Thinking Sideways: Paul is dead

I guess probably will surprise most of you. It's really scary mystery because it involved a dead body. It does maybe maybe not talked. Will you ask? Yeah, it really does. Uh. The mystery, I guess we're just going to call it, um Paul is dead and yes, this is a Beatles mystery. I wish we had a sound effective like girls screaming Yeah, but we don't. We don't. So. Paul McCartney of the Beatles is who we're talking about. You know, there there are four of them. Two of them are dead or

maybe three. Ringo Star is definitely alive. Nobody has ever cared about Ringo Star. I was when I was doing my rear. When I was doing my research, I was reading this quote of like, um, it was something like George Harrison was the heart of the Beatles, John Lennon was the voice or no, the soul of the Beatles, Paul McCartney was the voice of the Beatles, and Ringo was the drummer. It's like how people actually Ringo Ringo had more top ten hits after they broke up than

John Lennon did. Yeah, he's I mean, he's pretty talent it but um, so we're we're going to talk about this theory, this mystery that Paul McCartney actually died and was replaced sometimes in the sixties, sometimes in the sixties, and we'll talk details right now. The theory goes that Paul McCartney actually died in a car accident at five am on Wednesday, November nine, nineteen sixty six. Paul had reportedly picked up a female hitchhiker on his way to

visit friends. The woman became really really excited when she realized who had picked her up, and screamed and threw her arms around Paul, and that caused him to lose control of the car uh and he rammed it into a wall. Paul was decapitated by the accident, apparently, and the trauma to his head was so bad that even dental records were useless. Did she die too, She also died. How do they know she screened to put her arms around him. That's what I was wondering, right, good question.

What about the five It was at five am? He was going to visit friends, Okay, okay. Anyway, this was at the height of when the Beatles really really becoming popular, and so record executives decided that instead of upsetting the fans quote unquote um, they would just replace Paul with a fall If you will, fake Paul, which is a thing you will see all over yea, So we're gonna

we're gonna refer to him as such. Um. But the record executives decided to just replace Paul with fall Um and then just continue on as if nothing had ever happened. You know, probably the other three members agreed, because you know, they would continue to make money and be popular and have success, which they may or may not have if Paul ended up actually being dead. The surviving Beatles did, however, plant clues in all of the rest of their albums,

and in the cover art and stuff like that. Um, to make sure that the fans knew that Paul had actually died. The Record executives and I guess maybe the other Beatles, I don't know who had a second right, but they decided to replace Paul with a man named William Campbell who had recently won a Paul McCartney lookalike contest, and um, Billy they call him Billy Campbell. Actually they call him something totally different, but we'll talk about that later.

William Campbell or whoever they decided to replace Paul went through some extensive plastic surgery to make sure that he looked as much like Paul as possible. But he had this little scar either on his lip or chin, depending on who you talked to, that couldn't be fixed. And so it was happy accident that you know it had he probably been in a car accident. So it was okay because yeah, he had some stuff that looks a

little different. Um, but you know, it turned out it's okay because you know, Paul was in a car accident. According to the Record executives, he just you know, chipped a tooth and had a scar. Are not got to captate and replaced. That's a much happier story. Find story. Yeah. Also, apparently, according to the legend, it turns out that William Campbell could totally sing and was a songwriter, and he was really really good at creating pop melody. So he just happened.

He sounded almost exactly with a little tweaking. He sounded like Paul, you can always alter your vocal cords to yeah, right, with just a little plastic surgery. It's fine. Yeah, that's how I ended up sounding like guitar string ring the exactly. Yeah. Okay, well that's it's kind of silly, right, this whole story a little bit a little silly. Yeah, So are you gonna are you gonna kind of conclude right now that

it's absurd? Yeah? Story over episode overall credits. I remember when I was when I was a kid, this story was making the rounds, and somebody showed me, like you know, I was like, yeah, man, it's like it's true, Like you know, it showed me the cover of Abbey Road and Paul's barefoot and we're gonna talk about that, don't go too far into that. But but my reaction was so what you know, and I was just a kid. Yeah,

so you've always been like this. So the story, this story really gained It was in the news, and um, a couple of news outlets reported immediately that Paul had died in this car accident. And I should mention that it is true that a car belonging to Paul McCartney did crash on that night at that time. Whether he was in it or not, I'll be let you be

the judge, like, yeah, exactly, I think it was. Um no, just kidding anyway, So the news outlets did immediately report that Paul had been killed, but then retracted it, um presumably because the record executives or whoever was behind the replacement. Um yeah, they you know, they said no, no, wait, wait, wait wait, no, Paul's here, he's fine, don't worry about it. And the news outlets were like, all right, yeah, I

know you're right, we were probably wrong. But a really intrepid investigative journalist from the well known publication called The Northern Star really broke this case open and made it popular. You guys know, you guys know the Northern Star, right of course, right yeah, the Illinois University student newspaper, right, hard hitting journalism. No Okay, well, in this article it kind of exposed the conspiracy quote unquote, and it was Um.

It was either that one or depending on where you read it, the editor of the Drake Times Delphic, which is Drake University's student newspaper, either of these, and I couldn't find the original one, shocking, but the article whichever one, whichever student newspaper was in, came out on September seventeenth,

nineteen sixty nine. The credit is kind of spread all over the place because they're like four other places who also say no, no, we came up with this first, but I thought they definitively identified the guy who wrote the original story. That's not true. There's a lot of people who give credit that's that's credit. Well, no, there's a lot of people who point credit at different people, and it just happens to be. I think there's a crowd. The guy who's named Um is the editor at the

Drake University newspaper. But I've also seen a lot of sources that say, actually, it was the Northern Star. So I'm just choosing to say it's some university newspaper, which is probably the safest bet in It's kind of kind of amazing, even before the internet wild rumors got started. Yeah, it's crazy. The this article added a little something to the story that we just told, and that was that in the Beatles song Revolution nine, um, if you played

it backwards, you would reveal a hidden message. Now we're actually gonna examine that right now, and I'm not going to tell you what they said it said because I want you to just hear it. So first it's going to play forwards, and then there'll be a pause, and then it'll play backwards, and then we'll be back to talk about what it reportedly says. Number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine. So what did you hear? Nothing? Yeah, you's so glad.

