'Yes, it's true. I'm not actually Paul McCartney. You know Paul McCartney, he didn't have a scar on his mouth. I'm very like him, but I'm actually not him.' ^(4)
That's what I told me mate Peter Blake who designed the cover of Sgt Peppers, on the day in 1969 that the news came out that I was rumoured to be dead. And, for a couple of minutes, Peter Blake actually believed me! Of course the reason I now had a scar on my mouth was because I'd fallen off me bike.
As Mark Twain said, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.^(1)
I was rung one day by one of the blokes in the office, who said, 'Hey, there's a rumour started by a DJ in America that you're dead. I said, 'you're kidding - just tell them that I'm not.' He said, 'No, that won't do. You've got not shoes on on the cover [of Abbey Road]: this is apparently a Mafia sign of death. And there's a car registration plate behind you which says 28 IF. Well, that means you'd be twenty-eight - if you'd have lived.' And I replied, 'Wait a minute - he's stretching a bit here, isn't he?'^(1)
It's all bloody stupid!^(5)
So what me old mates in the Beatles thought at the time about it was that it was a load of rubbish...a load of rubbish that was helping us sell records. I mean, me old mate John (RIP) said in an interview at the time, and I quote:
Paul McCartney couldn't die without the world knowing it. The same as he couldn't get married without the world knowing it. It's impossible - he can't go on holiday without the world knowing it. It's just insanity - but it's a great plug for Abbey Road.^(2)
I mean, if I'm honest, I reckon John there was a little jealous of my gift for publicity - here he was in 1969 doing all those bed-ins for world peace, and I was getting publicity for being dead! In another interview from the time, John was pretty harsh, I have to say:
Now they’re saying that Paul’s been dead for three and a half years and we’ve been using a look alike stand in. . . . How about that: a rumor invented by a jackass and perpetuated by an out-of-work grave digger. . . . If that doesn’t work then we’ll start our own rumor that the public is dead from the neck up and they’ve been using a stand-in facsimile of a brain for the past three and a half years and then sit back and see who denies it.^(8)
Ringo thought along the same lines: 'It didn't worry us. It was part of rock'n'roll. It kept the madness going: we had an album out, and it was in every newspaper and on TV. It was big doings.'^(3)
Mind you, it was a bit weird meeting people shortly after that, because they'd be looking at the back of my ears, looking a bit through me, and it was weird doing the 'I really am him' stuff.^(1)
Anyway, they reckoned I'd died in November 1966 in a car accident. But if you look at what we were up to in November and December that year after I allegedly died, I mean, we were at Abbey Road recording 'Strawberry Fields', 'Penny Lane' and 'When I'm Sixty Four'.^(7) Pretty amazing that the Beatles could find a lookalike with a scouse accent who could play bass and sing like me - and within days! And, I mean, how strange: that guy they found kept writing songs in the style of Paul McCartney that continued to be hits!
In the 1970s, the academics had a field day about what the hoax meant. Folklore Forum said that
Not even the Forum, with its network of far-flung correspondents, has been able to keep track of the deluge of published and oral materials speculating on Paul McCartney’s alleged demise. We are even at a loss for what to term the phenomenon, for it seems to incorporate elements of rumor, legend, belief, mock scholarship and kabbalistic magic.
Some academics in an article about the phenomenon in 1976 said it pretty well, I think:
How many people believed in Paul McCartney’s “death” can not be determined. Yet the fact that so many stopped to consider the possibility is significant. Somethings become very clear about the relationship of the popular audience to their idols. The popular artist is indeed regarded as the property of his audience and, if his fate in life (or death) is not fertile enough ground for vicarious participation by the audience, the audience will certainly find ways to make it so. As one fan put it, “everybody was so concerned with proving that Paul was dead, that nobody was so concerned with proving that Paul was not dead, that nobody, including me, stopped to say, wow, well I hope he’s not dead. I hope he’s alive.”^(8)
But if I were dead, I'd be the last to know...^(6)
^(1) Paul McCartney quote from The Beatles Anthology book.
^(2) John Lennon quote from 1969, from the Beatles Anthology book.
^(3) Ringo Starr quote in The Beatles Anthology
^(4) Quote from Peter Blake in The Beatles Off The Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews by Keith Badman
^(5) Paul McCartney quote in The Beatles Off The Record: Outrageous Opinions & Unrehearsed Interviews by Keith Badman
^(6) quote in Peter Brown with Steven Gaines, The Love You Make
^(7) According to Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Chronicle
^(8) Donald Bird, Stephen Holder and Diane Sears (1976), 'Walrus Is Greek For Corpse: Rumor and the Death of Paul McCartney' in the Journal of Popular Culture