For this researcher, there can be little doubt that the man now known as James Paul McCartney is, in fact, an impostor. Both he and those who installed him over four decades ago have succeeded in deceiving the world in a way scarcely imaginable. In the view of mainstream history, the Beatles story is signed, sealed, and stamped: Four bright lads from Liverpool make it big, taking the world by storm in an unprecedented wave of musical celebrity. These same four lads become men, get fed up with stardom, retreat to the recording studio, get turned on and turned off, and then break up in a tizzy of arguments concerning girlfriends, producers, and money... Seems simple enough, and everyone who was involved has more or less confirmed the narrative over the last forty years, with a few notable exceptions by way of bizarre asides. But what rests beneath the surface? And what is to be made of truths plainly seen, but which go against the grain of what is accepted and taken at face value?
There can be little doubt that Paul McCartney changed dramatically, both physically and otherwise, after the summer of 1966. Some chalk it up to any number of causes: weight loss, drug use, an ego trip; a sudden interest in the avant garde art scene, etc. But such excuses, while acceptable to those who merely seek a shallow confirmation of a pre-conceived view, simply do not stand the evidence test. No amount of weight loss or drug use can account for a sudden drastic change in facial structure and height. No mere ego trip or changing interests can explain an about-face in personality and in personal tastes. Yet, we are led to believe that the McCartney changes occurred naturally within less than a six-month time frame! I am utterly flabbergasted by the fact that no journalist, TV host, etc. has ever questioned "McCartney" concerning this period. Even if the idea of a Beatle being replaced is totally absurd to you, one must concede the oddity of the above. What the official record would have the public believe is that "Paul" went from lovable moptop to greasy-haired hippie without so much as blinking. Well, reality points to a different story, regardless of the mainstream reluctance to confront it.
At the end of the Beatles' summer '66 tour, anomalies began to appear in Paul McCartney's appearance, and footage from those final days in August is hard to come by. Almost none remains (in the public sphere at least) from the band's last performance at Candlestick Park. Why? After the tour, the Beatles quite suddenly go on hiatus, and Paul disappears from public view. He supposedly takes a safari in Kenya with Beatles' roadie Mal Evans, and returns in November to begin work on the groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper album. All of the above would be well and good, or at least partly suspicious, if "McCartney" had not come out of that autumn looking and acting like a different person. To illustrate, one might view the 'Paperback Writer' (1966) promotional video and that of 'Strawberry Fields' (1967) back to back. They were produced less than a year apart, but I defy any who would claim that McCartney is unchanged from one to the other. "He has a mustache and his hair is shorter," say some, who I cannot possibly take seriously. For starters, they might compare the widely different facial features between the "Paul" in Strawberry Fields and the McCartney of Paperback Writer. The faces are of a different structure, the two noses are of a differing shape and length, the ears do not match, and the eyes are not the same color.
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| "Paul" on his Kenyan safari |
There are more than just physical differences to be noted in McCartney during the closing months of 1966 and after. Upon returning from the Kenya trip, Mal Evans was sent by Brian Epstein to McCartney's Cavendish Avenue residence to fire his long-time housekeeper, ordering the man to gather his things and be out within an hour. The event, so uncharacteristic of the well-mannered and polite McCartney, was only the beginning of the dramatic and unprecedented character changes that would follow. The man currently known as "Paul McCartney" has, over the course of four decades, made himself a reputation for being obnoxious, petty, rude, and egotistical in the extreme. The current image has almost entirely engulfed the memory of the pre-'66 McCartney, who, though certainly no moral angel, was of a soft-spoken and thoughtful disposition, who displayed a fine taste in everything from music to clothing, and whose interests ranged widely, even to conspiracy research--he was the first reader to review attorney Mark Lane's groundbreaking manuscript on the JFK assassination, Rush to Judgement.
In 2009, a group of Italian researchers conducted a forensic investigation into PID. Comparing full-on photographs, they analyzed Paul McCartney's face both before and after 1966. Their conclusion: the images depict two different men, i.e, the original Paul was replaced by a lookalike sometime during '66. The results of the study were officially published in Italy's Wired magazine.
The obvious question we now face is simply: Why? Why was Paul McCartney replaced, and by whom. Further, did his replacement result from a mere accident, as the original rumor suggests? Or was he murdered by forces unknown? Additionally, why did the remaining Beatles keep their silence and continue to propagate the lie that the impostor was and is the genuine article? In light of their resilience, it is difficult initially to accept the obvious truth that Paul McCartney was replaced--the full force of psychological manipulation is at play here. As I mentioned above, the Beatle mythos is virtually set in stone. The public sphere has seen a myriad of information over the past forty years, fed to them via books, interviews, and the supposedly definitive Beatles Anthology. The man who has gone by the name "Paul McCartney" for so long has the art of deception down to a science. He lounges during interviews, casually firing off anecdotes about those "good old Beatlemania days", complete with bits of snark and lame attempts at jokes--The word "anecdotes" ought to be emphasized here, specifically in reference to "Paul's" recollection of events prior to 1966. If one looks past his slick delivery, it is not difficult to recognize that he may as well be quoting from a Beatles trivia book. His "memories" simply do not have the ring of authenticity one would expect from someone who had actually lived them. Tellingly, his more consistent and vivid recollections come from the years after 1966, and it is only when speaking of those years that his stories even out and form some semblance of an actual life's narrative-- "Paul" has, on several occasions, been asked about the rumors concerning his death. His responses have been cagey at best, and never in the form of direct denials. On one occasion he said that, no he was not dead, but just a "good replica". He has also repeatedly revealed an ignorance of how the death rumors first came to public light, claiming it was because he was barefooted on the Abbey Road album cover. Is he serious, or merely trying to confuse things further?
