The Beatles Conspiracies

As one of the biggest musical acts in human history, the Beatles didn't just fundamentally change the course of music -- they also affected society at large in numerous ways, evolving beyond musicians to larger-than-life icons in the public eye. And, over the decades, they've also become the subject of multiple conspiracy theories. Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Well, hey, everybody,

(00:25):
and welcome to the show. You know by hearing my
voice first that our compatriots and beloved friend Matt is
not here. That it's true, is on a top secret
adventure which we cannot disclose details about at this point. However,
he will return and as far as we know, he

(00:46):
is safe and sound, so stay tuned for the return
of Matt Frederick. We had to sign some ironclad in
das about this whole affair. I didn't sign it, but
they call me Ben. We are joined, of course, with
our super producer Paul Deck and most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. With an episode that's been a

(01:07):
long time in coming, and I'm I'm a little sad
Matt's not here. I am super sad. But I will
say something I'm not sad about is that I have
the perfect nickname for Paul for this episode. It's Paul
the Walrus decond I'll take it. Yeah, come on, dude,
that's perfect. Yeah, well, we'll see, Yeah, I'll go with
it because Paul was the Let's see, Paul was the
Walrus and the Beatles and who was the Eggman? Well,

(01:30):
in the in the Magical Mystery to Our film, I
believe John was the Eggman, but the Walrus was Paul.
Is a lyric from a song off the White Album
called glass Onion, And that's another reference to the ubiquitous,
probably most well known Beatles conspiracy theory that there is

(01:51):
that Paul McCartney died before his time and it's now
living life as as a as a double some sort
of dopple that was hired to replace him. But we
will get into that later, which I appreciate the foreshadowing
their old because that is one of the reasons that
I wish Matt were here today, way back in the
early days of stuff. They don't want you to know,

(02:12):
we did a video wherein we portrayed uh, my trustee,
longtime friend Matt Frederick as a Beatles conspiracy theorists obsessed
with the Paul McCartney concept. But let's take a step
back and start with uh the introductions and facts. Clearly,

(02:33):
clearly you've heard of the Beatles. We don't make too
many assumptions on this show, but if you are listening
now and you're thinking this is a show about insects
that we have given names to and misspelled in the title,
right and misspelled in the title, we we promise you
there's a method to the madness. The Beatles, you see,
b E A t l e s. Are one of,

(02:55):
if not the most famous bands in human history, not
in modern his s three, not in recent history alone,
all of it human history. And hey, no ding on you,
anyone out there if you never notice until this moment
that Beatles is spelled funny because we actually had a
conversation in the break room with Paul the Walrus, and
he mentioned that he had only just noticed the fact

(03:15):
that it was spelled b E A t l e
s as opposed to the traditional spelling of the insect
B E t l e S. Well, not just noticed,
he said. In college, well that's you know, a man,
We're but a spec right now in the in the
grand scape scheme of college is like last week. So
let's put some numbers behind that claim of being the

(03:36):
most famous band in human history. According to UK newspaper note,
the Guardian, The Beatles have sold over one hundred seventy
million units or albums. That's not counting the over one
point six billion singles they've sold closer to two billion now,
and that's not counting the innumerable movies, documentaries, covers, tribute

(04:00):
ut action figures, branded toys, the Hobo te other merchandise,
board games and so on associated with the band, board
games and so on associated with the bag of course, Yes,
they're definitely merch rich, those Beatles, um, and I bet
you know what else about it doesn't include streams because
they only just pretty recently, I mean not college recently,

(04:23):
No more recently than college just a few years back,
a few years back got added to Spotify, and that
was a really big deal because the you know, because
the Apple Records and Parlophone and whatnot retained all the
rights to that stuff with an iron fist. It was
not on any streaming services until they obviously struck up
some kind of pretty lucrative deal with Spotify. Yeah, it
was a huge deal with Apple Music a few years earlier. Right,

(04:45):
that's right, that's right then, and it was certainly part
of a big old ad push. Um. You know, hey,
the Beatles are on streaming, so I'd be interested to
see because now streaming numbers do factor into units moved
in some odd kind of formulation. Art cane, it's a
little weird. Are some arcane incantation for measuring success and

(05:05):
also for any hardcore Beatles fans in the audience today,
we do have to point out that it can be
surprisingly difficult to get reliable, up to date statistics for
a lot of numbers. You will see other claims that say, no,
the Eagles of all bands are the most most lucrative
or popular best selling bands. You know what, The Eagles suck.

(05:30):
You're you're one of those huh yeah, I'm a bit
of a lebowski, you know what. Now I'm just being
a curmudge and the Eagles do not suck. I will
tell you though, this is apropos of something I went
through with a friend of mine. I said something like,
what do the Eagles have like five hits? The guy's like, no, dude,
it's like twenty. And it is almost exactly twenty giant

(05:50):
giant hits of the Eagles head. So, whether you dig
their music or not, they were highly influential, at least
in terms of the mainstream. I think it's the ubiquity
of the Eagles that turn a lot of people off,
because you know, they're they're famous. In elevators across the planet,
you will hear some sort of version of I'll tell
you what. Nothing is quite the same level of depressing

(06:15):
as being alone in a grocery store at three am
and hearing an instrumental music version of Desperado playing while
you're walking by the frozen food aisle. I will say,
I really do like the Los Lobos version of how
of Hotel California that's on the Big Lebowski soundtrack. Yeah,
I mean, the covers are great, but you could say,
I don't know. You could say the same thing about
the Beatles. There are so many Beatles covers that have

(06:38):
been done through so many iterations that they're eventually just
becoming this sort of musical canon that everybody knows how
to play a variation of. I mean. It's no surprise
then that even in eighteen with spoiler alert half of
the Beatles Dead fans and fringe theorist the like insist
that the world has yet to hear the true story

(06:59):
of what what are also known as the Fab Four
that's fab short for fabulous. Uh. So with this whole
crazy tale of the Beatles begins way back in the
mid fifties with a kid who was kind of a
popular cool guy, a hothead. Yeah, and he was really

(07:20):
down with this whole skiffle scene. You know, the skiffle
scene is the skiffle craze, give it, Give it to me.
I always have a hard time remembering how how it
one would because I think it's sort of a folk thing.
We talked about it before, um skiffle. Yeah, it's sort
of like a blues based folk hybrid that sort of
takes American traditional music and turned it a little bit

(07:43):
into more of a I don't know, a rock and
roll kind of jug band kind of pastiche of of
folk music American music that was popular at the times,
and John Lennon and co. Were particularly enamored of American
prison songs from the South. So when John Lennon took
some of his buddies and formed a group called the

(08:05):
quarry Men, they would play these prison songs from the
American South during what was known as the skiffle Craze.
Lennon was around seventeen at this time, but he already
knew another kid who was a couple of years younger
than him, who really wanted to be cool, a little
bit more of a straight laced kid with stricter parents.

