album and includes the lyric ‘Suddenly I’m not the man I used to be’, i.e. William Campbell. ‘Dr.Robert’ is another track. There were many doctors in London at the time with the first name Robert any one of whom might have hypothetically performed dead Paul’s autopsy and/or pronounced him dead.
Clues Found In/On ‘Sgt.Pepper’ 1967
Sgt.Pepper’s iconic, Grammy Award winning cover, one of the most enduring (and copied) in the history of rock ‘n” roll, is staged like a funeral crowd shot with a wreath resting on a grave in the foreground which is yellow hyacinths in the shape of a left-handed bass guitar – Paul played bass left-handed. Some claim that the same image of the bass looks like it spells ‘Paul’. It doesn’t look to me like it says anything.
A younger band-suited version of the Beatles (circa 1964) stands beside them as Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band pose in vibrant pastel uniforms facing the grave whilst a crowd of mostly dead celebrities who became famous under names other than the ones given them at birth surround them. If nothing else Cluesters detect physical differences from 1964 Paul and 1967 Paul. Aside from the mustache and uniform 1967 Paul appears a couple of inches taller and with smaller ears but a slightly longer nose. I never once noticed a difference between real Paul and fake Paul other than the usual changes that age puts on all of us.
The Shirley Temple doll (one of three likenesses of her on the cover) seated to the right has a toy white Aston Martin on its lap. An ominous bloody-gloved right hand is reaching around the doll. A statue of the Hindu destroyer god Shiva is at the bottom, his hands pointing at Paul.
Hollywood cowboy star Tom Mix is among the crowd of famous faces behind the Beatles. Mix died in a car accident. James Dean, who died in a car accident is there. Lawrence of Arabia who died of injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident is there too. So is Jayne Mansfield who would die in a car accident at the end of June 1967 – mere weeks after the album’s June 1st release. Odd coincidences but nothing more.
Supposedly author Stephen Crane is seen behind Paul. Crane wrote a story called ‘The Open Boat’ about a quartet of men who try to stay alive on a boat and three survive. Edgar Allan Poe – the great American writer is pictured. He died (also at 5 AM but on a Sunday) under mysterious circumstances wearing someone else’s clothes.
On the left sleeve of Paul’s baby blue uniform on the front of the cover as well as the inner cover is a patch which some think reads ‘OPD’ which they take to be an abbreviation for ‘officially presumed dead’ or ‘old Paul dead’. In fact the patch is the official one of the OPP – Ontario Provincial Police. Why Paul is wearing it was anyone’s guess up until Paul revealed to Life magazine November 1969 was just a patch a fan had sent him. Some suggest the abbreviation on the patch was altered. If so it may have been to avoid copyright infringement but proponents of the death theory prefer insidious reasons.
On the back of the album cover (the LP version but not the CD) the band members are seen in their Sgt.Pepper’s uniforms with the songs listed along with the lyrics to each superimposed over top. But curiously Paul is the only one of the Fab Four pictured with his back turned. Bandmate George Harrison appears to be pointing with his thumb at the opening lyric from the song ‘She’s Leaving Home’ in which Paul sings ‘Wednesday Morning at 5 o’clock as the day begins’ which is presumed to be the time he was pronounced dead.
Lyrics to ‘Within You Without You’ were superimposed over the image of Paul. They read ‘We were talking about the space between us all/And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion never glimpse the truth. Then it’s far too late – when they pass away’. Which means you know what. Or does it?
Sgt.Pepper’s title track has the line ‘it was a fake mustache’ when it is played backwards. Which means what? That fake Paul is one of those guys who can’t grow a proper ‘stache? The line ‘yeah, we’ll all be magic supermen’ can supposedly be heard at the end of the album if you play it backwards. Again, meaning what?
The lyrics to ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ also mention 5 O’clock ‘People running around/it’s 5 O’clock’. Later comes the line ‘Nothing to do to save his life’. Cluesters take this to reference the presumed scene after the hypothetical crash. If he was decapitated like they say there would have been ‘Nothing to do to save his life’.
The scene is described in ‘A Day In the Life’ lyrics line ‘a crowd of people stood and stared’ and he ‘blew his mind out in a car’. ‘I’d love to turn you on’ is another lyric in that song. ‘Revolution Number 9’ (played backwards) off of the White Album offers context for it.
