Back in 1969, Life magazine did a brief check on Paul McCartney, who they found at home, on his farm in Scotland, with his wife Linda and their young children. He had gone missing from the public eye around the time that the "Paul is Dead" story, along with a few years worth of attendant clues on Beatles albums, landed big on the minds of American youth. It was almost as if the British Invasion, heralded by The Beatles and other British bands in 1964, was landing again. Beatles albums started flying off the shelves as fascinated Americans bought two and three copies of each, which they wore out by tracking them backwards as they listened for Beatle confessions, such as "I buried Paul".

McCartney, judging by the tone of the article, which you can read in full at http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1969.1107.beatles.html, seemed not to be amused by the ensuing hubbub, which brought a magazine reporter and photographer to his northern rural retreat.

"I would rather do what I began by doing, which is making music. We make good music and we want to go on making good music. But the Beatle thing is over. It has been exploded, partly by what we have done, and partly by other people. We are individuals-- all different. John married Yoko, I married Linda. We didn't marry the same girl."

"The people who are making up these rumors should look to themselves a little more. There is not enough time in life. They should worry about themselves instead of worrying whether I am dead or not."

"What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything I write a song. Can you spread it around that I am just an ordinary person and want to live in peace? We have to go now. We have two children at home."

Rumor Reborn - Paul is Dead Again

Over the past decade, as the now 76-year old "Sir Paul McCartney" continues to tour and play around the world, the "Paul is Dead" rumor has gained new life as a popular internet theme. YouTube has numerous "investigators" reporting on this story that has gained in nuance and complexity over the years.

If somehow you missed this, the story is that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike, who is the guy we know today as Sir Paul McCartney.

Even if you find the conspiracy idea to be patently ridiculous, there is a long list of odd things about the Paul McCartney story that make it impossible to disregard:

• PHYSICAL CHANGES: McCartney disappeared from public view in the final months of 1966, and when the public saw him next, in 1967, he looked physically different.* All The Beatles looked different stylistically from the way they did as the Fab Four, but McCartney seemed to have morphed into a whole different guy.

  • McCartney in 1967 seems to have a longer face than the round-faced Paul of 1966 and earlier. His chin seems longer, and more pointed.

  • The Paul we all fell for in 63-64 had huge ears that connected at their bottoms to the sides of his head, rather than in hanging lobes. The 1967 Paul has hanging lobes, and the ear structure is different.

  • Paul before 1966 seemed to have brown eyes, while the 1967 Paul seemed to have hazel or green eyes.

  • Early Paul appeared to be about the same height as John Lennon, but the 1967 Paul looks significantly taller. Is it possible that McCartney had a growth spurt in his mid-20s?**

• FINGERPRINT IRREGULARITIES: In 1980, while touring with Wings, McCartney was detained in a Japanese jail for nine days while authorities attempted to rectify differences in the McCartney fingerprints on file with InterPol - McCartney had a police record from a fire prank he pulled that got him deported from Germany in his early Beatle days - and those of this guy they had jailed for passport forgery and marijuana possession. The Japanese felt they had a McCartney imposter behind bars. The British government, in the form of Scotland Yard, came to McCartney's rescue, but there was never an explanation for the fingerprint mismatch.

• FORENSIC ANALYSIS OF FEATURES: In 2009, Wired magazine in Italy reported on the investigations of two Italian forensic analysts who examined photographic features of pre-1966 Paul and 1967 Paul and determined that they are not the same person. 

• VOICE ANALYSIS: Forensic analysis of McCartney vocals over the years have yielded contradicting results, with one suggesting that the singers of "Yesterday" and "Blackbird" are two different people, and another suggesting that changes in McCartney's voice over the years are typical of aging.

• DNA ANALYSIS: Before The Beatles became an international sensation, and were playing in Germany, McCartney fathered a child (named Bettina) and paid the family of the girl (Hubers) a sum of money that was intended to quiet the issue. The Hubers family pursued McCartney for years to gain child support payments. When Bettina turned 18, McCartney's lawyers felt their client could no longer be considered responsible for child support, but the German courts pursued the Hubers' case and demanded a DNA test to show paternity. McCartney was barred from playing in Germany until that test was completed. The DNA results showed that the DNA of the guy we know as Paul McCartney did not match that of Bettina's father, 1962 Paul, meaning new-Paul, or "Faul" as he is sometimes called, was off the hook for any further demands for child support. The Hubers family suggested that the guy who gave DNA and signed the court papers was not the real Paul McCartney - he wasn't even left-handed.

*This statement is highly contested, which is a story in itself. Some people see a different Paul in 1967 and thereafter, where others see the same guy we all knew since at least 1963.