(08:26):
He was fifteen years old. His name was Paul McCartney,
and cool guy John Lennon came to Paul and said, hey,
do you want to play music with me even though
you're only fifteen. So soon they began composing songs and
playing music together. Well, fast forward. You can hear entire
volumes of this story. It's the tale as old as times.
And I think most Beatles fans have some inkling of

(08:49):
the Hamburg days and like these, and you know, the
young lads from Liverpool kind of like getting together and
forming themselves a rock and roll band. Um. So then
the next thing that happened was in February of nineteen
fifty eight, Paul invited a buddy of his, guy from
around town, George Harrison, just to come and check out
the band. Um. And then he actually auditioned and Lennon,

(09:10):
who you know, the hothead bad boy of the crew,
who probably um you know, was a bit of the ringleader.
It seems like I wasn't so sure about George because
he was a little too young. Um, even though he
was only the same age as Paul, but uh, George
could shred. Yeah. So the first audition that Harrison had,

(09:31):
Lennon says. Lennon says, well, it's he's too he's too young.
He's pretty good, but he's too young. So George comes
back young. George comes back a second time, and according
to the story, he played a lead guitar part from
a song they all knew on the top level of
a double decker bus and John Lennon essentially went, Okay, yeah, fine,

(09:53):
forget it. He's fifteen. He's fifteen. He's also our lead guitarist.
And then eventually other members of the Quarryman's set left,
so they were in a weird situation. Was just John,
Paul and George, and they were playing guitar pretty much
when they could find a drummer, and they said, we
need we need some more people. And uh, that's when

(10:15):
they started picking up some names that are going to
be familiar to more hardcore Beatles fans, but maybe not
familiar to people who only know the Fab four. Yeah,
they picked up a guy named Stu or Stewart Sutcliffe,
who played a little bass. Uh, you know, you always
think of Paul is playing the bass, So what was
what was Paul playing if Stu was sitting on the

(10:37):
base where they three guitars strong plus bass. I believe
so so yeah. And at the time, here's Stuart's big
contribution to the band. He is the one who suggested
changing the group's name to the Beatles or the beat Alls,
and you'll hear a couple of different spellings, and he

(10:58):
said this as a tribute to the Holly and the Crickets,
a group that both John Lennon and Paul McCartney had
idolized for some time, and clearly Stu felt the same.
Over the nineteen sixties, their name would change a few
more times, first to the Silver Beatles, always retaining that
B E a T spelling though, which is important because
that's sort of like the little bit of a play
on words. It's Gold Jerry Gold. And I wondered too

(11:21):
if it was a reference to There was a a
zine I guess, for lack of a better term, called
Mercy Beat that one of John Lennon's high school buddies started.
Um and that's Mercy M E. R. S. Y b
E A T. And that was actually the publication that
kind of covered a lot of the early Beatles exploits
in that that skiffle movement or whatever, yeah could be.

(11:44):
You know a lot of times. Well at least Stuart
Sutcliffe himself will attribute that inspiration for the name to himself.
It's probably true in some way. But also you know
people who found that kind of attribution, they while they
were going through this name change, they said, okay, look
we we just need a drummer, and so they hired

(12:05):
a guy named Pete Best and for a time they
were playing as a five piece band. Their first British
performance as the Beatles happens on December seventeenth, nineteen sixty
to a place called the Kasbak Coffee Club in Liverpool
CoSbAs and Rock and the and while they were recording

(12:26):
for the first time in the studio in August of
nineteen sixty two, during their first first session together, Pete
Best was apparently just not cutting the mustard and they
got their manager to let go of Pete Best. Well,
that was right after I think it was even the manager,
um George Martin, who said the drummer's gotta go. They all.

(12:49):
I've heard one story where that was definitely a thing,
but apparently they had a problem with his hair cut
because he had kind of much more of the traditional
kind of greaser pompadour haircut, Whereas by this point the
dudes were rocking that British mod mop top that we
we know and love so well. That became the hallmark

(13:09):
of their look. And it just goes to show that
even early on in their career, they were very conscious
of this image, you know. Yeah, and their manager had
famously told them that if they wanted to be big,
it's like, look, you have to do better image wise.
You can't because they were just showing up uh and
smoking or eating and drinking on stage and wearing whatever

(13:30):
they have been wearing that day, and it's like, you
need to get some proper trousers. There's some great quotes
about it, especially because I guess that's back when people
said trousers more often. So. And it's crazy because this
is George Martin's career before he wrote those awesome Game
of Thrones books. You know, who knew he actually had
a story to kick career as a record producer and manager. Yeah,

(13:51):
And he was really just doing the Beatles, I think
to support his love of writing and his love of
Fred Puccinos. He's pretty He's pretty candid about that. Yeah.
They so they got rid of Pete Best and that's
when Ringo Starr comes into the picture. Also, Stuart Sutcliffe
had earlier left of his own accord to pursue a

(14:11):
career in art. That had to be a real kick
in the pants later for the guy. You know, we're
you're familiar with a lot of the discography. In October
nineteen sixty two, their first single is the Beatles comes out.
It's called Love Me Do d O. It enters the
British charts reaches number seventeen, pretty good for a first
time out. Yeah, and this is like their earliest, earliest

(14:34):
days and sound, which is much more akin to like
the Phil Specter kind of traditional rock and roll I
mean really just kind of a lot more straightforward but
very catchy melodies um that they would continue to incorporate
into their future stuff. But it it obviously got a
little weirder and cooler in my opinion, thankfully. Yeah, because

(14:54):
this is a little bit poppy boy bandy stuff, you know,
the simple kind of three core or Buddy Holly esque
for lack of a better word. In nineteen sixty three,
February eleven, they record their first album, Please Please Me,
and they do it all in one day. In November
nineteen sixty three same year, with the Beatles becomes the