Joe did listen that until just now. We just played it for him in the studio and he had never heard it. Um. And apparently he didn't read my script either, so he doesn't know what it was supposed to have said. Um, Steve, did you when you listen to it? Did you hear anything? If you stitch it together in your mind, you can

make something out of it. It doesn't clearly say something. Yeah, so apparently it's saying, um, turn me on dead Man when it's played backwards, and unfortunately, I will say, well, I mean unfortunately, I will say that for all of these sound clips that we're talking about. Unfortunately, I read before I listened, so it was pretty easy for me to hear some of it, not all of it, but

some of it. Well, this is this is this one particularly, this is the most concrete of the sound clips that you've sent us before, because there were a number of them that I kept. You know, it's not you see them on YouTube and they put the text up and I'm reading the text and I'm looking at it, and only here is yeah, there's nothing there. There's one of the the Paula's dead Man miss and miss and miss, and you can sort of hear that in there kind of

yeah you can't. And again but again that's one of those ones that um, I read before, I read about it before I heard it, and so I don't know how much of that influence influences that because that that's the way that I was like, this is gibberish, I don't. I listened to it four times before I started to kind of get it. Yeah, So I'm just going to put that out there that um, when we're talking about that. Let me ask you ask you this, What if you

wanted to play that backwards? Do you do you just rotate the album backwards on a on a turntable or do you tape it and then run the tape backwards? How how do you go about doing that? Well, that one that we just played, I presume was a digital

digitally reverse copy. But I would assume back in the day, Back in the day, what you had you had to take because the record needle is meant to run one way in the group, So what people would have to do is they would essentially have to lift the arm out of its its socket, the record player arm, and then rotate at ninety degrees so that when the track was running backwards, it was still writing in the groove instead of pushing into the group. I've seen it done.

That's it's hokey. That's one of my that's one of my theories is that the person who put this out there, I really just wanted to get a whole lot of people to ruin their albums. This is like, what was that stupid game that was out for a while for tossing your cell phone into the air? Yeah? Yeah, could you toss your phone just so people would be dumb and break them. I was I was actually gonna write write a phone app for your for your cell phone,

for your iPhone and you and your droid. It's the scale and so that's so you're up up the scale and then it just waste things and then you just you just you know, you just you know, you set it on the ground and you get on the scale and perfect. I think that's a great idea. I can

maybe make money. Sorry, let's get back on UM. So that little revelation UM really spurred people to start looking for clues, and actually there were a lot of aired uh comments and fans calling into certain DJs, and then news articles, most notably in the Michigan Daily, which is actually reputable source, or at least was at the time. But this is kind of when I guess collective clue finding started to happen, but it really kind of took off at that point. So we're gonna there's not I mean,

there's theories about this. It's going to be a little bit of a different episode. We're going to talk about the what I'm calling the clues quote unquote them. There are a lot of them, and but they're kind of proof for one or the other. But we're gonna commingle. We're going to talk about, you know, some of them and then go back and talk about why they may

or may not be true. Um. And that's going to be kind of the format instead of seeing, here's the theories for, and here's the theories against, because there's so much and you know, frankly, the theories against are like, well, that's dumb, and I don't want to do that. I want to actually address Yeah, and bye, thanks everyone. So let's start talking about clues. And I guess the the first thing that we're going to talk about a cigarette that was found outside his apartment and that was weird

because he didn't smoke. Nobody in England at that time smoke no no no. Um. One of the big clues came from Strawberry Fields Forever. And at the end, apparently you can hear John Lennon saying I buried Paul Um and then actually speaking of speaking stuff, let's listen to something else for a second. He begs him him. You can clearly hear gibberish interspersed with Paul is dead, miss him, miss him, miss him? Right? You heard that right, Okay, So for the I buried Paul Thing. Um No, he

says cranberry sauce twice. I think I don't know why he says cranberry sauce. They were loaded, Yeah, probably that. I'm sorry, but the Beatles were having a hi old time, no pun intended. Yeah they weren't. They weren't as extreme as the Rolling Stones by any means, or you know, or the Doors Morrison. He was yeah, yeah, So John Lennon actually says cranberry sauce at the end of Strawberry

Fields Forever. You can find some pretty good YouTube videos of it slowed down really far, and it's extra clear that he says cranberry sauce. Is much like um Daft Punk when they put out that song two years ago and everybody thought it was saying Mexican Monkey. And remember that Daft Punk. They their their new record came out a couple of years back, and the first song on it, I can't remember what it actually says, but everybody was like,

it's Shane Mexican Monkey. And to the point that band was got on the Internet and said, please stop telling people it says Mexican Monkey. But I can't remember what it says now that you put me on the spot. But everybody, you know I heard it. I was like, I didn't hear that until somebody's told me that's what it said. Oh yeah, because you know, sometimes when songs happen, you're not exactly sure how the annunciation is working. Yeah, I mean, and to that point, um, this whole Paul

is dead miss him, miss Him part. I disagree. I don't hear it at all, like at all. Yeah, this is the one I was. I listened to it four times. I kept reading it before I figured out what it was supposed to say. I could hear it in there, but I had already seen the text. Yeah, but I also don't know what was meant to be said there, Like nobody has ever said no, no, this person is saying this, so I could self correct. It was just that was the only thing for him, miss him. Yeah,

that's a backwards recording. Yeah, but I mean it doesn't matter, like it would be easy for them to say, like, wow, but it's this yeah, gibberish forwards and backwards. Well I don't think it was gibberish for it is. I listened to it. It's gibberish. I swear you're wrong. I thought that was actual words at that point when it was going forward. It's gibberish going forward. It actually sounds more like words going backwards than it does forwards. And that