**This, too, is an observation open to dispute. Photographs of the four Beatles over the years leave no clear sense of their relative heights, other than that Ringo was significantly shorter than the others. One might think a researcher could find Sir Paul's driver's license statistics and compare to Paul's license stats in the early '60s. On the other hand, the conspiracy suggests that the British government was deeply involved, and as the government issues driver licenses any evidence they might present would likely be subject to suspicion.

Photographic Evidence and Beatles Doubles

Analysis of Beatle photographs is greatly complicated by the The Beatles' use of body doubles after the hysteria surrounding their international fame made them prisoners, completely unable to visit public places. Fans camped in front of their homes, making it impossible for them to leave without creating an event, so they employed doubles to throw the public off track.

Some of these doubles went on to become famous people in their own right, among them Spencer Davis (Spencer Davis Group) and Denny Laine (The Moody Blues, Wings). It is entirely likely that even some of the most widely-circulated Beatles photographs include images of Beatles doubles. For instance, internet researchers have suggested that these photographs below are of at least three different people. Some say there is one Paul pictured twice in the line below, that being the guy in the 1st and 4th photographs in this row. I don't know that any of them look like the Paul McCartney I first saw in 1964.

It was the fifth image above (from left), which is from The Beatles video for "Hey Jude", that struck me as noteworthy. I recall the first time that I saw that video in 1969. I hadn't seen Paul McCartney in a while, and my first impression upon seeing him in the "Hey Jude" video was that there was something wrong with him, that he might be ill. He just didn't look right to me. It certainly never occurred to me that he wasn't the same Paul.

In that photograph, does he look like any of the others shown here? And if not, what would account for that? That is, if he is Paul McCartney?

What is this Conspiracy Theory Really About?

Some would suggest that the bands of the 1964 event known as "The British Invasion" were involved in a literal invasion of the United States by Great Britain, orchestrated by British intelligence.

Fifteen years into the reconstruction of Europe and Asia, following the end of World War II, the United States reigned as the supreme industrial and military power in the world. The reason was simple: America had not been bombed into oblivion like those theaters of war had; in fact, the U.S. had extended its dominance in the world by reconverting parts of its military industrial muscle into peace-time production. American manufacturers sold products throughout the world, often against limited competition, and the American middle class exploded in size as the 20th became known as "the American Century".

History, since the time of the Crusades, has revealed that bankers pull the strings that create world events, and by the 20th Century the center of world banking and finance was in London, specifically in the City of London, which is the ancient center of greater London. That unique sovereign state within a country had become the beneficiary of a world created by a Venetian Banking System, which in the 11th through the 13th centuries had indebted and exploited crusading Christians to sack the ports of the Middle East and capture trade to the region. With the largest trading fleet in the world at the time, the Venetians were a power in themselves and owed allegiance to no nation.

Some would say that the "Black Venetians", as some call them, were the progenitors of today's "New World Order" idea, or maybe they are simply the same. "Modern banking" was essentially invented by powerful families in Florence, including the Acciaiuoli, Mozzi, Bardi and Peruzzi families. The famous Medici family founded a bank in 1394 that operates to this day!

Those families created their banks in response to Italian Christians who had devised ways around usury laws. In many cultures it is considered a sin to charge interest on loans, and these clever Christians had devised a workaround. Worse yet, a group of Jews, according to common sources (see Wikipedia), also entered the financing market and exploited usury opportunities through clever manipulation of commodities trading. Driving it all was the Crusades, which did for the Venetian bankers what WWII did for America. The door to unethical banking practices had been pried open by competitors, and the Black Venetians rushed to define the new world.

Countries were saddled with crushing debt and by the 15th Century, all of the European countries were bankrupt, as for a time were even the bankers, who began to migrate across Europe on the way to their eventual relocation in the City of London. During that time, the Rothschild banking family placed relatives in every royal house in Europe and infiltrated the Venetian Banking System.

Those City of London bankers, and their Queen, who in terms of money and holdings is the wealthiest person in the world, are all about consolidating power under a single global elite, and they and their intelligence operatives targeted the U.S. in the 1960s. The U.S. was tilting the balance of power, and the bankers rely on big expensive wars that never really end, which requires a level of parity among their puppet nations. Employing advanced technologies in behavioral manipulation and mind control, including the introduction of mind-altering drugs, they unleashed a scheme to send America into cultural and societal chaos.

They used the tools that had been developed through research into the effects of trauma, learned through two world wars and numerous other conflicts, and they set about destroying the fabric of American society, in part through the cultural influence of two of their prime weapons: The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

Kennedy Assassination

The Beatles have a strange association with the Kennedy assassination of November 22, 1963.