(15:17):
first million selling album in Britain and then they begin
their crazy evolution, their domination of the world as well
as their internal change is a band. In February of
nineteen sixty four, they tour the US for the first time.
People lose their minds, they're out of their gourds, the
barn doors wide open, whatever idiom you want to use,

(15:40):
their nuts. This is where you see a lot of
that archival footage of people just screaming and screeching as
the guys get off the plane. Yeah, I mean it's
in particular young ladies. They were quite fond of of these,
these lads from these liverpood Lean lads. Did you know
that's the word for it, Liverpoolian. It's a weird inexplicable
dan um. Yeah, there's one story about how and came

(16:00):
up behind Ringo and like snipped a lock of his hair.
So this was during their first trip to the United States.
I believe they did the At Sullivan Show and then
broke TV record numbers. And I know a lot of
us listening today will say, well, yeah, of course somebody's
gonna sneak up behind you and snip a lock your hair.
That happens, you know, that happens on a semi regular basis,

(16:23):
but this was a different time. So things begin to
where you kidding. What are you kidding about the lock
of your hair? Snipris? No, that hasn't happen to you.
I don't think I've reached those heights yet. We hang out,
maybe just a different circles, I guess. So we hang
out together a lot, though, Ben, are people doing this
to you? Are you okay? Are you do? Do you

(16:43):
want me to point it out when someone does it
to you? Please? Okay? You have my words. Do you
think they're just being really stealthy about it? I'm just
not noticing. I feel like I've seen it happen, but
you acted like it was normal. I was none the wiser,
my friend, Well, that is you know what, as a team,
we can all we can to all do better. Also,
typically it is Matt who is sneaking up behind you.

(17:03):
I just want to put that out there. I've caught
him doing that before. It's in the hall. But listen,
I wanted to point one thing out. In sixty five,
the Beatles play Schat Stadium and it's just like Bonker Nanzas,
and it's like that was literally the creation of the
arena rock genre. Even though it's funny because the Beatles,
you don't picture that as being a mega rock show

(17:25):
because they're even even like their early stuff, it's a
little more traditionally rock and roll. Again, it was a
very different time, you know. I think one of the
things that really pushed them to that arena status is
the year earlier. On July six of nineteen sixty four,
they had debuted the film A Hard Day's Night, and

(17:45):
they had released a soundtrack with that. I know, I
guess ten that reached number one. It also that soundtrack
included additional songs, so they were doing something very intelligent.
They were releasing albums concurrently or roughly concurly with films,
so if you're a super fan, you can embrace multiple

(18:06):
avenues of fandom. This way, they meet the Queen, they
play the arena. As you said, no, they release another film,
Help and the group internally and content wise begins to change.
On December third of they release Rubber Soul. This is

(18:26):
often cited as a turning point for the band. They
begin to depart from those very straightforward rock and roll
roots we mentioned earlier. They released Revolver. In sixty six,
they released Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and sixties
seven it becomes the highest selling British album of all time,
and I think it still holds up. I really like

(18:47):
that album which Sergeant Pepper's Linely Hearts called. Yeah it's okay,
that's what they call. It's stone cold classic, my friend. Yeah,
I agree. Uh. They release Magical Mystery Tour in sixty seven.
That's actually my favorite November seven, the super psyche stuff
that more so than the just the Beatles album in

(19:08):
the album, Yeah, that to me, that's a different Beatles though,
Like I really like like the Magical Mystery Tour and
Sergeant Pepper are like the most kind of candy dripping
psychedelic records that they have in their catalog. Then the
White album has some weird stuff on it, but it's
much more of a songwriter e straightforward kind of And
they also say that was when they their breakup was
eminent because a lot of people refer to that album

(19:31):
as a series of solo songs. When referred to as
a he says, not a Beatles record. He said, it's
a series of solo songs. And we all this is
something where the fans perhaps one out over the creators,
because the creator has just released this white album cover
and they called it the Beatles and Eponymous record, but
everyone else has called it the Wide Album, and that's

(19:51):
what it goes down in history. As uh. They've also
been releasing films, but yes, their internal organization is beginning
to stag nate and decay. In January of nineteen sixty nine,
a documentary is filmed. It's called Let It Be, and
it's intended as an account of the Beatles rebirth, but

(20:11):
instead it ends up chronicling their demise and they are
headed for an inevitable breakup. Speaking of breakups, let's take
a break for a word from our sponsors. So as
they're attaining this massive fame, the band members are growing

(20:32):
increasingly distant. In nineteen sixty nine, John Lennon privately tells
the rest of the band that he plans to leave
the parts skidaddle. They asked him to keep it under wraps,
so they keep this statement private. In April of nineteen seventy,
Ringo Star is the only one to show up for
a final studio session for Beatles record. There's no real

(20:56):
formal announcement. They had intended to let it peter out,
but on April tenth, Paul publicly announces his own departure,
and news spreads that The Beatles are no more. Their
thirteenth and final album, Let It Be, is released on
May eight. In the aftermath, without delving into all the
legal issues they had and all the personal acrimony that occurred,

(21:19):
we should just say that the band's breakup did not
end well. It was not amicable, and for a time
several members, particularly Paul McCartney, felt really constrained and tied
down by the various agreements they have made and the
as the Beatles. In December of nineteen eight, John Lennon
fatally shot. November of two thousand and one, George Harrison

(21:39):
succumbs to lung cancer. As we record this, Ringo Star
and Paul McCartney are still alive, still with us, the
last living members of the world's Best selling band, and
oddly enough, many of their fans suspect these two men
may hold secrets their bandmates took to the grave. So

(22:00):
here's where it gets crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's hard
to be a band that rises to such meteorc fames
so quickly and sustains that fame not only sustains it
as a popular phenomenon, but actually as a critical darling.
You know. And H just considered to be incredible artists
and songwriters and influencers of the zeitgeist and like recording

(22:24):
techniques and everything you could possibly imagine pop culture wise,
these guys had their hands in you know. Um, it's
very difficult to be that influential and not have people
coming up with some interesting theories about stuff that that
went on, especially considering that they were a little clandestine
about certain aspects of their lives and their careers. Um,

