The weight of evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Sir James Paul McCartney OBE did not perish in 1966, and is still quite alive at the time of this posting. First of all, the PID rumor presupposes willingness on the part of numerous officials to ignore their own concerns and violate their own procedures in order to help the Beatles maintain their prominence and wealth. As we can easily determine from FBI files, US and UK Intelligence had an animus against rock stars during the 1960s. They had nothing to gain by helping the band pull off such a hoax. Most important, every bit of documentary, anecdotal, and eyewitness evidence stresses that McCartney is still alive.
Meanwhile, the abundant clues and the scant evidence offered are specious, fraudulent, or irrelevant.
As I said earlier, recording forward lyrics that one can purposely reverse would require a painstaking effort to produce a very limited quantity of messages (say three or four). But here, we have scores of backmasked “clues” from a very prolific band. And if the listener is predisposed to the rumor’s main tenets, then she can pick out just about any collection of stray sounds and construe them as something intelligible. Thus, backmasking doesn’t offer any evidence that McCartney is dead.
Likewise, one can construe cryptic lyrics any way he wants, especially when he takes the words out of context. For example, the line in the song “Glass Onion” that goes “And here’s another clue for you all; The walrus was Paul” refers to Lennon’s frustrations about listener misinterpretation of his lyrics and statements. And since “Glass Onion” appeared on the White Album, released in 1968, there’s no logic in Lennon referring to “another clue,” since previous clues had yet to emerge until the fall of 1969.
The Terry Knight song “St. Paul” faced similar misinterpretation. In context, the song mocks the Beatles for selling out, thus alluding to a metaphoric death, not a literal one.
Many PID proponents harp on the fact that Lennon and McCartney published the song, but none of Knight’s other tunes as if there is some type of sinister connection. The reason for Maclen to publish “St. Paul” is quite obvious. The song has an extended quotation from the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” Had Knight (left) produced the song in 2007, he could have done so free and clear, since current law allows one artist to copy another for purposes of parody. In 1969, such a tune would have straddled a gray legal area. Rather than go to court and sue for copyright infringement, Lennon and McCartney opted to do something sensible: they simply licensed “St. Paul” themselves to take their rightful share of the profits from it.
As for the visual cues, the Beatles didn’t do their own artwork; others did. Even when the Beatles controlled their own visual representations, such as The Magical Mystery Tour, which they wrote and directed, other aspects such as the album cover, the accompanying booklet, et cetera were done by professionals. Their involvement with Yellow Submarine was limited even further to their non-animated appearance at the end. Voice actors depicted them onscreen, and they had no control of the script or editing. If there were intentional clues in these, they didn’t come from the Beatles.
I believe that some of the clues are deliberate, and not random. A few came from the Beatles themselves, but only after the band broke up for good. They goofed on the rumor occasionally, and that explains the post-Beatle clues.
In other words, there is nothing probative about the vast bulk of the Paul Is Dead evidence. Worse yet, the traditionally cited evidence at best demonstrates randomness and selective stimuli response. Facial and vocal analyses are the only real evidence that hint at the possibility of something untoward. Yet they alone do not indicate McCartney’s death, let alone prove it. Moreover, much of the facial evidence is fraudulent.
R. Gary Patterson, a researcher who looks extensively into rock controversies and oddities, became intrigued by the facial recognition tests that indicated an unnatural change in McCartney’s physical appearance. Instead of expressing an ill-informed opinion, he sought help from experts, specifically the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, in preparation for a Coast-to-Coast interview on the subject. The TBI found the photographs used to prove alleged differences between McCartney and William Campbell were, well, worthless:
Figure 1. Paul McCartney c. 1961
In many of the comparison photographs between McCartney and “William Campbell” someone has altered McCartney’s face. The differences are quite subtle. Nevertheless, they betray a very judicious use of Photoshop (or Photochop, as She puts it) somewhere along the line.
Figure 2. Paul McCartney, Spies Like Us album image (left), and altered image purporting to be from the same album (right)
At first glance, the faces look the same. But if you click on the image (to enlarge it), you’ll see that the genuine McCartney photo (left), although grainier, shows more detail with respect to his hair. Secondly, in the real McCartney photo the inner eyelid fold is more pronounced, despite the fact that it’s of lower quality. Note too the difference in nose size and angle between the real photograph and the fake one.
Although the differences are slight, the altered picture fits more neatly into an argument that McCartney had (pardon the expression) two faces, and thus could not have been the same individual. As an old mentor used to tell me, photographs don’t lie, but photographers do.
While negotiation of the facial recognition analysis breaks down under scrutiny, the vocal analysis is tougher to dismiss. Dr. Truby was a highly respected linguist, and would have been one of the best people on the planet to take on the job of analyzing McCartney’s voice. If he said there were three voices, then there were three distinct voices identified as Paul McCartney.