recorded this. Oh man, I think it was Lennon talking at that point. Sorry, you know what, it could be something completely I watched. I tried to watch The Yellow Submarine this week just to do extra research, and that was a giant mistake. That's not not my favorite Beatles movie. Oh yeah it was. I don't remember watching that and I had stopped. Yeah, so another clue here is UM

something else album covers. Quickly, we'll talk about the Yesterday and Today cover UM, which was initially baby Dolls dismembered exactly like Paul was in the accident, right right right. The producers thought that it was a bit much, so they replaced it worth from one where Paul was sitting in a box, which was obviously meant to be a coffin. It was a big trunk. It was like a shipping

or steamer trunk. But no, actually, that's silly. I've listened to some interviews with Lennon uh and he says that he wanted to quote break the Beatles image unquote of being a good boy band and to show quote that we were aware of life unquote and um not some angels. And then I think that second one probably signifies like we feel like we're being put in a box. Very likely. I mean, if I were the Beatles and I was hearing all these rumors that would be had attempted to

have a little fun with it. Totally. Yeah. The hard problem with that is that, I mean there were Beatles fan clubs in every town across the world, and and they were The fans were voracious, and nobody get upset at me because my Beatles knowledge is a little weak in general. I'm not you know some no, but I'm not a Beatle just but those people were rabid and I could just imagine that if you were caught messing with them, it would be bad. Yeah. Absolutely, that's true. Yea,

I guess people working. That's where the word band comes from. It's fanatic yep. So yeah, they're guardo crazy. Uh pretty much. Okay, Next is the um Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band album cover. It's a big one. We're going to talk to all that stuff. Um. And as a side note, this is my favorite Beatles album. Alright, so let's just go through them all real quick. Here. Um, there's a hand over Paul's head all the as though he was being blessed by a priest before being interred across this

grave site. You should look this up. If you look it up before you pause us google it, yeah, and then come back. Cool, you're back, Welcome back. Across the grave site is a bass guitar that's oriented the way Paul, who was left handed, would have played it. Is it a grave site. It's a big area with flowers on it. Yeah. I mean I think it's meant to be a great of even like not in weird interpretations. I think it's meant to be kind of signifying the death of the

old Beatles. I mean, there's so some of the some symbolism that the sympology that we're not going to talk about is. Um, if you're if you haven't stopped and googled it and found it. There's these wax figures of quote unquote the old Beatles and then um, the new Beatles in there like technicolor uniforms, and so I think it's supposed to signify them finally being able to kind of break their old mold of the boy band and going into this new genre. So I do believe it

is meant to be a grave site either way. The strings on the bass guitar made out of flowers are made of sticks, but there are only three sticks instead of four, just because there would be three beatles instead of four without Paul the base. Yeah. If you hold a mirror across the middle of the words lonely Hearts that are written in the center of the drum, in the very center of the album cover, you only see I one I x he die with like little I

don't actually know what those things are called. The greater than Yeah. But by the way you're you're reflecting the top part of the letters. So it's the top part of the letters which reflecting, not the bottom. Yeah, and not you're not it's not in the center horizontal. Yeah, it's horizontal reflecting the top down exactly. So rearrange a little bit. Given some spaces, uh, it should say I want I x he um you know, greater than less than uh die, which the image suggests. The date which

is eleven nine or November ninety six. That Paul died, and the diamond in between the words he and die points directly at Paul. So obviously that is a sign that Paul died on November nine, actually greater than listen symbol that. Look at the image for ding Dong's it's it's just a diamond, yeah kind of And actually it doesn't say he die. It says it says one one E or I I E. No, that's just a bad image, is that? What it is actually is a cross a

little cross piece there. It's it's from the internet, of course, it's UM. There was a model of an Aston Martin, which was the type of car that Paul was supposedly driving at the time of his fatal accident, leaned against UM. A doll's leg in the picture, and the interior of this car is apparently read, which symbolizes Paul's bloody accident. There's a a grandmother figure that a doll is laying on, and there's something that looks much like a bloody stained

driving globe UM sitting there with that. There's a Japanese stone figure on the other side in front of the wax images of these younger beetles, and it's got a line on its head, which obviously represents the head wound that Paul sustained in his fatal accident or decapitation. I don't really know. The there's a four armed Indian doll

and front in like the very front center. Two of the dolls arms are raised pointing directly at New Paul fall and Paul Old Paul UM, which apparently signifies something. The television set on the ground to the right of the Beatles is turned off, suggesting that the news of the tragedy had been suppressed. And then UM in the photo. On the sleeve of Paul's uniform is a patch that says O p D, which is obviously UM stands for

officially pronounced dead. Right, So you guys want to go back and talk about some of these, Yeah, So I actually looked up UM. I actually was able to find some behind the scenes pictures of this photo shoot, which we're actually really really interesting from the different angles and just people. It was actually like UM people painting the figures that are standing behind them and getting them all set up, and then the Beatles in different pose is and the Beatles kind of just hanging out, and so

that was really interesting and also very enlightening. So let's talk a little bit about what that informed me of for this stuff. The idea that there's a hand over Paul's head as though he were being blessed, that's a that's a waving figure. He just happens to be standing in front of picture of somebody who's who's waving was waving in the original. Yes, there's another photo that you know just as well could have been the album cover

and John Lennon was standing under it. So does that mean that that was also a sign that John Lennon was going to be assassinated? That Oh my god, the bass guitar also looks exactly like a p so maybe it actually stands for Paul, or even if you squint

really hard, it could even spell out Paul. Either way, I think it's silly just in general that its gar Yeah, I've actually seen some pretty funny images of this where people have also insert did other things, so that, um, the I think something about camera what part of it. But it says lies in the main text of Sergeant Pepper. But the funny thing is that if you look at the original and then you look at this one, that