(22:47):
early on, they had this image of like this squeaky
clean kind of boy band almost like almost like a
manufactured thing with the screaming girls that chase stadium and whatnot.
But then over time they evolved into much more guru like, uh,
you know, kings of psychedelia, and then um, even beyond
them became much more involved in activism and use their platform,

(23:10):
especially Lennon, to influence world events, which we'll get into.
So when when you have those uh kind of conditions colliding, it's, it's, it's, it's,
it brews up some pretty interesting conspiracy theories. Um, and
we're gonna talk about some of the most popular ones
or the most Maybe some of them you may have
heard of, and some of them are a little under

(23:31):
the radar I have not heard of, but uh, they're
the most They're the ones that interested us the most. Yeah, yeah,
we have to. In honor of our compatriot, Matt, we
want to start with one of your favorite ones. Matt.
We know he's listening. Hey, Matt. Uh, it's that Paul
McCartney is dead. This is, as you said, Noel, one
of the most well known, perhaps strangest Beatles conspiracy theories.

(23:54):
The idea is the following, the real Paul McCartney, the
one that you see in various interview us or appearances
or the occasional cameo, isn't Paul McCartney at all. That
man is an impostor. The genuine Paul McCartney, the little
what's the word, Nold liverpood Lean, Liverpool Lean liverpood Lean,

(24:16):
the Little liverpood Lean, a little liverpood Lean actually died
in the early hours of November nine, nine sixty six,
after his car skidded off an icy road and crashed
into a poll. According to the story, when John Lennon
and George and Ringo found out about this death, they

(24:38):
thought that they would not be able to come back
from it because we just walked through their earlier timeline.
This is sixty six. A lot of great things are happening,
they're reaching heights, but they think they have further to go. So,
according to this legend, they covered up his death by
replacing him with a look alike, a guy named Billy Shears,
who already looked, acted and even hounded like the actual

(25:02):
Paul McCartney. You mean Billy Shears from little help from
my friends on you know when they go Bily She's
and that's the that's the guy, that's Ringo's character. And uh,
a little help from my friends. What would you think

(25:22):
if I'm saying, yeah, that's Billy Shears, So that's is
that that's that's that a clue? Maybe it is, And
I'm glad you mentioned clues here, because they the question
is are you hearing Billy shears or Billy's here? You
know this, this is one of the one of the

(25:44):
primary pieces of proof for people who believe this theory.
There are these ideas that various audio artifacts have been
hidden inside Beatles recordings that give you clues to the story, right,
and that's that's one of them. But there's another one
that might be even more, uh more familiar to our

(26:05):
fellow conspiracy realist. Well, there's there's a lot of them,
and a lot of them. A lot of this one
revolves around hidden images, a lot of a lot of
most of these do revolve around things hidden in plain
sight or plane audio. Yeah, because it said audio artifacts earlier.
But it's important to notice a lot of the album
artwork itself is pointed to as proof of this. Yeah,

(26:28):
album aren't and even um press photos and things like that,
but yeah, um so. One of the lyrics on Sergeant
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of one of the most
gorgeous and probably most popular songs on the record, A
Day in the Life, has the lyric he blew his
mind out in a car he didn't notice that the
lights had changed. Um, and also uh that you know

(26:51):
people pointed to that as being a reference to Paul
his death. And then in Strawberry Fields Forever, there is
a what's known as a back words mask, which we've
talked about quite a bit on this show. In that
most recent episode we did about satanic panics in Italy. Um,
I think we talked about a led Zeppelin back mask.
But in the song Strawberry Fields, there's a part where

(27:13):
when you flip it backwards, it sounds like John Lennon
saying I buried Paul. Um. He actually would would correct
the record on this and say I was saying Cranberry sauce. Um,
I'll let you be the judge. Yeah, let's let's play this. Well.
We can't play too many Beatles clips without getting into
a crazy lawsuit, but we can get away with this one.

(27:35):
Surely we can. Sure sounds like that to me. I
don't hear Cranberry sauce. What do you hear? Ben? Well,
the thing is it doesn't. It's very much an audio
roor shack. Do you know what I mean by that?
And yeah, it's like painting but for your ears or

(27:57):
what do they call it bader Minehuff where like you
expect to see something and then you'll see it everywhere,
or you think about a thing and then you start
to see it everywhere. Their confirmation bias directly. Yeah, but
you can see how if someone already believes this, they
would they would see more of these things as proof.
And there there are several other details in their including

(28:20):
for example, on the White album, there's the claim that, uh,
if you play the track Revolution nine backwards, you'll hear
the message turn me on dead Man, turn me on
dead Man, tear me on dead Man. And in ninety nine,
on October twelve, UH student at Michigan University kid named
Tom Zarski called a Detroit radio host and Russ Gibb,

(28:42):
and he wanted to talk to us about the stories
regarding Paul being dead. Gibb was dismissive of the rumors,
but Zarski talked him into playing Revolution nine backwards on
air at w K and r f M, and everyone
who turned tuned in thought they heard turned me on
dead Man, turned me on dead Man, and the phones

(29:05):
rang off the hooks, and this brought the conspiracy to
national levels. Isn't this the kid that had had a
bunch of other theories about how like, what was this
guy story? I feel like I think there was a
part where in the research where he mentioned not having
the resources to play every Beatles record backwards to find
more hidden messages. You'll also hear people say that it

(29:30):
was just a hoax, that czar Sky knowingly participated it,
and then I misspoke. There's actually a different kid that
in the nineties, who um who had some pretty interesting
theories about backwards masking in Beatles songs relating to another
conspiracy that we'll get into short. Okay, I see. And

(29:51):
then so this also goes into the idea that you mentioned.
Nola all amend I do think. I do think the
nickname for super producer Paul is probably the best one
we can have for today's episode because in the glass
Onion song, John says, well, here's another clue for you all.

(30:13):
The Walrus was Paul, and the people who believe this
started thinking, okay, get that you have to walk with
us here. Uh So, people who believe this when started
spreading rumors that walrus was actually a Scandinavian word that
meant death that is factually inaccurate. Is the nicest way

(30:36):
for me to say it. The word is actually derived
from the old dors romes, however, which means walrus, not death.
So while there are all these clues or purported clues
about Paul McCartney's secret death, the biggest question would be

(30:58):
how could someone get away with this? How could they
keep a secret? If there is a look alike, how
could he live his entire life as someone else without
slipping up once? Yeah, and make all those sick Wings
records too, you know, I mean, come on, I mean
their their records. What are you talking about? Have you
heard Ram? That's not considered Wings? But that record is fantastic.