When a mirror is held beneath the upper half of the letters ‘Lonely’ on the drum-skin pictured on the album cover they appear to read ’10’, ‘1’ and ‘IX’. ‘Hearts’ becomes ‘He’ and ‘Die’ with a small diamond shape pointing to Paul. This is extrapolated to mean that McCartney died on November 9th. The lyrics to ‘Let It Be’ have the words ‘read the Record Mirror’ presumably directing fans to use a mirror on the record cover.
Forget about the date November 9th, 1966 (purportedly the day John met Yoko) placing Paul in the location of London. He was in Nairobi, Kenya on vacation with his girlfriend Jane Asher and tour manager Mal Evans until later that month. He could have been dead for all anyone knew but the date of his supposed death is completely gathered from ‘evidence’ found on Beatles albums.
On the back of the album someone named ‘Joe Ephgrave’ is credited with having designed the drum-skin. The name is presumably a pseudonym as no one with that name can be found. The theory is that the ‘eph’ preceding ‘grave’ means ‘epitaph’. The drum-skin on the cover with the ‘Sgt.Pepper’ logo on it looks to some like the Westminster Abbey epitaph of writer Lewis Carroll. Carroll wrote ‘Jabberwocky’ which showed how words to can take different meaning when a mirror is held beneath the upper half of the letters.
The lyrics to ‘Lovely Rita’ with the words ‘I took her home, I nearly made it’ supposedly allude to a female hitch-hiker Paul picked up before his fatal accident.
Clues Found In/On ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ Movie/Soundtrack Album 1967
The cover of the soundtrack album shows each Beatle dressed as an animal. Paul is identified as the one wearing the dark walrus costume while his bandmates are wearing lighter colored costumes. A walrus is said to symbolize death in pagan cultures though no one has cited a proper source with relevant details.
The band name on the cover is spelled out in stars which, when the cover is inverted and held to a mirror turn into numbers ‘2317438’ which was said to be the phone number of a mortuary in London presumably where Cluesters believe Paul was embalmed.
The ‘I Am the Walrus’ sequence in the movie ends with what could be interpreted as a funeral procession as costumed George, John, Paul and Ringo march/dance following the bus. As previously stated Paul is generally thought to be the one wearing the walrus costume though there is confusion about that due to the opening portion of the sequence when the band are seen in psychedelic threads without masks and Lennon is the one playing piano. Near the end of the sequence we see someone in the walrus costume playing the piano whilst another stands in front playing a left-handed bass.
Spoken words from the BBC radio production of King Lear are sampled in ‘I Am the Walrus’ and the lines discernible are ‘thou hast slain me’, ‘bury my body’, ‘What? Is he dead?’ and ‘O untimely death!’. King Lear, one of Shakespeare’s most popular, is a long play with a lot of quotable dialogue. Why did they excerpt these sinister lines from it?
The your ‘Mother Should Know’ sequence (part at the end of the movie where the band dresses up in white tuxedos and dance/ascend a lush staircase) is notable to Cluesters. Each Beatle is wearing a carnation but Paul’s is black while the others have red ones. Paul has since stated that they just didn’t have enough red carnations so he took a black one without. It had no significance particularly in the context of trying to prove he was alive or dead.
A photograph in the enclosed booklet shows Paul in socked feet shoeless. It was a custom in some parts of the world to bury corpses barefoot.
At the end of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ Lennon sounds like he says ‘I buried Paul’ (a phrase which can also be heard in the chorus of ‘All Together Now’ off of ‘Yellow Submarine’). The implication is that the real Paul was buried in Strawberry Fields. Lennon denied it saying what he’d actually said at the end of ‘Strawberry Fields’ was ‘cranberry sauce’. Other backwards messages on the track purportedly say things like ‘We’ll sing it man’, ‘We’ll be reverse’ and ‘please guess he’s dead’.
Cluesters contend that Strawberry Field (Lennon added the ‘s’ and included much of the area around Strawberry Field as collectively part of what he referred to in his childhood as ‘Strawberry Fields’) was the name of a cemetery in Liverpool in which Eleanour Rigby’s grave can be found. Actually it was a Salvation Army children’s home. But there was a church with a graveyard not too far away.
‘Penny Lane’ the other A-side of the single with ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, both of which are included on the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ soundtrack album has the lyric sung by Paul ‘Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes’. An old custom was placing coins (pennies) on the eyelids of the dead but I don’t know about the ears.
‘Hello, Goodbye’ track 7 – other than being one of the most nauseating songs McCartney wrote up until he formed ‘Wings’ it is, for Cluesters, a way of fake Paul saying hello to fans and goodbye to dead Paul.