shows that it says lies it's so freaking photoshop it's absurd. Yeah, absolutely, that's the problem. And then well I I say that, yeah, because we find so many of them, some of them we just it becomes an avalanche. Well, and the thing to also remember is that this this was created on a sound stage basically, like all of the flowers were actually arranged, all everything was actually arranged, and they were

actually in the space. It's not like a modern photo shoot where things are then photoshopped on top or even altered afterwards. And so you know, when we start talking about well it looks like there's only three sticks instead of four, it's a bad camera angle. There's four sticks on their calm down next the I one I X he died. Yeah, that's very similar to the backwards recordings. Yeah, it's interpretation. I don't really see it. I do, I I see it, but it's it's one of those things

that you're just you're grasping for things. It's very convenient that it's the Roman numeral I for the first thing, and then spelled out O N E for the second, with an X followed after it to make eleven. Why can't it be one one ten's But here's the other such a stretch. And here's the really big thing is that you may or may not be forgetting that the Beatles were British and they date things day month year,

not month day year. So if they were going to insert something, why in the world would they do it in the American style of eleven nine instead of nine eleven daw because we're the only world smarta to figure it out, obviously, you're right. Well, yeah, probably the person to photoshop this is an American, right, Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah. Yeah. And also that not the difference in fonts between the E and he and the reverse three. Yeah, that's what's

going on with that. Um is that is that reverse three? Is that symbol as the remaining live Beetles? Um? Okay, So the Aston Martin thing. To be honest, I don't see any car model in the image. It's really small. But furthermore, the car that crashed that Paul owned that night was actually a Mini Cooper, not an Aston Martin, so no wonder he died. Yeah. Um, that does look like there's a bloody glove being worn by the grandmother figure. I'll give you that, but it also it's not it

looks like a glove. It doesn't have to be a driving glove. It just looks like a white glove. And there are such things as in red gloves. Right, Yeah, well it's not it's looks like it's blood stained, like, yeah, it's not just all read. The Japanese stone figure is one that I've seen a lot of and they always look like that, so I don't I don't think that's crazy. Um. Also, he was decapitated, not conked on the head, so like,

why didn't it just not have a head? The Shiva doll she is, yes, okay, the Shiva doll is pointing at Paul and Paul fair again, she's also pointing in everybody else. No, she even got six arms. She's pointing six different directions. It's two down and or it's four down and two up. The only two up are pointing

at Paul and and fall. However, Shiva's all often depicted like that, so like, and it's a it's one of those like Coopie dolls kind of, so the arms only go in so many directions, got it, Yeah, and that you know it's Paul was Paul probably thought of himself as you know, kind of being in charge of the whole thing. So he probably insisted on, you know, being the center of attention a little. Maybe it's possible voice,

yeah it was. He's still alive. It doesn't matter. M The television, the television set being off doesn't bother me at all, because like, why would the television set be on for for this? Have you ever tried to photograph a television? It's done. Also then also you need a power chord, you know, maybe somebody forgot the power chords.

Oh my god. And then the patch that's on paul sleeve you can see in a lot of other places and also in these other photos that I saw, it's actually an Ontario Provincial Police badge, which you can see in other photo shoots and you can look up pictures of and it looks the same. So calm down. So it is that calm down? Well, why did they go with Ontario Provincial Police? I don't know it was colorful because it says oh it doesn't it says O P

P O. Wow. I never expect to. Uh. Next up, we're going to talk about the rest of this cover because it's like one of the biggest clues. But we're kind of so Sergeant Pepper's only Heart Club Band album was kind of a new thing. They included a sleeve that included um lyrics and things like that in in the album, and that wasn't a thing that they were really doing before then, No I became kind of the

standard operating. Yeah, they kind of set the standards. So on the sleeve there are a lot of clues to you guys, ready to talk about those please okay? UM. So on the picture, um, behind all of the lyrics and track listings, Paul has his back turned to the camera about the other three are facing front. And by the way, it's more of a close up of the band. Only the background, the painted background and all the flowers and stuff isn't there. It's not there anymore. Yeah, it's

just the band members. And then he has black buttons on the back of his coat, which um apparently represent the morning of the other Beatles. There's three of them, three of the Beatles and also three of the buttons. If that wasn't clear, all of them except for Ringo so um, John, Paul, and George were all about the same height, at least they were when they first started recording.

And let's just go ahead and start that off by saying they start recording when they were in there, like early twenties, and men typically grow until they're and they're like mid to late twenties. They keep growing for a while after that. And they started earlier than they started in their teams. And we'll talk about some dates a little bit, um. But so apparently it's very mysterious that suddenly Paul is taller than the other two, like he's

ascending the heaven. Next to Paul's head are the words without you, Um, from the song title within You without You, which is like my favorite Beatles song. Also Um, George appears to be pointing at the words Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins, which is, you know, when Paul died in his car accident. The title song

sergeant Um, it's very hot in here. Uh. That song introduces um one Billy Shears, who tells the audience in um, with a little help from my friends, quote, lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song and I'll try not to sing out of key. Paul's replacement, William campbell Um, was often called Billy Shears, and apparently, you know, he was still working on perfecting his singing voice to sound like Paul, so um, you know, he kind of is still adjusting to that, apparently because the Beatles didn't

put out an album for three years. Yeah, according to this, Okay, that isn't really that gap was there. I'm not up in my no, there's not. Actually, there's not actually a three year gap. I think I didn't think so. In the story that we told earlier about Paul picking up the woman, apparently her name was Rita, right well, and there's a song called Lovely Rita. It has a lyric that says I took her home and nearly made it.

So that's, you know, a song I made it. Yeah, And then towards the end of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band Reprised, you can hear a voice shouting Paul is dead. Yeah, really really dead. All right, let's back up and talk about some of these if we have to, we dor Okay, So, yeah, Paul Paula's back turn in in that picture, like I don't know why, but yeah, was the significance of him having black buttons on his jacket. Okay, Can I just stand on the soapbox for a second.