(31:19):
That is a really, really great record. I don't really
care much about the Wings stuff after that, but Ram
is a classic, my friend. So this guy who was
rumored to have replaced Paul McCartney, where did he come from?
Billy Shears? We called him his full names, William Shears Campbell.
He was the winner of the nineteen sixty five Paul

(31:40):
McCartney lookalike competition. It's right. He apparently was an orphan
who hailed from Edinburgh, And it just so happened to
my previous point re Ram, he was also a pretty
good mimic in terms of this type of songs that
he could actually right himself and the way he's sang

(32:00):
and his mannerisms. Um. So yeah, this is interesting detail here. Yeah.
But the the issue with it is that for people
who believe there's a body double, uh, they believe there
are minuscule discrepancies differences between the actual Paul's face and

(32:22):
the impersonator or impostor's face. And you can find plenty
of plenty of blogs and forums wherein they describe what
they see as the multiple provable differences between the real
Paul McCartney and the man they call fall f A
U L Fake Paul. That's great, um. And there's another

(32:43):
interesting detail here too. Um. It was right around this
time November of nineteen sixty six when supposedly this impostor
stepped in. That's when the Beatles stopped touring. They were
never really much of a touring band. They played these
handful of big, giant stadium shows around the world, but
not in the sense that we know today in terms

(33:04):
of bands that just grind it out on the road
for a month at a time. Um, they were not
that kind of man, and they just stopped entirely to
focus on their recorded output. And you know, some conspiracy
minded types might point to the idea that it's a
lot easier to hide these kinds of things if you're
not constantly out in the public eye and you can
control your image in the output of photographs and liner

(33:28):
notes and what have you. Right, that's a valid point
for sure. And this, this theory, of course, is also
one of the oldest ones about the Beatles. You can
trace it back to nineteen nine when a guy named
Tim Harper, who was the editor of a student newspaper
at Drake University, published an article called is Beatle Paul
McCartney Dead? And then you know, later in that year

(33:52):
it gets the national coverage because it's on the radio.
It takes off like gangbusters, and people still believe it
to some degree today. As you might imagine, as you
might imagine the Paul McCartney or fake Paul McCartney, whichever
you choose. Folks, was asked about this before, and he

(34:13):
said that, and then he said something jovial and delightful,
didn't he he was? He was, He was surprisingly diplomatic.
He said, well, you know, I haven't been in the
public eye. I took some time off, so maybe that's
why people thought I was dead. And then, you know,
there's that question like, when you're at that level of

(34:33):
fame and prominence, do people treat it like you're dead
when you decide not to be on the front of
magazines and then these covers? If anything, you know, hopefully
he looks at it as a flattering thing. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure how to take it. What would you
do if you were accused of being your own body double? Yeah,
that'd be tough, man. I have been accused of this though.

(34:54):
Actually someone on one of the forums, uh mentioned that
on this show sound really serious, and on our other show,
Ridiculous History, I sound much more upbeat, and uh, is
it possible that I have some sort of clones or
we're we're double action going on. So I imagined you'd
be pretty delighted by it. I thought your answer was diplomat.
It was, you know, I try. Um. I can't claim

(35:17):
to be as as a diplomatic as Sir Paul McCartney. UM,
but speaking was. Let's talk about a couple of more
image related clues to this particular one on the cover
of Sergeant Pepper's Leley Hearts Club band, which is just
chuck full of references and things and different characters from history,
like I believe Karl Marx is on there. Um. Also,
all all four Beatles are um shown wearing band uniforms

(35:41):
and gathered around this giant bass drum, and Paul has
his right hand over his head and this is uh
been interpreted to represent an Eastern symbol UM that means death.
And he also has a black clarinet while the other
guys in the band have gold and brass type instruments,

(36:01):
and there's something with his dominant hand as it's pictured
in the art right in terms of which one he's
using to hold the clarinet. Interesting. Okay, so there's um.
There's actually a website called turn me on dead man
dot com and has a whole page devoted to some
of these Paul is Dead theories, and one of them
involved taking a mirror and holding it up to the

(36:22):
center of that Sergeant Pepper bass drum, at which point
it says I own X he die um, which would
be I one nine he die, which also has an
embedded reference to eleven nine November ninety six, which is
when supposedly he had this fatal car crash. So is

(36:45):
this a is this surreptitious communication? And if so, why
and how if they want to keep it a secret?
That's the big question this. Oh, going back to what
Paul McCartney said himself or his double said, uh, he
seems to have been kind of a sport about it.
In he gave a nod to this conspiracy theory in

(37:10):
his album do you know the name of it? It
was Paul is Live? Yes, it is Paul is Live. Uh.
And despite that, the theory continues today as recently as
just two thousand and nine, even in Wired magazine and

(37:30):
the Italian version of the publication, there was a study
done by two forensic scientists who used computer technology to
compare the measurements of McCartney's skull before and after the
car accident. They took on the project because they wanted
to prove that the Paul is Dead thing had no basis.
But what they claim to discover is that the point

(37:50):
where the nose detaches from the face is different in
both skulls, and the position of the years is different
in a way that cannot be explained by surgery, and
the shape of the palette is also different. So their
story is that they went in to disprove it and
they came out going, oh but in Italian. And I

(38:11):
think at this point we can even move on to
a slightly related one. Um that a very strange one
that implies that every single Beetle was in fact a double,
a double or fictional. Well, but there's two. There's there's
one that says they were they were a series of

(38:31):
of humans that were actors that were hired to play
them so they could like maximize their uh, you know,
grind time with all the different you know, responsibilities they
would have being a giant band like that. Um, So
that's one, and I don't know, we're not to even
go into that one two D, But that is one
that's floating out there, the idea of a boy band
sort of manufactured, like the Monkeys and things like that.