They arrived in America, in February 1964, when the country and even a shocked world needed comfort, which The Beatles provided. It was uncanny and no one who was alive at the time will ever forget it.

Traumatized, we all switched on Ed Sullivan one Sunday night and suddenly it seemed like the world might go on after all - The Beatles had arrived to snuff out the Blue Meanies. And we gave ourselves to them, heart and soul.

Was that serendipity? Or was that part of a plan?

The Replacement: Vivien Stanshall?

However strange and confusing a McCartney photo review might be, the next leap in this bizzarro replacement story is one that I would find impossible to believe based on the photo at the right.

The guy in the photo was a cabaret performer named Vivien Stanshall, who was quite well known to audiences in the U.K. in the 1960s. Stanshall achieved a level of fame with an act he developed called the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Watch the video below to see fascinating footage of the band at work, led by this character Vivien Stanshall.

The Bonzo band included Neil Innes, who would go on to star in The Rutles movie, which was a send-up of The Beatles that was mounted by Monty Python's Eric Idle and financed by Beatle George Harrison. The Bonzo band was a comic entertainment that presaged "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and it caught the attention of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who would come to the clubs to watch them play.

In fact, the Bonzo band, which was a nightclub act not at all focused on creating original music and radio hits, were signed to a record label and producing records. Under pressure to produce something commercial for the radio, they enlisted Paul McCartney to produce a song called "Urban Spaceman", which was a hit in the U.K. in 1968.

Stanshall, Innes, and the Bonzo band were later featured in The Beatles television special "A Magical Mystery Tour".

Funny and Brilliant-Weird: Stanshall World

Watching Vivien Stanshall in the performance videos within the video to the right, and thinking about the Paul McCartney we have known, and still know today, one starts to imagine that this musical thespian might have some physical characteristics in common with Paul McCartney. Moreover, you seem to hear some of those comical character voices that are like those often featured on Beatles tracks. Stanshall had the love of old Vaudeville-type show tunes that we recognize in McCartney, and both have a thing for the ukelele.

Credulity strains, however, relative to the notion that Stanshall became McCartney, under the weight of Vivien Stanshall's own successful career, which continued until his death in a house fire in 1995. He was 51.

Stanshall looked like this in the end.

According to his Wikipedia page, that is him with his wife of 18 years, Ki Longfellow-Stanshall, who wrote a book about his career and life - The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall, a Fairytale of Grimm Art. Strangely, the illustrations in the book are not Stanshall's, though painting and art design was a big part of Stanshall's life. Ki Longfellow had a child with Stanshall and she is quite an interesting character in her own right. See her Wikipedia page.

Stanshall was cremated and his ashes were placed in a mausoleum close to those of his friend Keith Moon. Or at least that's the official story, told through a Wikipedia page dedicated to Stanshall.

So how could the guy above be Paul McCartney? According to the account in the fictional memoir of Billy Shears, it is because that guy you see there was paid to portray Vivien Stanshall while the real Vivian was out portraying Paul McCartney.

Sir Paul decided to retire the Vivien character in 1995, when it all became too much, or so the story goes.

____________________

So how could some "Paul is Dead" conspiracy buffs believe that the Vivien Stanshall story is somehow a lie?

They believe Stanshall was a theatrical construction, and the work of a guy named William Shepherd.

What Troubles Vivien?

As detailed in the video above, Vivien Stanshall's Bonzo band did a couple low-budget tours of the United States. The first was in 1967, and the second a year later, in 1968. Between those dates, a change came over Stanshall. He showed signs of having lost his nerve and confidence, and he began drinking heavily. He shaved his head and seemed to physically change.

The fun had gone out of the Bonzo band for everyone involved, and especially for Vivien, who had always seemed most comfortable on stage when he was behind a mask, portraying something other than himself. On his own, he was insecure, almost neutralized with doubt about who he was and who he wanted to be.

The Bonzo band played a final show in 1968 and called it quits. Hooked on booze and valium, Stanshall formed bands that tried to duplicate the Bonzo madness, but he told associates that he was not really present in his mind throughout that next 10 years. In the wonderful video above there is a reference to a reunion with Frank Zappa, which adds another interesting wrinkle to this story, which is discussed below.

In the late '70s, Stanshall went solo, recording an album with Stevie Winwood of Traffic fame, but he became more reclusive over time. He acted as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells. He developed a show titled Sir Henry at Rawlinson End that he turned into a radio series, an audio recording, a book, and a film.  He developed a theatrical musical, "Stinkfoot", that was funny and quite well received, but then he suddenly walked away from a second run of that play and retired to his London flat. There he reportedly killed himself by accidentally starting a fire through his careless handling of cigarettes.