You always do I do It never ceases to amaze me at all of these crazy little references that people find in things. You know, Oh well, in this culture, a walrus means that to Vikings, and it's like, oh, well, so you're saying that instead of focusing on making music and chasing women and drinking and having a good time, the Beatles were sitting in a library going through tons and tons of cultural information to try and find references that they could plant it everything, Like right, They're so

random and out there. Yeah. Yeah, I think that they really had better things to do with their time. But I also think that probably what happened is on that particular day, Paul probably just had a really huge zip and so that's why he turned around developed in the photo shoot. Yeah it did. He was just stressed out or he I mean, there's just a million reasons he could have had a back turned. So, like, I guess

the subtitle for this episode should be calmed down. UM As to his height difference, it does appear that M. Paul probably did hit a growth spurt, and I have some height measurements, um. But regardless, we'll talk about the height thing a little bit later. I saw you, and I don't like it, um, but the body of that human is taller than the body of the other humans.

But calm down, like men grow. It's fine. As to George pointing at Wednesday morning at five o'clock the day begins, he was actually making an L, because if you look at the hands of the Beatles in that image, they're actually low key's spelling love. He's got his hands in an L, and then another one has it in an O, and then one of them has his hands tucked into his pants to make a V, and then the E is Yeah, they're spelling love. It's okay. He's not pointing

at anything. Also, it's not like they took the picture with the lyrics like in front of them, and I'm pretty sure that they weren't in the studio saying, oh, you know what, I'm going a point here, and you should arrange that so that it perfectly matches up with the time that Paul died. I don't know, well, I was gonna say, I don't know if either of you

have had to set type. I've had I've done it digitally, but do yeah, I mean back in the day when you had to do it manually, that would have been just insanity to say these three words must line up here. Um As to the whole idea of Billy Shears, it is a little weird that they made a song that included a Paul look alike name in it. But I also wasn't at all able to find the origin of William Campbell being called Billy Shears. So for all I know that nickname has been given to him post fact,

that would not be surprising. It wouldn't be surprising to me either, love Like, just why, I don't know that that really says anything at all. I don't think it does. That's not even a clue. And then as far as the Paul is dead, yeah, really really dead part, I don't know what that person is saying in the background. And this is again one of those instances where I read it and then I listened to it and it sounded like it to me, But nobody's ever provided me

with what was meant to be said there. Um. And also I think I could, you know, I could make it into anything. I could make it into a bunch of different things. It's just kind of in the background, really muffled. So I think that's silly. Yeah. Subtitle of this episode that's silly. No, it's calmed down. That calmed down, that's silly. Yeah, you're right next up the Abbey Road

coveritive clue. Yeah, there's lots of definitive clues here. Umfit definitively, we're going to do the same thing we just did, so buckle in. As you look at the four beatles, you will see that Paul is the only one out of step. So that draws attention to Paul. Again. If you haven't seen this, go look it up. But you've seen it. It's the one of the Beatles crossing a road with But if you can't remember it, go look it up because we're gonna reference it. Also, Paul happens

to be barefoot in this picture. The Beatles are shown in a really specific order. Um. John is dressed first in white like a priest would be be that, but would Ringo was dressed like an undertaker and all black. Paul is um quote shabby suited unquote um, and he resembles a corpse and obviously his feet are bare. And then um, George is in old jeans and he's a grave digger. Paul actually looks like a zombie in that photo. Yeah, he does. UM, if you take a closer look at Paul.

If you take a closer look at Paul, you'll see that he's holding a cigarette also known as a off and nail in his right hand. And anybody who's any kind of fan of the Beatles would know that Paul was actually left handed. So why does he have a cigarette in his right hand? UM? You know, actually people

proof proof UM. Behind George Harrison, there's a white Volkswagen which looks like an innocent car until you look at the license plate, which is UM like something on the top half, and then on the bottom half it's twenty eight if, which obviously means that you know, Paul would

be twenty eight if he were alive. And then there's UM a policeman and UM and a police car on the other side, which symbolizes the police who were called to the scene of the crime of UM Paul's accident in the nineteen sixty six But we're paid off to hush up the whole affair. Let's go back a First of all, I'm just gonna go ahead and say this right now. The Beatles had literally ten minutes to get a shot for this album cover, literally ten minutes. It

was super impromptu. Yeah, the these were holding up traffic. Um. They were really anxious to wrap up production on Abbey Road, and so they said, you know what, let's just go outside and take some pictures. That's what they did. They didn't plan anything. There was a photographer there, he took some pictures, they went back in. They picked the best one. That's what they were with. So the idea that they had time to plan all the symbolism like as it

is silly next, um, Paul being out of step. It turns out that almost every single one of the takes they were only like five, everyone was out of step, like really out of step. This was the only one where everyone was stepping at the same time. And the fact that Paul was on the wrong foot, it seemed pretty trivial. I gotta tell you that I never noticed that he was on the wrong foot. Yeah. He also he's the one who picked the picture, so I maybe, I don't know, maybe that's a sign. Maybe fall is

in on it. Yeah, maybe he also had Yeah he was barefoot. He had started out wearing sandals, but they were uncomfortable or getting in his way, so he just took him off. Yeah, I saw him on David Letterman. He was talking about this and he said he was wearing flip flops because it was a hot day and so yeah, he just said to kick him off. Yeah, so he's not wearing any shoes. In terms of the clothing, um, all of them were wearing suits, except for Harrison, who

is wearing okay, find maybe like shabby old jeans. I don't really know what his deal is, but um, the other three were wearing suits that were specifically designed for them by a designer by the name of Tommy Nutter, who I know sounds crazy but is actually a really prominent suit designer in um from Britain, not anymore. I don't remember if he's alive or not. But so this whole idea that Paul is in a shabby suit, that's silly. It's a designer suit designs specifically for him. Is Tommy Nutter,

the one who invented the cookie, the Nutter butter. Oh my god. Um, so Harrison was wearing Yeah, he was wearing jeans, but it wasn't even I mean, they're not old they was. He was wearing nice stuff. They're all wearing nice stuff. You're reading into it. Calm down, The next fact, which is really fun for me, is the bit about the cigarette. So at one point they're all smoking obviously, right, the Beatles smoked a lot, everybody did.