(38:53):
The Beatles would have been the ones that kind of
set that trend off. But this is the idea that
they were in fact all played by different actors. Is
this the one that says the Beatles were created by
the Illuminati? Well, I it's a different one, but it's related.
So this is it. That's all I've got for that one.
It's just I mean, it's really there's really not much
to it. Yeah, here we go. So there's a guy

(39:15):
named Chris Fischelle This is coming from a great Huffington
Post article, UM, who was looking into the idea McCartney
had died, and in his research decided that, in fact,
every other Beatle had died except possibly Paul Um, and
that there were tons of clues hidden in all of

(39:37):
these record covers dating far back as nine UM, where
ringoes face on their sixty three record um is not
in line with the rest of them. Um. And then
in sixty four you've got a Hard Day's Night where
George has his back to the camera UM and is
holding a cigarette. This is all super stretchy to me.
And then on Revolver we've got supposedly the second John

(40:00):
Lennon singing the line I'm only sleeping sleep being a
metaphor for death. And then we've got the Buried Paul
thing in sixties seven. UM. And you know, this guy
goes into about two dozen or so pieces of evidence
and decides that this is the one I was talking about. Elier.
He says he just didn't have the resources necessary to

(40:20):
listen to every single song backwards. I guess he didn't
have a computer yet. Um, right, But that's it. Yeah,
that that that's and and then that it goes on
because there's another one saying that the Beatles had been
played by different actors, every single one of them. And
there's a list just like you said with Paul, for
every Beatle, showing that there are different facial uh dissimilarities

(40:46):
through various periods in their career. It's it's interesting because
that is not as implausible and principle a theory as
we might initially think. It's not. I don't think it's
particularly a secret, but it's probably an open secret. We
can go ahead and say this something similar has occurred

(41:10):
in in the past and entertainment culture, and I have
one example of something that's going on. Now. Have you
heard the story about Morgan Freeman and voiceover. I think
we talked about this off air. Morgan Freeman has an
iconic voice and will lend it to anything you hear him. Often,
even when he's in any film, he's just the narrator

(41:32):
because he's that well known for this. You got an
AX card commercial, right, you gotta break up? With your girlfriends,
get Morgan Freeman on the phone, soften the blow shawakaway,
giving that voicemail message ten stars. Also, don't break up
with your significant other over the phone. You know what
I mean, be an adult. But uh. But the strange

(41:54):
thing about Morgan Freeman, and that a lot of people
don't know, is that he has been getting so much
voice acting work and he is so well known and
so popular in the industry that his prices go up.
And if he doesn't have the time or the inclination,
or if you don't have the money to afford him,
he will recommend his secret voice double what there's a

(42:15):
guy who just does Morgan Freeman esque voices. So if
m X candle forward, he doesn't want to do it,
but he still wants a piece of the action. He'll say,
you know, well you can't get me, you can get
this guy who sounds like me. And do you think
that guy has to pay him like a finder's fee
or some sort of give him a cut? I bet
he does. Surely he does. I'm sure he gets a cut.
I don't know the nature that relationships had to license

(42:36):
that voice. And so that's a very weird arrangement. Back
and what an interesting what an interesting thing? So and
then dictators often use body doubles. Saddam right, Saddam, Stalin, Gadaffi,
the list goes on, but Saddam in particular. I believe
there was some forensic expert that went through dozens and
dozens of photographs of Saddam Husseining and determined that there

(42:58):
were at least I want to say six, Well, there
were several. Yeah, I think a couple of them died too.
But we say all that to say it is not
entirely out of the realm of possibility that someone could
have a body double in the entertainment industry. What differentiates
this theory is the idea that it would be so
prolific and so successful. I mean, I wonder, frankly, I

(43:21):
wonder if it happens with K pop, which is another
huge industry. But not every Beatle as we know, ended
up being one of the Fab four Pete Best get
kicked out. There's also this conspiracy theory that says the
Beatles tried themselves to kill Pete Best. And these are
just these are just some of the beginnings we have.

(43:42):
We have some more to explore, but maybe let's give
that some room to breathe. We'll be back after a
word from our sponsor. Here's one of the darker ones,
the John Letting cover up. We mentioned earlier that he

(44:04):
was shot on December eighth in Manhattan by a fellow
named Mark David Chapman. It's weird because he was simultaneously
a crazed fan. He's been described that way many times,
but he also had some real problems with Lennon, specifically

(44:24):
with his atheism, because Chapman himself was a Christian and
he uh did not appreciate John Lennon kind of spreading
this notion that you know, that Christianity. He would never
go so far as to say that it's stupid, but
he just did not think it was important that you
the notion that you do not need a God or

(44:45):
the threat of divine punishment to be a decent person.
Atheism essentially somewhere between spiritualism and atheism. Yeah, So he
he shot Lennon four times in the back. I think he'
fired the gun five times, and then he just sat
down on a curb and started reading The Catcher in
the Rye, which he had brought with him when he

(45:07):
was arrested, he asked for a statement. He told police
that the book The Catcher in the Rye was his statement.
This has got to be a real terrible occurrence for J. D. Salinger. Well,
this is a recurring thing. Um, this idea that Catcher
in the Rise somehow some sort of assassination trigger because
the gentleman who made an attempt on Ronald Reagan's life, UM,

(45:31):
I believe was carrying a copy of it as well. Uh.
And it's been talked about as an interesting you know,
if any of anyone hasn't read it, it's it's told
from the perspective of a young dude who was very
kind of antisocial and telling the story from um, the
confines of a psychiatric institution, and it sort of normalizes

(45:54):
that kind of outsider mentality, you know, the kind of
lone wolf no one. He doesn't kill anybody in the
book spoiler alert, but he talks about things along those lines.
And there's a there's a huge, a huge thematic thread
going through this story in which Holden Caulfield, the protagonist

(46:16):
or at least the main character, wrestles with the concept
of what is real and what is fake, who is phony,
who is sincere and yes, it has been alleged in
various conspiracy theories that catching the Rye was used as
a psychological trigger by intelligence agencies. So in this theory,

(46:37):
John Lennon was not killed so much by Chapman himself.
He was more killed by a remote control. The ideas
that Chapman was programmed by US government agents to kill
Lennon and they used the novel as a signal to
go ahead with the operations. So either it was a
a subtle signal to Chapman the other people wouldn't und understand,

(47:00):
or it was a trigger that he was programmed, brainwashed
essentially into into following, you know, like he sees this
or here's a passage read aloud and it triggers a
certain set of actions. This sounds just this sounds like
if it were a breakfast dish, it would be nuts
and bananas. But it is true that John Lennon, like