The operant phrase is “identified as Paul McCartney.” Truby analyzed data given to him by others. Many non-musicians hear function before they hear actual sound, so it’s quite likely that if someone else in the band performed in the style of McCartney, listeners might mistake him for Paul. When John Lennon sang lead, for example, McCartney’s role entailed performing a linear modal harmony above him, almost always at the third. Sometimes, however, internal band squabbles would upset this arrangement. As McCartney explained to dedicated Beatles researcher Mark Lewisohn for the book The Beatles: Recording Sessions:
Meanwhile, the abundant clues and the scant evidence offered are specious, fraudulent, or irrelevant.
As I said earlier, recording forward lyrics that one can purposely reverse would require a painstaking effort to produce a very limited quantity of messages (say three or four). But here, we have scores of backmasked “clues” from a very prolific band. And if the listener is predisposed to the rumor’s main tenets, then she can pick out just about any collection of stray sounds and construe them as something intelligible. Thus, backmasking doesn’t offer any evidence that McCartney is dead.
Likewise, one can construe cryptic lyrics any way he wants, especially when he takes the words out of context. For example, the line in the song “Glass Onion” that goes “And here’s another clue for you all; The walrus was Paul” refers to Lennon’s frustrations about listener misinterpretation of his lyrics and statements. And since “Glass Onion” appeared on the White Album, released in 1968, there’s no logic in Lennon referring to “another clue,” since previous clues had yet to emerge until the fall of 1969.
The Terry Knight song “St. Paul” faced similar misinterpretation. In context, the song mocks the Beatles for selling out, thus alluding to a metaphoric death, not a literal one.
Many PID proponents harp on the fact that Lennon and McCartney published the song, but none of Knight’s other tunes as if there is some type of sinister connection. The reason for Maclen to publish “St. Paul” is quite obvious. The song has an extended quotation from the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” Had Knight (left) produced the song in 2007, he could have done so free and clear, since current law allows one artist to copy another for purposes of parody. In 1969, such a tune would have straddled a gray legal area. Rather than go to court and sue for copyright infringement, Lennon and McCartney opted to do something sensible: they simply licensed “St. Paul” themselves to take their rightful share of the profits from it.As for the visual cues, the Beatles didn’t do their own artwork; others did. Even when the Beatles controlled their own visual representations, such as The Magical Mystery Tour, which they wrote and directed, other aspects such as the album cover, the accompanying booklet, et cetera were done by professionals. Their involvement with Yellow Submarine was limited even further to their non-animated appearance at the end. Voice actors depicted them onscreen, and they had no control of the script or editing. If there were intentional clues in these, they didn’t come from the Beatles.
I believe that some of the clues are deliberate, and not random. A few came from the Beatles themselves, but only after the band broke up for good. They goofed on the rumor occasionally, and that explains the post-Beatle clues.
In other words, there is nothing probative about the vast bulk of the Paul Is Dead evidence. Worse yet, the traditionally cited evidence at best demonstrates randomness and selective stimuli response. Facial and vocal analyses are the only real evidence that hint at the possibility of something untoward. Yet they alone do not indicate McCartney’s death, let alone prove it. Moreover, much of the facial evidence is fraudulent.
R. Gary Patterson, a researcher who looks extensively into rock controversies and oddities, became intrigued by the facial recognition tests that indicated an unnatural change in McCartney’s physical appearance. Instead of expressing an ill-informed opinion, he sought help from experts, specifically the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, in preparation for a Coast-to-Coast interview on the subject. The TBI found the photographs used to prove alleged differences between McCartney and William Campbell were, well, worthless:
The resolution of the pictures is not comparison quality--different angles are not a scientific way to examine photographs especially to back up an argument. Different angles are there to give an overall view only but not for comparison. It has to theoretically be an exact of the one you are comparing it against.I myself noticed immediately that the apparent shape of McCartney’s face prior to 1966 was the result of two things. First off, the infamous moptop haircut created an optical illusion of roundness for McCartney, but not the other Beatles. That’s probably due to the uniqueness of his head shape. After all, the exact same haircut can have a different effect on any two people. Secondly, the effect became more pronounced when he tilted his head back just a little. Most important, when one takes a look at McCartney before the moptop days, one discovers that he actually had a long, rectangular face to begin with.
Changes in muscle movements in various photographs cannot be seen with the naked eye but can change measurements if you are comparing only photographs. That is why unless you can see beneath the skin to the actual muscle-then you cannot say precisely what a facial measurement is especially using two photographs that are that dissimilar in expression for comparison.
Figure 1. Paul McCartney c. 1961
In many of the comparison photographs between McCartney and “William Campbell” someone has altered McCartney’s face. The differences are quite subtle. Nevertheless, they betray a very judicious use of Photoshop (or Photochop, as She puts it) somewhere along the line.
Figure 2. Paul McCartney, Spies Like Us album image (left), and altered image purporting to be from the same album (right)
At first glance, the faces look the same. But if you click on the image (to enlarge it), you’ll see that the genuine McCartney photo (left), although grainier, shows more detail with respect to his hair. Secondly, in the real McCartney photo the inner eyelid fold is more pronounced, despite the fact that it’s of lower quality. Note too the difference in nose size and angle between the real photograph and the fake one.
Although the differences are slight, the altered picture fits more neatly into an argument that McCartney had (pardon the expression) two faces, and thus could not have been the same individual. As an old mentor used to tell me, photographs don’t lie, but photographers do.