Given the darker, more chaotic turn the Beatles' music took after 1966, it is tempting to recognize in the replacement of Paul the black hand-print of powerful elite interests. After all, the Beatles did not exist in a vacuum, nor can it be truthfully claimed (no matter what the official line) that their rise to fame was purely an organic phenomenon. There is a chance that the Beatles were a manufactured entity, a brainchild of England's psychological intelligence program via the mysterious Tavistock Institute. We now know that our own CIA was an instigator and manipulator of the hippie drug culture, and that the agency's efforts helped create many of the supposedly "rebel" musical acts of the 60's. John Lennon himself admitted in a 1980 interview for Playboy, that we had the CIA to "thank" for LSD. He also admitted that the Beatles set out with a specific cultural agenda. Could it be that the real James Paul McCartney grew tired of the game and wanted out? What if he desired freedom from his controllers? It is interesting to note that, prior to 1966, Paul was not heavily into drugs. We know that all the Beatles smoked pot, but Paul himself eschewed the use of psychedelics. All that changed in 1968, when suddenly "he" confesses to LSD use, and gives an obstinate interview for all the world to see. Was McCartney cut from the loop for refusing to endorse the mascot drug of the hippie movement? We may never know for sure. But why the sudden change in the Beatles' music and style after the summer '66 tour? Was it merely innocent artistic growth, or the result of an ultimatum from on high? The Beatles were far from squeaky clean before the period in question, but it cannot be denied that their music took an unprecedented turn toward the psychedelic and the occult after 1966. Whatever the reason, all arrows seem to point to the possibility of James Paul McCartney's replacement being anything but an accident.
The idea of a sinister hand behind the scenes is given further credence when one discovers telltale signs surrounding PID. With this case, as with JFK's assassination and other such cover-ups, there is a high rate of suspicious deaths involving eyewitnesses and those who might have known too much. In relation to PID, two deaths of note would be the alleged "suicide" of Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, in 1967, and the murder of Mal Evans, the band's long-time roadie and the man who seems to have taken an active part in Paul's replacement. Evans was set to publish a tell-all memoir of his time with the Beatles, but was bizarrely killed by Los Angeles police in the early 70's for supposedly waving a BB gun around. His manuscript has never been found.
November 9th of this year marked the would-be release date of two new documentaries purporting to finally reveal the truth about Paul McCartney's replacement. Curiously enough, both distributors claimed to be embroiled in lawsuits and cease and desist letters which prevented them from releasing their films on the promised day. Cheap attention grab, or dark conspiracy? Who can say? The most recent PID film was the laughable 'Paul McCartney Really is Dead,' which was essentially a composite of several old theories, all presented by an obviously phony narrator pretending to be the voice of the real George Harrison. The creators of the film were evidently out to soil the creek even more than it already was previously, but their work has managed to bring PID to more people's attention, either in a negative or positive sense.
One of the new yet-to-be-released films was made by an entity calling itself "Iamaphoney," though at least one of the individuals involved is known by name. The new film is a sequel to an earlier work entitled The Winged Beatle, which reiterated the classic PID clues on Beatles albums, but also managed to present some enticing new tidbits previously unknown to this case. It seems Iamaphoney has pieced together an intricate web that links the Beatles with renowned satanist Aleister Crowley, and hints that Paul's replacement held a dark spiritual significance. Iamaphoney hopes to sort out the legal issues soon and then release the film. However, there is some reason to suspect that the Iamaphoney project is being secretly backed by none other than Apple Corp., the Beatles' own company. Is "Paul" anonymously confessing to the truth? Or are the videos merely another disinformation tool?
PID, while remaining one of the more nebulous theories, is by no means devoid of concrete attributes. The most obvious is, of course, the physical differences between the Paul McCartney of early Beatles fame and the man who was photographed outside Abbey Road studios in November 1966, and who bears the "McCartney" name to this day. Secondly, there are the personality and stylistic differences to be noted, neither of which can be written off as easily as some would like. These two aspects of the case must serve as the foundation for all further inquiry. There are some researchers who have left the evidence field on this matter and gone off into the high grass. They claim that all the Beatles were replaced, or that there were three or five Paul McCartneys prior to 1966! Their reasons are far-ranging and fantastical, but all have one thing in common: they have latched onto flotsam instead of the lifeboat. Only by means of the lifeboat will we reach the shore in this case, otherwise we are left forever bobbing around it.
AL, 2012
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