The ‘Paul McCartney is Dead’ Hoax

The car crash at the end of Revolution 9.  The funereal-looking yellow flower arrangement in the shape of a left-handed bass on the cover of Sgt Pepper.  A barefoot Paul, eyes closed and out of step with the other Beatles, in the zebra crossing on the cover of Abbey Road. In the same shot, the Volkswagen Beetle with its license plate reading LMW-28IF. The eerie spoken references to death that could be heard when certain recordings were played backwards.   

Some “clues” were chilling; others – in retrospect – seem silly. Taken all together,
they appeared compelling, or at least oddly coincidental.   

To some Beatles fans, these “clues” were proof positive — Paul McCartney was dead, and had been for three years.   

The rumour sprang to life in the fall of 1969, in the wake of a tumultuous summer. The Manson murders had horrified the nation, Lieutenant William Calley had been charged with murder in the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians, and hundreds of thousands of people were taking to the streets to protest the war. In the UK, British troops had been deployed to North Ireland. The Beatles, who had just released Abbey Road, were disbanding, and Paul McCartney — in virtual seclusion in his castle in Scotland with Linda McCartney – was granting no interviews.   

So the time was perhaps ripe for a rumour of this sort to take root. What is amazing is the speed with which an account of Paul’s “death,” complete with dates, times and details, materialized almost overnight.   

In the early morning hours of November 9, 1966, according to the story, a drunken, angry Paul stormed out in the middle of a recording session and sped away in his Aston Martin. At 5 am, he crashed the car and suffered a fatal head injury. Not wanting to disappoint their fans, the remaining Beatles had replaced him with lookalike William Shears Campbell, a former policeman from Canada.   

It was part folk narrative, part morality tale, and all fiction. But, for several weeks in the fall off 1969, this rumour created an international uproar.   

Like most rumours, the story contained several grains of truth. Paul’s car had indeed been crashed in London in January of 1967, but a friend was driving; Paul was not even present. And he had once walked out of a recording session during the making of Abbey Road.   


The initial source of the rumour was the student newspaper of Drake University in Iowa, which published a tongue-in-cheek article titled “Is Beatle Paul McCartney dead?” The article noted that “turn me on, dead man,” could be heard when Revolution 9 was played backwards. . 


The rumour gathered a head of steam on October 12, 1969, when a caller to a Detroit radio station mentioned it to disc jockey Russ Gibb, who made it the subject of an hour-long discussion with callers. It was University of Michigan student Fred LaBour who added fuel to the fire by writing a satirical review of Abbey Road containing many more “clues,” all completely improvised. It is LaBour who invented the name William Shears Campbell, which neatly ties in with the “introduction” of “the one and only Billy Shears” on Sgt Pepper. The story was picked up by American newspapers nationwide, at which point — a mere week after the first call-in — WKNR devoted a 2-hour program to “The Beatles Plot.” Two days later, WABC-New York DJ Roby Yonge further publicized the rumor during a late night broadcast, which had a reach of 38 states and several other countries.   


The story now swept the United States, triggering countless calls to Beatles’ representatives,  hours of searching for additional “clues” by fans, who pored over album covers and recordings, and – as Paul was particularly beloved by female fans — outbursts of hysterical weeping in the halls by schoolgirls.   


Due to George Martin’s inventive recording techniques, which featured vari-speed recording, sound effects and distortions, the White Album, Magical Mystery Tour, Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road all seemed rich in apparent audio “clues.”   


John Lennon’s mournful words at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” heard by many as “I….buried… Paul” were particularly disturbing, but the truth turned out to be more prosaic. McCartney later revealed the phrase to be “cranberry sauce.” Paul wearing a black carnation in the booklet that accompanied Magical Mystery Tour seemed to offer more evidence, while the fact that Paul was smoking a cigarette with his right hand on the Abbey Road cover (he was known to be left-handed) was taken as further evidence of an imposter in his place.   


When the November 7, 1969, issue of Life magazine was published – with a cover photo of a healthy-looking Paul McCartney cuddling Linda and their two children – the hysteria began to die down. In the accompanying interview, McCartney assured readers he was not dead.  In a world before Photoshop and holographic images, this was sufficient proof; today, the rumours might be significantly harder to dispel.   


In 1993, McCartney poked fun at the rumour with his album cover for “Paul is Live,” which featured him in the zebra crossing, being pulled along by a sheepdog.  Instead of the iconic LMW- 28IF license plate – at one time interpreted as “Linda McCartney Weeps” (or “Linda McCartney Widowed”) and 28 IF (age 28 if he had lived) — a nearby car license features a triumphant message.