While negotiation of the facial recognition analysis breaks down under scrutiny, the vocal analysis is tougher to dismiss. Dr. Truby was a highly respected linguist, and would have been one of the best people on the planet to take on the job of analyzing McCartney’s voice. If he said there were three voices, then there were three distinct voices identified as Paul McCartney.
The operant phrase is “identified as Paul McCartney.” Truby analyzed data given to him by others. Many non-musicians hear function before they hear actual sound, so it’s quite likely that if someone else in the band performed in the style of McCartney, listeners might mistake him for Paul. When John Lennon sang lead, for example, McCartney’s role entailed performing a linear modal harmony above him, almost always at the third. Sometimes, however, internal band squabbles would upset this arrangement. As McCartney explained to dedicated Beatles researcher Mark Lewisohn for the book The Beatles: Recording Sessions:
It's a nice one. I like the title ‘She Said She Said,’ which I think was made up on the session. John brought it in pretty much finished, I think. I'm not sure but I think it was one of the only Beatle records I never played on. I think we had a barney or something and I said, ‘Oh, fuck you!’ and they said, ‘Well, we'll do it.’ I think George played bass.
Figure 3. “She Said, She Said” excerpt
For the song “She Said, She Said,” George Harrison took over on bass and vocals. I have little doubt that someone could have confused him as McCartney on this cut, especially in some sections where he sounds rather close. Thus, Harrison’s pretty much a lock as the second Paul, especially since he's said to have done a pitch-perfect impersonation of his three bandmates.
The third McCartney voice belonged to an impersonator, a rather obscure Apple employee named Tony Bramwell. Bramwell admitted in 1990 that McCartney’s characteristic seclusion forced him to take on the bassist’s identity for telephone interviews and other Apple-related business.
So now, all of the Pauls are present and accounted for. The remaining evidence—laterality, height and eye color—are likewise better explained by more mundane circumstances. First of all, I’ve seen footage of McCartney writing with his right hand in 1964, and with his left hand in 1967. That tells us that (a) McCartney’s actually ambidextrous; or (b) the films in one or both cases were reversed, a pretty common practice in image making. If it’s the former reason, then that negates this aspect of the rumor. If it’s the latter reason, then it renders the point moot. Second, I’ve known people whose eye color changes during the day, depending on the amount of sunlight reaching the irises. Furthermore, McCartney could have simply been experimenting with colored contact lenses. As for the height, the first Jane Asher photograph (posted previously) doesn’t show us a true height differential, for the cropping doesn’t show their legs. For all we know, she could have stood on a step in that first image, therefore exaggerating the height differences in the second. Then too, in the comparison of photos between McCartney and his bandmates, we again run into the problem of varying angles, and forced perspective. What’s more, McCartney could have been wearing elevator shoes in some photos, and not in others. Note that in the famous Abbey Road photograph McCartney’s barefoot, and doesn’t appear appreciatively taller than Harrison, who’s walking behind him.
Figure 4. Abbey Road photograph
For the song “She Said, She Said,” George Harrison took over on bass and vocals. I have little doubt that someone could have confused him as McCartney on this cut, especially in some sections where he sounds rather close. Thus, Harrison’s pretty much a lock as the second Paul, especially since he's said to have done a pitch-perfect impersonation of his three bandmates.
The third McCartney voice belonged to an impersonator, a rather obscure Apple employee named Tony Bramwell. Bramwell admitted in 1990 that McCartney’s characteristic seclusion forced him to take on the bassist’s identity for telephone interviews and other Apple-related business.
So now, all of the Pauls are present and accounted for. The remaining evidence—laterality, height and eye color—are likewise better explained by more mundane circumstances. First of all, I’ve seen footage of McCartney writing with his right hand in 1964, and with his left hand in 1967. That tells us that (a) McCartney’s actually ambidextrous; or (b) the films in one or both cases were reversed, a pretty common practice in image making. If it’s the former reason, then that negates this aspect of the rumor. If it’s the latter reason, then it renders the point moot. Second, I’ve known people whose eye color changes during the day, depending on the amount of sunlight reaching the irises. Furthermore, McCartney could have simply been experimenting with colored contact lenses. As for the height, the first Jane Asher photograph (posted previously) doesn’t show us a true height differential, for the cropping doesn’t show their legs. For all we know, she could have stood on a step in that first image, therefore exaggerating the height differences in the second. Then too, in the comparison of photos between McCartney and his bandmates, we again run into the problem of varying angles, and forced perspective. What’s more, McCartney could have been wearing elevator shoes in some photos, and not in others. Note that in the famous Abbey Road photograph McCartney’s barefoot, and doesn’t appear appreciatively taller than Harrison, who’s walking behind him.
Figure 4. Abbey Road photograph
While we can see that nothing serious supports the Paul Is Dead rumor, there are, nevertheless, elements of truth behind it. What we have to consider is how the story came about. We also have to wonder if the resultant hoopla came from someone’s deliberate attempts to convince the public that he died over four decades ago.
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