We'll All Be Magick Supermen: The “Paul is Dead” Videos of Iamaphoney

The “Paul is Dead” hoax/conspiracy/legend/myth/mystery, certainly one one of the stranger tales in the annals of rock 'n' roll, only gets weirder as time goes by. Rumors that Beatle Paul McCartney died in 1966 in a car crash and replaced by a lookalike “William Campbell” began circulating amongst heads in the UK and US throughout the late sixties, culminating in October 1969 broadcasts from Detroit's WKNR and NYC's WABC detailing not only the myth but also the “clues” left in Beatles album art, lyrics and proto-heavy-metal “backmasking.” There's the famous “I buried Paul” lyric from “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the “funeral march” depicted on the cover of Abbey Road, “Revolution #9” played backwards repeating “Wake me up dead man,” not to mention basic confusion over who and what “The Walrus” represents.

Of course, the 00's revolution in digital technology heralds another wave of “Paul is Dead” speculation as anonymous Youtube user Iamaphoney releases a series of videos documenting anything and everything (and perhaps even nothing) to do with the famous hoax. Iamaphoney's 80-part The Rotten Apple Series begins by reversing key lyric “Strawberry Fields / Nothing is real” to reveal “We'll sing it man, we'll be reverse,” and continues for hours, reversing and manipulating a truly impressive wealth of Beatles footage to forward the idea that Paul McCartney did not only die but was ritually murdered by a shadowy magickal order and replaced by an immortal android superman suggested to be the scion of arch-occultist Aleister Crowley. Tinfoil hat perennials Manson, Kubrick, and “2012” also figure largely.

Far fetched for sure, and fogged in no small part by Iamaphoney's heavy use of the very same hypnotic mind control and brainwashing techniques he seems to expose. But equally far fetched are the provided documents of the “surviving” Beatles' denials of the plot. Did Paul McCartney really go barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road because it was “too hot?” There can be no reliable narrator when all sides are drenched in LSD. In the end it doesn't matter. Grand conspiracy theories such as “Paul is Dead” play not upon fact, but possibility, weaving document and imagination together in the magical art of storytelling.

Comments

[Kip W]

Around 1968, a year or so before the big "Paul is Dead" thing erupted, my older sisters were into the notion that the Beatles albums had clues which, when deciphered, would tell you where and when (Wednesday Morning at Five O'Clock, for instance) to go and wait. A helicopter, they said, would show up and take the believers who figured it all out to a wonderful island where the Beatles would treat everybody to a sort of magical mystery tour.

I have no idea where they got it. A while later, closer to 1970, the big Paul McCartney thing erupted, and there was no more talk of mystery tours or helicopters.

[pierre norgaard]

Hi interesting article. Why don't you play the music of iamaphoney on your radiostation?
they are making a triple album, and the first one is free they have a link to download at therightalbum.com.
thanks for a ineresting blog.
Pierre

[mr. mike]

I've heard all this stuff before on conspiracy message boards and all I can ask is: what's the point? If they really did replace Paul in 1966, why should the facade matter now that the band cannot perform? And why hand out all these "clues" for 40 years? Insanity.

I would love if these guys would start asking questions about some of the weirder mysteries of `60s rock, like whatever happened to the original version of the Electric Prunes. The one that got a recording contract was not the first group to have that name....who were the originals, why did they break up, and did it have anything to do with anything interesting? The Monkees. Could they have formed a supergroup with Herman's Hermits to keep both bands afloat? And where is the fabled 30 minute Troggs tape? I've only heard about five minutes; does it get better? Worse? Inquiring minds want to know!

[John Fell Ryan]

It's a glaring question if The Beatles & Co really did commit this conspiracy, why they would purposely leave all these "clues." If they wanted to keep Paul's replacement a secret, wouldn't it be better to leave no hints at all? But by following a logical line of inquiry into the Paul Is Dead mystery, we'll already fallen into "their" trap, by assuming that the plot is real. The interesting thing about the Paul is Dead myth is not what really happened, but what people find themselves believing may have happened, despite all better judgement. Whether the "plot" was perpetrated by The Beatles, the "Illuminati," stoned college kids, all or none of the above is immaterial: the phenomenon exists with or without you. The essence of a grand mystery is not the solving of a crime, but the unraveling of the layers of reality, exposing what we might call the cosmic consciousness.
To paraphrase Pogo, "They is us."

[boil]

This has been eating at me all my life, thank you for finally clearing it up, no snark.

[fakeman]

I left a comment earlier about how all of this pointed to proof that Obama's birth certificate was a fake-- I see you expunged it from the comments. I was being sarcastic, but also trying to point out how belief in conspiracies is often devoid of any real evidence, in fact evidence disproving a conspiracy (Obama producing his birth certificate, Paul McCartney performing and writing very McCartney-esque songs for another 30 years after his "death") is usually discounted as "too perfect-- it must be part of the conspiracy!"

Personally I think it was all part of a larger conspiracy to help Klaatu sell records.

[Jim]

John's point is well taken:why the "clues"? Of course, the 'conspiracy'-oriented types would invent reasons to explain that away. In some cases, the whole thing resembles grand satire, but the theories are become extremely strange, suggesting a whole population of nutters who not truly believe the whole thing was true, but have actually imagined an alternate reality that resembles or represents the most bizarre fan-geek obsession imaginable. Each "clue" is buttressed with other "clues" (and many are obviously fictitious) and diverging theories are commonplace among the committed--it can be headache-inducing to read even small passages of the PID fantasies out there. Clearly, something simple such as DNA tests would conceivably solve everything, but even if so, the PID freaks would try to explain that away. Schizophrenia or something else?

[John Fell Ryan]

But to fan the flames, may I point out there are two "Pauls" in the complete collection of "Yellow Submarine" toys released in 1999: http://www.mybeatles.net/imagesmemnew/mcfarlane_1999.html
Reality just can't help it ... The PID myth is too catchy!

[Harold Kramer]

While I always found this interesting, the clues and what not, couldn't this be easily solved by comparing the voice prints of McCartney before and after 1966? I believe that every voice has it's own unique signature that cannot be duplicated. Am I right about this technology?

[AARON]

HIS PALM LINES ON HIS HANDS ARE WAY DIFFERNT PRESENT PAUL AND PRE 1967 PAUL