"Paul is Dead"

OK, I'll tell you my "Paul is Dead" story!  It isn't much of a story but I'll tell it anyway.

On that fateful day mentioned in the previous post, I eventually arrived, with my soul damned for all eternity, at the news-agency to buy the envelopes I needed, but outside on the footpath was a handwritten sign saying "Paul is Dead"  I stopped, wondering "Paul who?" when a kindly old man, just passing by, must have read either my mind or my face, and said, in the kindest voice, "It's Paul McCartney, love!"

"WHAT???"

"Paul McCartney was killed in a car accident."

It was so horrible, so soul-destroying, I was instantly blinded by howling tears and began to run, frantically trying to get away from the pain. At first, I had no conscious idea of where I was going, but then realised I was up the hill and half-way back to school, but coming at it from a different angle.

The back fence of the school grounds was just beyond a small suburban farm-ette.  I decided it was all too important to go back down the hill to the road and get in the ordinary way and that I had to tell the others immediately, and so took a shortcut through the property.

And barely had I passed through the gate ... when I'm attacked by flying geese. They came racing from everywhere and went for me, savagely honking, pecking at me, ripping off flesh, tearing clothes and fluttering up to go for the face. It was just so WRONG!  Here I am, devastated by the death of Paul McCartney and these stupid geese don't realise what pain I'm already in.

So, for the third time that day, I'm frantically running to escape something.  Anyway, battered, bloody and bruised, I made the back fence and scrambled over, finally realising why Ancient Romans kept those stupid birds as watch-dogs.

And secretly very, very pleased I'm getting to "Bleed for Paul!"

The other boarders were doing homework-prep when I burst in on them:  "Paul is dead!"  "Paul who?" "Paul McCartney!"  "Nooooooo!" and the entire room was instantly wailing and weeping and gnashing teeth, breast-beating, howling.  Oh, the pain!  The pain!

We had to know what happened so slunk out to find Sister Rosalie, the only sane and reasonable nun in the bunch, to tell her the news and to ask if she'd let us watch the off-limits only-on-Sunday-afternoons TV.  She too, lovely lady that she was, was devastated and together we all slunk into the TV room.

It was all over media on every channel, all those screaming, crying, devastated girls with fabbo haircuts. And in the few hours since the first press release, nine had already suicided.  Everyone wanted to "Bleed for Paul". But then came the ABC news and the lead story: "Paul McCartney issued a press statement this afternoon that he is NOT dead."  But he didn't show his face.

Yeah, right! Like we believed that!  "They're just saying that to stop all the suicides" we wisely told each other and continued with the weeping and wailing. 

It took weeks for Paul McCartney to show his face. Do you remember?  Unbelievably irresponsible. It wasn't until the premier of "Yellow Submarine", and that was ... what, five weeks after?  And we all studied those photographs with intense interest and, very definitely, that face was different.  The proportions of the face were all wrong, and that chin was so much longer. "It's a ring-in" we wisely told each other, determined not to be fooled by the money-men in the pop industry.

And so we believed the conspiracy theories and, for months, tried to work out who the ring-in was.  Everyone else was saying it was the winner of a recent Paul McCartney look-alike contest, but I had my own theory.

It was that awful song "Lily the Pink" that got me.

 

OK, I thought it was that guy on the left, made over with drastic plastic surgery, during those five or six weeks we had no Paul McCartney sightings whatsoever.

But really listen to that awful song!  The chords, the syntax, the way the song is structured, that ridiculous imagery, the way it's put together, but mostly that horrid fake "teenager" cynicism about adults. Isn't it just like every song Paul McCartney ever wrote ... that wasn't brutally written over by John Lennon and turned into something half-way decent.

I mean look at this song:



Or this one:



You can't tell me you can't see and hear the similarities!  Really stupid "high school" musical numbers written by a silly and pretentious kid raised on Vaudeville and bad English stand-up comedy! 

So for years that was my theory:  Paul McCartney was no longer Paul McCartney and was in fact the guy from Scaffold, and that's why every song he came up with after he "died" was SO BAD.

These days?  I think Paul McCartney, who claimed he was traveling the US with his then-girlfriend Jane Asher - and note how she dropped him in this time-frame, therein PROVING this Paul was a ring-in -  was having a chin implant at the time, and that's why he didn't show his face.  And that's also why his face looked out of proportion when he did finally show it!

Why I think this?  I recently re-saw The Magical Mystery Tour, made before and after the whole "Paul is dead" drama, and Paul has a decidedly weak chin and then he doesn't and then he does and then he doesn't.  I think what happened was that he saw the rushes of the film, didn't like his appearance and so went to the US to have it fixed ... which could also explain John Lennon's line in "I am the Walrus", written about Paul and written specifically for The Magic Mystery Tour album, which goes "You've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long!".

And if you look at those much later photos where he grows that beard, around the time of the Guru Maharaji/ India saga, if you look into the beard you'll see ... a sticking plaster.  I think that's when he finally realised his new chin didn't suit him and he had it taken out.

And the reason for the similarities between "Lily the Pink" and every song Paul McCartney ever wrote that wasn't reworked by John? I would put good money on it being a reject from the Lennon and McCartney songbook, rightfully thrown out by John for the unsave-able crap that it was  and thus sold in the open market.