Background The rumours surrounding McCartney began in earnest on October 12, 1969, when someone telephoned Russ Gibb (a radio DJ on WKNR-FM in Dearborn, Michigan serving the Detroit market). Identifying himself as "Tom" (allegedly Tom Zarski[1] of Eastern Michigan University), the caller announced that McCartney was dead. He also asked Gibb to play "Revolution 9" backwards. Gibb thought he heard "Turn me on, dead man."[2] Gibb also produced (with John Small and Dan Carlisle) The Beatle Plot, an hour-long radio show on the rumour. The show aired on WKNR-FM in late 1969 and has been repeated in the years since on Detroit radio. Fred Labour and John Gray, juniors at the University of Michigan, published a review of Abbey Road called "McCartney Dead; New Evidence Brought to Light", itemizing various "clues" of McCartney's death on Beatles album covers, in the October 14, 1969 issue of the Michigan Daily.[3] Terry Knight, a former Detroit DJ and then singer on Capitol Records, had visited the Beatles in London for the August 1968 "White Album" session during which Ringo Starr walked out. Although Terry's song, "Saint Paul", was written about the impending breakup of The Beatles, it was picked up by radio stations in autumn 1969 as a tribute to "the late" Paul McCartney.[4] The rumour gained momentum when Roby Yonge, an overnight disc jockey on the Top 40 station WABC in New York, discussed it "incoherently" on October 21, 1969. Yonge was immediately fired for making the broadcast.[5][6] WABC, a 50,000-watt clear channel station, could be heard clearly in 38 states, and as far as Africa's Atlantic coast.[7] Soon, national and international media picked up on the story and a new "Beatle craze" took off. The rumour is the subject of several books, including American journalist Andru J. Reeve's 1994 book Turn Me On, Dead Man (ISBN 1-4184-8294-3) and English author Benjamin Fitzpatrick's 1997 book, 'Rumours from John, George, Ringo and Me'. "Paul is dead" analyst Joel Glazier hypothesized[8] in a 1978 treatise that John Lennon's love of wordplay and studio editing may have been responsible for some clues in later albums, but that after Charles Manson claimed The Beatles were hiding references to an upcoming racial war in their song "Helter Skelter", the band members chose not to reveal the joke. The advent of the Internet gave "Paul is dead" rumours new life. Several websites have sprung up claiming that photographic evidence proves that the McCartney before and after late 1966 could not be the same man. [edit] The story of the alleged death The most common tale is that on Wednesday, 9 November 1966 at 5 am, McCartney, while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, stormed out of a recording session after an argument with the other Beatles and rode off in his Austin-Healey, which he subsequently crashed.[5] The story was largely pieced together by fans from the lyrics of several Beatles songs. The most common narrative includes the following pieces of evidence: "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ("A Day in the Life") because he was busy watching the pretty girl on the pavement (the eponymous meter maid of "Lovely Rita") after narrowly missing her dressed in blue (she's said to be the blur on the back of Abbey Road) jaywalking ("Blue Jay Way"). He then crashed into a lamp-post (a car crash sound is heard in "Revolution 9" and "A Day in the Life"). He was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" ("She's Leaving Home"), and nobody found out this because the news was withheld: "Wednesday morning papers didn't come" ("Lady Madonna"). A funeral procession was held days later (as supposedly implied in the Abbey Road album cover). Adding fuel to the legend is the ending of "Strawberry Fields Forever." Some believed John said "I buried Paul" in a slow deep voice over the final refrain. He later refuted that, stating that he said "cranberry sauce." According to believers, McCartney was replaced with the winner of a McCartney look-alike contest. The name of this look-alike has been recorded as William Shears Campbell, Billy Shears (the name of the fictitious leader of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), William Sheppard (based on the inspiration for the song "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"), or some combination of the names. There is no evidence of any sort of car crash in which McCartney was involved, although during the first week of January 1967, McCartney's custom-made Mini Cooper was wrecked by a friend on the M1 Motorway outside London. McCartney was involved in a moped crash on December 26, 1965, which resulted in a chipped tooth and the scar on his lip that can be seen on promotional videos for the "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" single, made shortly after the crash, in May 1966. According to McCartney, his desire to hide the scar on his lip was the impetus to grow a moustache; at about the same time the other three Beatles grew moustaches as well—in time for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. [edit] References by The Beatles This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008) Lennon joked about the rumour in the years following its initial growth and, in his solo years, referred to it in his vengeful song to McCartney entitled "How Do You Sleep?" from the 1971 Imagine album, commenting, "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead."[9] McCartney himself parodied the rumour with his 1993 live album and tour, Paul Is Live, the cover of which is a replica of the Abbey Road cover with the "LMW 28 IF" license plate changed to "51 IS", 51 being McCartney's age at the time of the album's release. Also, he appears with his shoes on and holding, by a leash in his left hand, one of the puppies that his sheepdog Martha gave birth to. During the Magical Mystery Tour film, Vivian Stanshall and the Bonzo Dog Band performs a song entitled "Death Cab for Cutie", a satirical song about a fatal car accident. McCartney was known as, and even described himself in an interview as, "the cute one". When McCartney performed in a skit on the television show Saturday Night Live in 1993, Chris Farley's character says to McCartney: "Remember when you were in The Beatles and you were supposed to be dead, and there were all these clues and everything like if you play that one song backwards it says 'Paul is dead, Paul is dead'... That was a hoax, right?" McCartney replies, "Yeah... I wasn't really dead." In 2003 McCartney went to Moscow to perform a concert on the Red Square. On the press conference he was asked, "Are you the real Paul or a double?" McCartney answered, "I can't tell you, it's a secret."[citation needed] [edit] Satirical or other references Batman #222 (June 1970). Cover by Neal Adams.The June 1970 issue of the DC Comics title Batman, written by Frank Robbins, parodied the rumour with a story entitled "Dead...Till Proven Alive" in which it is rumored that "Saul" from the band the Oliver Twists was deceased and replaced with a double. A twist ending revealed that an accident had killed every member of the Oliver Twists but Saul. The album that Robin is holding on the cover of the comic book mimics the back cover image on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. WMCA radio released a pinback promotional button for their station that read "Paul Lives WMCA Swings". The Rutles, a parody of The Beatles, included a couple of "Paul is dead" parodies. The Simpsons television show has included many references to it.[10]When McCartney guest-starred on The Simpsons in "Lisa the Vegetarian", he claimed there was a vegetarian hidden message in "Maybe I'm Amazed". Over the closing credits the song played with a backmasked lentil soup recipe. At the end, he says "Oh, and by the way, I'm alive." John Safran's Music Jamboree contains a segment about the conspiracy, followed by a mock George Harrison-is-dead conspiracy, after Harrison's death in 2001. The Onion's Our Dumb Century collection includes a fake headline from January 21, 1981 that reads, "Secret Album-Cover Clues Reveal John Lennon Is Dead." In the film Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks' character, Sam Baldwin, comes home to find his son, Jonah, listening to an album and declaring "Dad, this is incredible. If you play it backward it says 'Paul is dead.'"[11] In episode 819 of the series Mystery Science Theater 3000, a record player runs backward in a scene of the movie Invasion of the Neptune Men. Crow quips "Paul is a dead man! Miss him! Miss him!". In October 1974, the National Lampoon Radio Hour aired a skit titled "Rip Van Ripple" which told the story of a reporter picking-up a hippie hitchhiker who had apparently gotten wasted in 1966 and passed out for 8 years. Hitchhiker: Hey, is Paul McCartney still dead? Reporter: No, he's alive again. The Star Trek Customizable Card Game Alternative Universe expansion set's "Paul Rice" card reads "daed si luaP" ("Paul is Dead" backwards) next to the copyright information. In a 1987 edition of American Top 40, host Casey Kasem revisited the "Paul Is Dead" era as a related story to the Bananarama song "I Heard a Rumour". The following year, Dick Clark featured a similar story on Rock, Roll and Remember. He played the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" in which John Lennon allegedly says "I buried Paul" at the conclusion of the song (once it begins playing backward). (Lennon said in his 1980 Playboy interview that he actually said "cranberry sauce", which can be heard clearly on the song's extended version on Anthology 2.) In an episode of Celebrity Deathmatch pitting all of the Beatles against each other, Paul is the first band member to seemingly be killed early in the fight, only to come back with a giant silver hammer. On December 18, 2007, U.S. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joked that his Christmas commercial contained the phrase "Paul is dead!" if played backwards. Many bands have referenced the rumour on their music: SR-71 released a song called "Paul McCartney" on their debut album Now You See Inside which references that Paul is dead. The Union Underground wrote a song called "Turn Me On, Mr. Dead Man", a reference to the "Revolution 9" clue "Turn me on, dead man". "You Turn Me On", a song by Beat Happening, contains the lyrics "Turn me on, dead man," repeated multiple times throughout the chorus. Game Theory released a song called "Turn Me On, Dead Man" on their album Lolita Nation, also a reference to the "Revolution 9" clue "Turn me on, dead man", that features reversed humming and guitar playing. In the song "Readers Digest" from the album Only Visiting This Planet (1972) Christian rocker Larry Norman sings/recites: "Dear John, who's more popular now? I´ve been listening to some of Paul's new records. Sometimes I think he really is dead." Another Christian band, Five Iron Frenzy, released a song entitled "Get Your Riot Gear", from their Quantity Is Job 1 EP, which contains the backmasked message "Brad is dead. Let's kill Brad." The next song on the album, "The Untimely Death of Brad", tells a story about a false rumour that their trumpet player has died. New Zealand-based singer Shane recorded a version of Terry Knight's "Saint Paul" in 1969, believing the rumours to be true. [1] Punk rock band The Matches released the song "December is for Cynics" on the 2003 compilation A Santa Cause - It's A Punk Rock Christmas, in which they reference the rumor about the "Strawberry Fields Forever" backmasking