Clues Found In/On ‘the White Album’ 1968
At the end of ‘Revolution Number 9’ the sound of car crash explosion is heard. Played backwards at the beginning one hears ‘Turn me on, dead man’.
Then there is the infamous line in ‘Glass Onion’ in which John sings ‘Now here’s another clue for you all…The walrus was Paul’. We have Lennon implicitly acknowledging the Beatles were planting clues in regards to Paul whilst then mentioning him in the past tense i.e. like he is dead? ‘Now here’s another clue for you all’ is just wordplay. ‘The walrus was Paul’ past tense is because Paul was only the walrus for the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ gimmick which was a year in the past.
Another line in ‘Glass Onion’ repeated multiple times is ‘looking through the glass onion’ which, with ‘onion’ omitted and the remaining words turned around can be made to say ‘through the looking glass’. A ‘looking glass’ is a mirror which when used to look at the cover of ‘Sgt.Pepper’ to see a secret message as I already described.
At the end of ‘I’m So Tired’ John can be heard saying ‘Paul is dead, miss him, miss him’. Some say it is George Harrison saying it.
Lyrically the lines in ‘Helter Skelter’ like ‘and I stop and I turn and go for a ride’, ‘coming down fast’, ‘Look out cause here she comes’ can all be interpreted in a way that suggest a car accident but only if you really reach. At the end of the song Ringo exclaims ‘I’ve got blisters on my fingers’. Why does he have blisters? Presumably he got them by helping bury Paul. Of course the Manson Family had their own interpretation.
Clues Found In/On ‘Abbey Road’ 1969
The cover of the ‘Abbey Road’ album shows the fab four crossing the street near EMI studios in St.John’s Wood, Westminster, London. So what right? Well, Paul was barefoot. It is evident that Paul liked going barefoot and lyrics from ‘Good Day Sunshine’ suggest that. We’ve all seen people that like to do that. But it was a custom in some parts of the world to bury corpses barefoot and people read into it.
Cluesters extrapolate it was staging a funeral procession with John dressed in white as the angel of death or the euologising minister, Ringo dressed as the euologising minister or simply the undertaker, Paul as the corpse and casually dressed/shovel-wielding George as the gravedigger. With the tune ‘Johnny’s Birthday’ on George Harrison’s 1970 solo album ‘All Things Must Pass’ played backwards you can hear ‘He never wore his shoes we all knew he was dead’.
The cover, taken from one of ten shots by photographer Iain Macmillan (Yoko’s friend), also shows a smoke dangling between Paul’s fingers as he walks. It is in his right hand. Paul, pre 1966 and since played bass left-handed. Do you know any lefties who smoke with their right hand? Photos of Paul from pre 1966 and since show Paul with smokes in either hand. Ringo, also a lefty and a smoker was usually seen with a cigarette in his left hand but his drumkit is set up for a righty. It is meaningless.
Other aspects of the cover indicative of nothing include the fact that Paul is walking with his right foot forward while George, Ringo and John are walking left foot forward. Paul also has his eyes closed. A police van is visible which some think illustrates police complicity in a cover-up. No significance is attached to the fact that Paul, Ringo and John are all wearing Savile Row tailor Tommy Nutter’s suits while George is dressed in jeans and a work shirt. I refuse to go in to the asinine, nonsensical guff associated with theories about the license plate on the back of the white Volkswagen.
Who is ‘Fake Paul’ William Campbell, William Shears Campbell, Billy Shears or William Sheppard?
Supposedly the imposter Paul was named ‘Billy Shears’. ‘Billy Shears’ is the fictional singer of ‘Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band’ from the Beatles. Paul sings about him introducing him and saying that the singer i.e. Billy Shears will sing a song. Paul, John and George introduce him by singing in unison ‘Billl-lyyyy Sheearssss’ which segues into ‘I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends’ which Ringo sings. Ringo, in the diagesis of the Sgt.Pepper angle/gimmick was Billy Shears.
William was then derived from ‘Billy’ – it’s usual short-form and ascribed to the imposter Paul, one William Campbell selected in a Paul McCartney lookalike contest on American Bandstand which announced no winner. The facts, sparse and unconfirmed as they are don’t jive with the theory and certainly not with reality.
McCartney’s 1980 cannabis bust in Japan fingerprints supposedly didn’t match those from his prints on file from back when the Beatles toured there in 1966. Why the Beatles would have had files of their fingerprints made in 1966 is unclear. Held for ten days the rumor was that the Japanese police were trying to figure out if he was an imposter. Supposedly they even wheeled in a piano and made him play his old hits to judge for themselves if he was Campbell or whatever the fuck his name is.
