dilligas66 said:
In the late 60s half of the people on the planet became convinced for a short while that Paul McCartney was dead. Someone called into a radio station and made the claim that he played one of the Beatles' songs backward and the words came out- 'Paul is dead'. Before long we were all sitting around the turntable taking our finger and trying our best to play the song backward. Then radio stations began playing a professionally produced version of the song in reverse. The most ardent fans heard loud and clear... 'Paul is dead'. The rest of us heard gibberish. However, the gibberish crowd seemed less convinced than the others, and in the back of our minds thought it was possible, as crazy as it seemed.
This thread reminds me of that escapade. Once again, I'm in the 'gibberish crowd'. And once again, I have those 'what if' things rumbling in the back of my mind.
I suppose I can take some solace that McCartney will be playing in the Rangers Ballpark in June...
At the risk of thread derailment, I remember being captivated by the same rumor. I was in 6th or 7th grade. We'd go down to the corner market and read the tabloid stories.
It was more than just playing a song backward. During the long fadeout to Strawberry Fields Forever you can clearly hear a voice say, "I buried Paul." There were lots of visual clues in the booklet that was stitched into the original LP jacket to Magical Mystery Tour. For example, there's a photo of the band in white tuxedos. All the others are wearing red carnations, but Paul's carnation is black. There's a big crowd shot where someone is holding a hand over Paul's head (which, according to the tabloids, was a symbol for death). On the famous photo on the cover of Abbey Road, the other Beatles are wearing shoes but Paul is barefoot.
The claim was that, during their travels, the Beatles had met someone who was the spitting image of Paul. As a goof, they paid him to travel with them and sometimes stand in for Paul to see if they could actually fool people. When they saw it worked, they taught him to sing and play. Then, supposedly, the real Paul was killed in a car crash. They covered it all up and from then on passed off the body double as the real Paul.
We were all riveted back in 1968 or 1969, whenever it was.
"Free your ass and your mind will follow." -- George Clinton