(47:24):
other celebrities and musicians and political activists, John Lennon was
being monitored by US intelligence agencies to some degree. All
this theory does is go further. We should also mention
that Mark David Chapman at the time of this recording
is alive and well. He just had a parole hearing

(47:46):
earlier this year. He was denied parole because the Pearl
Board wrote back to him and said, you admittedly carefully
planned and executed the murder of a world famous person
for no reason other than to gain notoriety. While no
person's life is any more valuable than another's life, the
fact that you chose someone who is not only a

(48:07):
world renowned person and beloved by millions, regardless of pain
and suffering you would cause to his family, friends, and
many others, you demonstrated a callous disregard for the sanctity
of human life and the pain and suffering of others.
Not the most well written sentence, but you get what
they're saying. You know what I mean, has a bit
of a run on. When it was it was they
were trying to squeezing a lot of stuff there. But

(48:28):
does it maybe sound like too that they're really pushing
the onus of this act really hard on him, saying
for no reason, considering that this uh mk ultra esque
type conditioning was perhaps in play. Um and you know,
and and knowing what we know, maybe Ben talk a
little bit more about why Lennon was being monitored. Lennon

(48:48):
himself was being monitored by the government in the same
way that they would keep tabs on someone like Martin
Luther King Jr. Sure, yeah, So the concern here we
have to look back. It's the Cold Wars and full
swing Domino theory of ideology is also it's not something
that got left behind in Vietnam. You know. The idea

(49:10):
here is that leftist activist who have a public platform
could sway the US voter or the world stage. That
it was a big concern of the powers that be
at the time. But the question then becomes one of
technology involved. Has the US ever successfully managed to make

(49:34):
an individual do something they would not normally do unconsciously,
you know what I mean? Like Sir Hans Sir Han
claims that he was mentoring candidate as well. But then
the second question goes to um motivation. Had had John
Lennon done something specific that would have been the the

(49:57):
straw on the proverbial a mole's back. Had he done
something that made someone in a shadowy room in d
C or in Langley go he's gone too far. Send
the book, you know what I mean? And I don't know,
like when you ask this question about like, have we
really seen evidence that that this is even possible? And
this might sound utterly ridiculous, but I'm gonna put it

(50:19):
out there. I have seen, you know, and you you
may have to successful hypnosis, you know, and I know
a lot of times it's like people certain people are
more susceptible to it. But you know, I went to
like a Renaissance fair here in Atlanta, and I don't know,
I'm pretty skeptical about this stuff. But I saw some
people who I saw walking around earlier at the festival

(50:39):
and who were called up or volunteered to go up
on stage, and we're hypnotized super quickly and made to
do things that they wouldn't normally do, like cluck like
a chicken, or you know, walk around. Who's to say
you couldn't take that to the next level and trigger
somebody with a word to make them, you know, really
do something they wouldn't do, like like kill a man.
I don't know, well it it goes into not just

(51:02):
um severity of action or extreminity of action, but also
uh severity of time or distance from suggestion to action.
It's something I would, I would I've often called this
the chloroform question. So you know how chloroform We all
know this. Chloroform in fiction is depicted as something that

(51:22):
you it's put downs on a rag and then you
you put it over someone's face, right their mouth and
their nose, and they pass out for some amount of time.
Real chloroform application, or the real usage of it, is
much different. You have to hold it there longer, and
it keeps people under only as long really as it's

(51:43):
on them. They'll wake up shortly thereafter. And real hypnosis, uh,
we know it can. It can have these short term effects.
People will cluck like a chicken. They will do acts
that they might not normally do, but we don't know
if it can force them to do things that we
would consider depraved, like murder or you know, cannibalism. Maybe

(52:07):
you could get somebody the light of fire if they
were if they disassociated it from human harm. But the
big question is can we make some sort of suggestion
that will stay for months or years. That's the big question.
Can the renaissance fair hypnotist make someone cluck like a
chicken and then recall it with yes, no, I understand,

(52:30):
I understand, but it's still it's interesting to see that
happen in real time. The potentials, their potential seems to
be there. But you know, like we say, the human
mind is is even less understood than you know, what
we understand about space. So he did. Chapman did apologize
for being such an idiot and choosing the wrong way
for glory to Yoko Ono after he shot her husband,

(52:52):
and then choosing the wrong what choosing the wrong way
for glory? So he so he almost admitted that he
did it for like a notorie in some way. Right,
he is eligible for parole in Unlike Sir Hans sur Han,
he has not made art and consistent claims that he
was brainwashed by any intelligence agency. But that that's where

(53:15):
we leave it. And it's the thing that makes this
one so tantalizing is that we know, we know, years
and decades later, that the intelligence agencies of the US
at the very least did actively monitor people they considered
to be dangerous political activists, and they also actively harass them.

(53:37):
Like you said earlier with Dr King, they really did that, right,
co intel pro was a real thing. The question is
just how far it went. And if you want to
read more about this, check out John potash is book
Drugs as Weapons against US, which says that these agencies

(53:57):
did not just target Lennon, but they also targeted Tupac
Shakur and Kurt Cobain and many other celebrities. But here's
here's the question of what if there's something bigger than
intelligence agencies at work. What if it's bigger than the CIA,
What if it's bigger than the FBI. What if it's

(54:17):
the Illuminati? The Illuminati the very same Oh wow, okay?
And within that we have some subsets, don't were this
idea of the Illuminati? We have two in particular that
we're talking about. One that's a research wing of the
UK that supposedly receives government funding from the United States,

(54:39):
and that was very particularly tied to MK Ultra we
talked about a little while ago, which is something called
the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations. Yes, the tavist Like
instance in addition to the Committee of three hundred UM.
First off, let's talk a little bit about the Tavistock Institute.
They are essentially a nonprofit, at least on the surface

(55:02):
UM that a British based nonprofit that has done it
kind of a think tank. I guess you could call
it that has done research on how to solve societal problems, quote,
helping organizations, groups and individuals to learn, change, innovate, and develop.
How much more vague could you be. They were started

(55:23):
in back in right, that's right, and they have all
have since their inception been intimately tied to the field
of psychiatry um And again they were connected to the
mk ulture experiment, as we talked about earlier, which if
we didn't go too deep into it, surely you guys
know what this says. We've done episodes on in the past.
But it is that Manchurian candidate kind of research that

(55:46):
was ruled to be not cool, you know, by the
US government, the idea of turning people into secret sleeper soldiers,
among other things. Yeah, so they are commonly associated with
the Beatles and the rule rolling Stones. You can find
a couple of books focusing on this, one by Daniel
east Lynn called Tavistock Institute, Social Engineering and the Masses.