On McCartney’s 14th studio album 2007’s multi-platinum ‘Memory Almost Full’ the track ‘Gratitude’ when played backwards, Paul is supposedly heard singing ‘Who is this now’ multiple times before singing ‘I was Willie Campbell’.
Conspiracy Theorists Chart Mysterious Deaths
People surrounding the Beatles who died before their time are of course suspected by Cluesters of having seen something relating to the supposed conspiracy surrounding McCartney’s death and being a threat to talk.
Tara Browne – he of the fatal car accident in December 1966 referenced so beautifully in the Beatles song ‘A Day In the Life’ went first. He should have been untouchable given his wealth and status and would be in any conspiracy fable because of that. But in service of Cluester narrative he saw something and was set to go public with it. Result? Fatal vehicle sabotage made to look like an accident.
Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose (Carbitral mixed with booze) in August 1967. As the one of several referred to as being ‘the fifth Beatle’ Epstein was obviously very close with the band he had discovered and brought to prominence. A closeted homosexual he had learned to keep secrets but most of them were his own. The conspiracy theorist angle is that his personal secrets jeopardised the keeping of one big collective secret and he was killed in a manner made to look like death by misadventure.
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was a regular party guest at McCartney’s Cavendish Avenue house in the mid to late 1960s. He played saxophone on the Beatles tune ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ in Spring 1967 just after Sgt.Pepper was released. Jones died on the evening of July 2nd, 1969 having drowned in his swimming pool after consuming alcohol and downers. Of all the theories surrounding Jones’s death, keeping him quiet because of a secret he might have know about Paul McCartney is among the most far-fetched.
Pete Ham hanged himself on April 24th, 1975. He had been lead singer and chief composer for the legendary Welsh rock band Badfinger which was signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records label. While the Beatles were still together McCartney wrote and produced the Badfinger’s first single ‘Come and Get It’ – an international hit in 1970. Ham and his bandmates, flat broke within five years were badly mismanaged which Ham mentioned in his suicide note. It would be a reach to suggest his death was part of a conspiracy over something he may have seen or heard whilst working with McCartney. But reaching is what cluesters like.
Mal Evans – the Beatles long-time road manager died, aged 40, on January 5th, 1976 from a police shooting in Los Angeles, California. Acting strangely and holding what looked like a rifle (turned out to be an air gun) cops thought he was dangerous and shot him. Cremated, his ashes were then mysteriously misplaced. Allegedly also misplaced after the fact were pages of memoirs, documents, recordings and memorabilia relating to his time working the band. Some say it was a tell-all book.
Scots guitarist Jimmy McCulloch died of a heroin overdose on September 27th, 1979 in his flat in London, England. He had been a member of McCartney’s band ‘Wings’ from April 1974 to September 1977. Cluesters angle? He saw something he shouldn’t have prompting him to abruptly quit Wings and was marked for death in a manner which, like Epstein’s death, could be made to look like death by misadventure.
John Lennon – McCartney’s most famous bandmate was murdered on December 8th, 1980 outside his New York City apartment building, shot in the back by drug-addict weirdo Mark David Chapman. Most of the clues in Beatles albums about Paul’s supposed death were dropped by Lennon in cryptic lyrics and backwards masking. Presumably if he was killed by someone because of what he knew it would have been way, way sooner.
Suki Potier died in a car accident on June 23rd, 1981 in Portugal seven and a half months after Lennon was murdered. She had been Tara Browne’s girlfriend and was with him in his own fatal car crash in December 1966 very nearly perishing with him. Both hung around the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. She even dated Rolling Stone Brian Jones for a couple of years splitting up with him just before he died. If she was killed in something made to look like an accident to keep her silent was it over knowing too much about McCartney’s death or Jones’s?
Tom Evans, Pete Ham’s bandmate in Badfinger also hanged himself on November 19th, 1983. Bad management and resulting financial difficulties were cited as the cause along with his inability to get over the loss of his friend Ham. Cluester’s angle? Evans supposedly grew suspicious about Ham’s death and the reasons for it. Both had worked with McCartney. Did one or the other see or hear something they shouldn’t have?
Death is something that we would all like to think only happens to older people in their sleep. When it happens to younger people the tragedy and unfairness of it can prompt unnecessary and often nonsensical conjecture which may serve to besmirch the memory of the deceased rather than find truth.