But the really interesting part about this, I guess to me at least, is that the working title for abbey Road was actually Everest because the sound designer that they worked with um smoked their engineer. They're sorry, their engineer, Their sound engineer, theater old habits too hard. Their sound engineer's favorite brand of cigarettes was called Everest and he was always smoking them. So they're working title was Everest.

They initially planned to continue to have that be the title and hire a private jet and go take pictures of Everest, and that was what the album was going to be, but they were running out of time and so Paul said, you know what, screw it, Um, we're

all tired of this. Let's just go take a picture outside in ten minutes as discussed, and then, UM, we'll just named after abbey Road and that's fine, And everyone said, okay, but I'm sure they wanted to continue to pay homage to that, at least the idea of calling it Everest in you know, respect to the sound engineer so they had a cigarette. And then okay, yeah, Paul was left handed, but like, if he had a cigarette in his left hand,

no one would be able to see it. You know what the great thing about cigarettes is you could smoke him with either hands hands. There is no such thing as a left hand only cigarette. But also, if you are trying to get it in the shot, you're gonna you're being shot from the right side. You're going to have it on the right side. I will also say that smokers typically don't even realize that they have a cigarette in their hand and that it's going to be included. Yeah.

I've seen so many photos of people who years they like, oh my god, a cigarette, no idea, how to cigarette? So those are the two options, right, Either he just forgot about it or it was intentional, but it was an homage to the fact that they were going to call it Everest and then that kind of fell through. And plus you know, I mean also, you know, probably a lot of smokers actually use their less dominant hand to hold the cigarettecause they're doing something else, Yeah, like

holding a drink. Yeah, you know. So yeah, in regards to the bug that had yeah, like I said, that was only half of the license plate. And also it actually just belonged to the people who lived in the flat next to the recording studio, so it just was there all the time. In fact, they had a big

problem with theft after Abbey Road was released. People would come and steal the license plate a lot, and then finally somebody stole the car itself, like the entire car, and it's now I think it's in a museum in Germany or something like that. They took it to Germany. Yeah, no, it's actually in a museum. It's like a famous artifact now. But it wasn't intentional. And then to the police, like there were police, they're holding up traffic, that's what they

were doing. You can see them holding up graphic Calm down. I'm sorry, that's the word of the day. Are people needing calming down? I mean, I know that this was a big thing back in the you know, late sixties, early seventies. But here's the big problem actually is that Ringo Star recently didn't interview where he mentioned something about Paul being dead, like in two thus fifteen mentioned something about Paul being dead, and it started it up again.

And I started up again also because it was Ringo Star saying something about Paul being dead, so people thought that was pretty good authority. I didn't actually watch any of those interviews, I'll be honest with you, because I just don't think that's But there there are so many people who have been so attached to I mean, you remember Jeff On in the Facebook group. That guy was

lobbying for this story all the time. We did it substantly. Yes, you know, we've satisfied it for Jeff, but but he was one of many where it was like you would talk about something and it would be oh, but then the Polish dead thing, and then you would talk about catfood with the Paul dead thing, and then you talk about the Chinese you had the night before. Don't let me go. So yeah, Jeff, Jeff, hey, this is this one is for you. But also calm down. It's a

fun story. It's been around forever. Well, there's actually a bit more here, unfortunately, So yeah, we're not done. Well, we are done with Abbey Road scene. I'm done. Your book is out, so I don't like you. So there's actually a bit um of an ad on theory here um and that is that actually um m I five had something to do with the of the selection of of the replacement of Paul, the replacement of Paul with Fall. Um, they helped select this person and we'll talk about who

it might be in just like one second. Um. But the whole reason for that is because Paul or fall whichever, just pretty quickly after being replaced, gave an interview in which he admitted to having used LSD, which encouraged a lot of young people to experiment with LSD, which was actually an m I five plot to be able to better control people in the late sixties early seventies because they were on LSD and hallucinogenic drugs and they were

easier to manipulate and control. So um. So M I five actually placed Fall there and had him admit that as Paul, And that's what happened there. We hadn't paid for these mikes and they weren't stuck in this mounty thing on in front of me. I would drop it on the ground, right now, you would, Yeah, I don't. I think that's who put this theory out there. Yeah, yeah, M five and m I six are always kind of

a logger. Yeah, Well, but you know who actually put it out there was m I seventeen because they're the deviouses they're on. Yeah. Yeah, well, I gotta tell you, I don't think that people being high on LSD or coming down from LST or any easier to control. But hey, that's just me. So who who replaced Paul? I mean, assuming clues are mysteries, who is fault? I guess kind of. I don't know. I don't really know what this mystery is. Um it's you know, is Paul dead? Well? Probably not.

But if he is, who, um? Yeah, according to fall he's not. You mean, um, so he could have been replaced, as we mentioned before, um by one Mr William Campbell, who was actually called Billy Shears. His name was William Shears Campbell. He did win a Paul look like contest, although I've never been able to find any pictures. Didn't. I didn't either, and I haven't been able to find

any pictures. One would assume that if somebody want to look like contests, there would be pictures of that person everywhere, but not so I guess almost that's a little suspicious, right, So if she disappeared, WHOA what does that mean? Well, he did apparently disappear, but again, no official reports or anything like that. So maybe he didn't so much disappear just or just never exist. And so again I don't know if he could sing or not. Um, it's a

good question. And then the other person he could have been is um this guy named Billie Shepherd. I'm not sure why it's always Billy, but it's always Billy. Billy Shepherd didn't really look a whole lot like Paul, but he was the ex leader of Billy Pepper and the pepper Pots, which was a band, uh in kind of contemporary band of the Beatles, and they sounded quite a