(56:08):
That's the more recent one. It came out in But
the concept here is that there's a totalitarian agenda which
ultimately will result in the Illuminati taking over America with
the intent of utterly destroying it through rock music and
drugs to rebel against the status quo, undermine the family unit.

(56:32):
Dogs and cats sleeping together, people barefoot in the streets
and wearing shoes in their houses. Reminds me of that
episode we did a while back about did the CIA
manufacturer of the counterculture? A very similar end you know,
in theory would be to cause the breakdown of civilized
society in some way, or to demonize a particular group,

(56:54):
which I think more of what the CIA theory was about.
But this one is much more Watch the World burn
type stuff is Yeah, it is normal. There's The idea
is that the metals were created purposefully with intent by
the Illuminati or these various subsidiaries to introduced counterculture, to

(57:16):
introduce drugs, and this parably something larger, called the Aquarium
Conspiracy by its opponents. It was started by a guy
named John Coleman. As recently as the nineties. He used
to work for m I six and that gave him
some street cred with people. He said that the Tavistock
Institute for Human Relations was instrumental in creating this band,

(57:40):
and they do some of the Some of his claims
rest on the similar idea of subtle visual or audible clues,
like Key says, there's a promo picture from The Yellow
Submarine that shows John Lennon flashing the Devil's Horn sign
associated with this mysterious group, and that Paul is making
the six six six or eye of Horace hand side

(58:03):
or is that like to refer to it, the A
O K emoji hand? Is that what it is? Yeah?
Kind of. I mean it's just like putting your finger
and your thumb together in a circle and holding out
your other three fingers. But you know, if you if
you draw a line through that that oh you're making,
and then the remaining three fingers, you get three sixes.
But it's also it's literally you know that's with the

(58:24):
six six six, but it's also literally you know, an
emoji for and it just means cool. Everything is a okay,
you know, well in some places it means butthole. That's fair.
That's I think that's unfair to tourists who don't know
that when we'll travel. There was another conspiracy theory or
you know, kind of an alarmist thing that was making
the round. Well, wasn't white power. I think it was

(58:45):
like the teenagers were using that symbol in pictures and
it showed that they were what the kids called DTF
it's down to freak. Yeah. Oh, there's also one of
the One of the pieces of evidence for the Illuminati
idea is that the cover Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club

(59:05):
Band also includes a host of quote Illuminati stooges such
as Alice Huxley, Karl Marks, h G. Wells, and playwright
George Bernard Shaw too. Yeah. Yeah, a known known Illuminati stooge.
I just love it when people are called stooges or tycoon's. Uh,

(59:25):
we do have something else. One more tad on the
pile here, and that's the idea that the Beatles did
not release all their songs. Did you ever hear this? Yeah?
This one is pretty pretty debunkable, but it's one of
those ones that I think rabid fans were so jazzed
about the idea of they just wanted to let it ride.
But what's the what's the backstory? Yeah, it goes back

(59:47):
to one There's a British teenager named Martin Lewis and
he sends a bootleg Beatles recording to a magazine and
he includes extra track names on the bootleg songs like
Colliding Circles, Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong, deck
Chair and Pink Litmus paper Shirt and claim they have

(01:00:08):
been hidden away in the Apple Records vault. The thing is,
of course people thought this is amazing. They wanted to
hear these new songs. But the thing is that later
Lewis confesses and says the whole thing is a hoax,
and like you said, Noel, people don't believe him. He
even explained it in an interview with USA Today when
he said, to my shock and horror, many Beatles fans

(01:00:31):
refused to believe me. People told me, your confession is
a hoax. I know someone who's got those songs. And
so he says, I'm letting the cat out of the
bag again. There are no hidden songs, which is where
we begin to wrap up the show today, folks, Because

(01:00:51):
for some of these theories that we've described, some more
plausible than others. They're always going to be people who say,
if you are attempting to disprove what I believe, then
that means you are part of the vast Beatles conspiracy.
But what do you think? Uh? No, what do you think?
Do you think any of these could have some sand

(01:01:11):
or a grain of truth. Do you think Paul McCartney
died in the sixties. I don't know, man, I hope not.
He seems he seems like the same old Paul. And
also it's on balance we have to we have to
think of the ratio to be fair. If there's a
body double, he spent more time now being Paul McCartney
than Paul McCartney did when he was alive. So, you know,

(01:01:32):
in terms of just time spent as Paul, who is
more genuine? I know that makes me sound like a
horrible person, not at all, not at all. But we
also want to hear from you, folks, fellow conspiracy realist
skeptics alike. Do you think that any of these claims
have an amount of an amount of sand. One thing
we did not talk about, which is a provable improven conspiracy,

(01:01:56):
be corruption in the music industry and the ways in
which aretist back then and today. We're chosen sometimes to
be successful through practices like Paola, through practices like um,
you know, suppressing one record labels output to play the
records of another label. Hopefully that's something that we can

(01:02:18):
we can explore in a future episode, but in the meantime,
let us know what you think. You can find us
on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter, you can
find us on Facebook. On our various community pages, the
one for this one is Here's where it gets crazy.
Long time listeners, you probably you hopefully heard Noel and

(01:02:40):
Matt do an episode recently that was entirely composed of
fascinating stuff from our community page. Right now. Yeah, that
was a fun one. Those are always fun to do.
In Ben there was a very disconcerting bend shaped abyss
in the room with us at that time. But you yourself,
we're not corporeally present, but we did commune with the

(01:03:00):
abyss a couple of times. It's very kind. I I
am often described as have been shaped abyss. So you
can write to us, you can, Oh, you can call
us as well. Matt would Matt would be a gas
if we did not mention our very own call in
number one eight three three s T D W y
T K and he would be gassed. If you called

(01:03:23):
that number and left a really cool message, yes we
all would, so say we all. But if none of
that particularly plucks your string or plays your cord, then
you can write to us directly. We are conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com.