bit like the Beatles. Actually, he sounded quite a bit like Paul Um at least in the early days of the Beatles, the kind of poppy, you know, she loves me kind of stuff. Yeah, but I don't think I from all the pictures I saw, he didn't really look like Paul, so he would have had to undergone pretty extensive plastic surgery. And whoever it was obviously just hated John because they began to fight just incessantly. Yeah, or he just wanted to, you know, go solo. I wanted

to just live his life as Paul and that was it. Yeah, I kind of think that it would have made more sense to forgo the plastic surgery and just say, hey, unfortunately Paul I got killed, but we have this awesome replacement is super talented, and that would be the simplest answer. But according to our conspiracy friends, that is not the word the way the world operates, because young girls would

be throwing themselves off of bridges and buildings everywhere. Yeah, and I actually have I have some pictures in this script that unfortunately our UM listeners can't see. But the pictures are. The pictures are kind of where I start to lose my skepticism a little bit just looking at them. And you guys, I really encourage you all post some links to some stuff that encourages that that has some UM side by side comparisons. I um, I see what

people see. I totally see what people see. I don't think that, you know, old Paul looks like new Paul really that much at all. Does he look like that to you for the most part? Does? I'm sorry one of you said no, there are difference. Isn't anyone said no, he looks like him? So look at these two guys,

they're like similar. Those are the ones that look the most similar, but there's like a lot of differences in those um and then particularly the ones on these two pages, Like the chin is totally different, and that's not like a weight loss thing. It's a totally different chin shape. I don't believe that. You don't. I don't. Okay, you're

gonna do your photo analysis thing that you do. Well, No, I don't have to analyze any photos other than look at him and go, Okay, that photo was taken in nineteen sixty three and the other photo was taken in nineteen sixty seven or sixty eight. Okay, ballpark, ballpark ranges here. But there's a couple of things. The guys are aging, they're losing their baby fat. That's going to have an impact on it's a heroin addict, also in a methodict.

Yeah it wasn't, but but they can. They probably all got a little bit of plastic surgery here and there to fix some things they didn't like make in the sixties that was so prevalent, though I don't think so. I don't know, you know, at the at the level of fame that they had, I'm not going to say that they couldn't have done it, but there's some things that really make me think that it is just simply aging.

And one of them is the insane schedule that the Beatles held between So you guys have read the history of the Beatles and and there's this point where they spent a bunch of time in Hamburg, and they were there over the course of like three or four years. This is before the US invasion. They did twelve hundred live events in three years or three and a half years.

That's a freaking insane schedule. They worked hard. I have a popular and I have a feeling that a lot of these early photos that we see have two things going on. One is they're probably wearing makeup is going to hide the wrinkles, and two, they've probably been airbrushed because it wasn't around, so you had to airbrush photos so that the wrinkles went away. So that's a huge thing to me, is that they had worked so hard for so long, they're gonna burn out. They're gonna be

drinking and partying and chasing skirts and just having fun. Well, they're gonna burn off that fat. They're They're not gonna be a twenty two year old kid anymore. They're gonna be a twenty six year old guy, and you see that with a lot of men where it's like he was so baby faced and then suddenly he has a chin and a jawline and it's weird and how did that happen? Like that happens all the time. Yeah, yeah, total, yeah. Yeah.

The height thing, so let's I'll just say that. Um. In uh, nineteen sixty three, there was a biography that was published of Paul and it said that he was five eleven, and then in nineteen sixty seven he reported that he was six to um, which is it was just strange because Paul never looked that tall to me. Yeah, he didn't look that tall to me either. But I also, I mean they started wearing lifts like he was wearing shoes. But also, dudes grow. Paul was always the tallest of

them if you look. So I laughed at this because there was some articles that I came across from people like well, I found this live performance where they were moving around and I was trying to use that to judge the height of one or the other. Okay, you

didn't need to do that. They had all kinds of skills and they're like my My favorite one is they came off the plane when they first hit the States, which means that they were they weren't wearing fancy, fancy shoes and stuff, because if we're on a plane all day. But you know, who's the tallest, Paul, So he didn't suddenly get taller than the other guys. He was always a little taller than the other Well, and the pictures that I always see are of them, you know, wearing

exactly the same thing. So people say, oh, but they didn't wear exactly the same thing, you know, much longer than after they got popular. So it's always kind of stuff. It's really grainy, crappy pictures, and it's like, oh, yeah, see that one, that one's Paul. And it's like, I don't know, they all have the exact same haircut, they all have dark, dark hair, they're all wearing the same thing. That could be Paul, that could be Ringo, that could

be anyone. I don't know who that is. So you can't just say, oh, look that's that one because they all look exactly the same. The photo is so grainy, e they're wearing the same thing. And then a lot of it is taken from like their Ed Sullivan appearance, which is video tape. It's it's it's that tape. It's film, which is not that greater equality film, and it has

an aged well. The other thing from that Teleivan film that people talk about is the changes in Paul's performance demeanor, which is always so interesting to me because it's like, dude, yeah, they were like brand new to the stage. They had never really performed on that scale before, and I'm sure he was nervous. And then as they performs for The Sullivan Show, the sensors would walk up and say, don't do this. I mean, there's famous stories about what they told.

Have you ever seen there's that gag video out there. I think it's an S and L thing about Elvis Pressley on The Sullivan Show, and they said, you can't shake your hips, it's it's too sexual, and he went ahead and did it. And there's they put a black bar across his waist, which I did, and then he keeps shaking and the bar keeps rising, he keeps trying to get taller till there's nothing but Elvis's chin and the in his eyes on the screen, and the whole rest of the screen is black like that but that

is the extent that the sensors went to. They did crazy stuff, and I'm sure that they were afraid to do anything. Heard that story about the doors, right, there's a whole bunch of them. Yeah, So, I mean I agree that it's um, they're not good reasons. You have more. I see your book out. Yeah, I know the book didn't go away. There's still there's let's let's go there.

Let's throw on the fire for this, okay. Um, So I think that where there's this whole thing of Paul being in an accident, and that's where this whole story. But you do know was never in an accident. Yes he was. He was in a mo Pad accident. Okay, he was in a Mopad accident. That's how he chipped his tooth and that's how he got the scar on his lip. But I think that is the kernel of

oh my god, Paul was in an accident? What actually had? Right? Okay, So a car that he owned was in a really serious accident, and he was in a Mopad accident probably you know, within a year or so of each other. Who was driving his friends. I don't remember his name. There's well, there's there's several friends. There was no he crashed, he totaled the car. But he was like, fine, well

that's for the Mini Cooper. Yeah, there is when you when you go on the internet, you will see a series of very iconic photos which show I believe it's an Aston Martin, it's a sports car and this thing is just ripped up and I see it referenced all the time for this story. But that's the Princess Die car. Well but here's the thing, No, this is this is

total sixties sporty. I started Google image searching, and I love the fact that you can grab an image and look for other similars, and very quickly found out that there was indeed an accident in the December of nineve which people then spun forward to this possible November sixties

six thing. And is there is a friend of the band, a guy whose name was Tara Brown, and he was you know, he was a big guy, or not a big he was a semi famous and he was hanging around with the band doing stuff and he was driving his car and he had a woman in the car with him, and he swerved to avoid another car and he careened through park cars and while it said that he was going exceptionally fast. It killed him and his head. He took severe damage to his skull and it killed him.

But it wasn't Paul. He looked nothing like Paul. But he was a friend of the Beatles. So this is as with always, it's a game of telephone. A friend of the Beatles was in a car accident in a sports car, and then it do do Do Do Do do? Paul is dead. So that's why thing is that. I because I was confused when I read your stuff about it being the Mini and I what the hell? Yeah,

I guess I should have clarified. I'm realizing I didn't at this point, Um that that story that we told in the beginning is the like Steve version of things, when we told the most fantastical version of anything. That's what that is, realistic magical mystery tour. Yeah, none of it happened. It didn't happen. Sorry, Yeah, I know it was. Actually I don't. I didn't even know that it grew from that, Colonel Truth. I thought somebody just made it up. I really believe that somebody made it up. He did.

It was an amalgam of a lot of things. Yeah, I I think with a lot of these things, it's it's held together with spit and duct tape, and it just I don't know how it survives. Just a heck of a lot of LSD. Yeah, there's a lot of things that No, actually there's not a lot of things have been held together by LSD. So you don't know, do you have any more stuff that we need to

just nothing that is that is really good? Good bits that the car and the friend were really and that the origin of the scar and the tooth, that it's not a different human being he got like people get those things. Yeah, there was actually somebody who said, Paul, you need to get your tooth fixed it it looks kind of bad. People are going to notice. But apparently it's you know, there was no nerves are and he just didn't care. You never fixed it. Yeah, I never

get fixed a little super glup, you know. I mean that. But you know, even though I don't believe that Paul died, there is a similar, more recent thing, which is Avril Levine. No, there's a lot, there's actually a lot of this stuff out there, and it's not it's well, it's not just I mean, I love the avro Levine thing I do. There's also like the Beyonce was never pregnant thing. There's like there's so many of these things out there that

people are just like crazy, we'll be talking about Levin. No, I'll just say the moral of the story is just like calm down, Yeah, like take a step back and think about what you're saying. Well, the thing about it is is that if Paul truly is dead, well they found a really good replacement and who cares. Yeah, it's amazing that they managed to find a replacement that looked

like sound like that could play the same instrument, could write. Yeah, like the coincidence for that, the alignment of the stars, and really realistically, to Joe's point, I mean Fall, if it is, Fall has been Paul for longer than Paul ever really was, and at this point he is Paul. That's just that's so, what you're telling me is that

the British monarchy united an impersonator. Yeah, why not. It wouldn't be the first time, and that, by the way, Fall probably deserved it, you know, because he made many contributions to the band, apparently at least after he was swapped in for Paul. Yeah, yeah, so I guess he deserves his knighthood. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. So. UM. If you want to see any of the lengths of the research that we did, um, we'll try to include some that have pictures at hatch to them. You can

find that information on Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Uh. You can find us on Facebook. We have a group and we have a page. UM, so find both of those pretty cool things. I guess I don't know. Uh. We have a Twitter we're thinking sideways. We have a subreddit which is thinking Sideways. Um. We have an email address, so you can email us just like literally whatever you want. I don't really care. Um. That email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You're probably listening to

us on iTunes. If you are and you haven't already, subscribe and leave a comment and rating. If you are listening to us on a streaming site and you can subscribe and leave a comment rating, do that as well. Side note on that obviously, if you have some constructive criticism, please email us so we can have a dialogue about it. Um. We're not trying to get out of bad reviews if you genuinely have a bad review, but all so email us let us know. Um, we don't have a chance

to check all of our bad reviews. Sorry, um, not that there's like a million of them and there's nothing we can do in response. Yeah, we can't have a discussion to find out really what's going on. Okay. And then also, if you want to contribute to the show in a financial matter, there's you know, no obligation to you can get merch. Um, there's links to that on our website. Yeah, totally in stickers. Um, if you want to contribute one time, we do have a PayPal there's

a link to that on the website. Um, if you want to do a recurring donation, that's awesome. That's our favorite. Um that's going to be on Patreon. That's patreon dot com, slash thinking sideways and thanks to everybody who donates, and thanks to considering donating. And I think that's everything. Yeah. So I guess we're gonna, you know, just get out of here. Okay, So I'm going to join a Beatles tribute band, and I'm gonna be bulled. I think we

had to like start a Beatles tribute band. All we need, Actually we don't. We can do it three because Paul's dead, right, I'm not Ringo. I'm not Ringo. I'll be Ringo. I'm George. Alright, Ringo. Let's get out of here, right bye, guys. I love you, yeah yeah, I love you yeah yeah yeah. I love luck that. You know, you should be glad