Who Was (or is) Billy Shears?

Billy Shears, as all Beatle buffs know, was a character introduced on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club album. It was by way of introduction to the song "A Little Help From My Friends", which featured a vocal by Ringo Starr. What's the mystery, right? Ringo has another song in which he refers to himself as Billy Shears.

For some who believe in the "Paul Is Dead" story, Billy Shears refers to William (Billy) Shepherd. They believe that William Shepherd, who was once selected by Beatles manager Brian Epstein as a winner in a Paul McCartney look-alike contest, and afterwards worked as a Beatle double, was the musician behind the character publicly known as Vivien Stanshall. To them, Stanshall was a character that Shepherd created and continued to perform as until 1995, when he decided to retire the character by having him killed off, complete with a book and a Wiki that suggests that Stanshall was a real person.

To them, William Shepherd is an enormously talented multi-instrumentalist - known as "the man of a thousand voices" - who manager Epstein and Beatles Producer George Martin chose to replace Paul McCartney immediately upon McCartney's death in 1966 - if not before.

William Shepherd

Billy Shepherd was, or is, a musician who has been on the music scene in the U.K. for at least as long as The Beatles. He is said to be a descendant of Scottish legend William Wallace (the character Mel Gibson played in the film "Braveheart"). A multi-instrumentalist, Shepherd is credited as a songwriter on a raft of albums produced during the British Invasion period for American audiences who were nuts about the Mersey Beat. He was the key figure in albums released under the names The Mersey Beats, The Liverpool Beats, and Billy Pepper and the Pepperpots. Those albums featured faithful covers of Beatles hits, along with Shepherd originals.

Beyond producing exploitive Beatles sound-alike LPs, Shepherd also had a series of bands with Denny Laine, the guitarist-singer who was a founder of The Moody Blues and co-founder of the McCartney band Wings.*

Shepherd and Laine also played together in a band called The Diplomats, in which Shepherd went by the name Phil Ackrill. And, the story further goes that Billy Shepherd was also the cabaret performer Vivien Stanshall.

Beyond being a Paul McCartney double, and playing in all those bands, Shepherd wrote articles for the Mersey Beat music magazine, which was devoted almost entirely to The Beatles. He analyzed them inside and out, even noting in one article that it was time for The Beatles to go through a needed change.

*This is edited from an earlier version incorrectly suggesting that Paul McCartney wrote the song "Go Now", which was a hit for the Moodys. That song was written by Larry Banks and Milton Bennett.

MACCA CORP

This book at right is largely responsible for the rebirth of the Paul Is Dead story. Privately published by Peppers Press in 2009, it purports to be the inside story of the Paul McCartney replacement, Billy Shepherd.

It is a work of "historical fiction", supposedly categorized as fiction to avoid conflict with the confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements Shepherd has with whatever organization has orchestrated and managed the McCartney story.

Thomas E. Uharriet is identified as the guy who "encoded" this book, highlighting words throughout its 666 pages to summarize a tale.

The tale is that high-ranking Freemasons and the Tavistock Institute were behind the entire Beatles story. The book further suggests that occult forces have been a big part of The Beatle formula, including the orchestrated replacement of Paul McCartney.

MACCA CORP. is an expired Utah corporation, with a Corporation-Domestic-Profit Company Type.

Kenneth Anger and Horus

Still around today, avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger had an extraordinary influence on pop culture in the late 1960s, though he had been producing fringe art since the late 1930s. A protegé of Aleister Crowley and a devotee of Crowley's Thelema religion, the openly gay Anger made homoerotic cinematic art that influenced young filmmakers David Lynch, Martin Scorcese, and John Waters. They emulated Anger's surreal and courageous visions, mostly communicated through short, erotic films, though his prodigious productions also included his tacky Hollywood Babylon gossip books.

Anger made a couple films, Invocation of My Demon Brother and Lucifer Rising that featured '60s stars Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Marianne Faithful, as well as Manson-family murderer Bobby Beausoleil. They were about the coming Aeon of Horus, which in the Thelema world promised a transition from an age of a single authoritarian god to an age of self-realization and self-actualization.

To Christians, Anger's future vision was nothing less than Satanic.

Beyond the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page (who owns a large collection of Aleister Crowley memorabilia, as well as Crowley's former residence on the shore of Loch Ness), The Beatles also fell under Anger and Crowley's influence. Their images are on the Sargent Peppers cover. In fact, the video on the right suggests that Aleister Crowley was Sargent Pepper! The notion that they were tools used to usher in the Aeon of Horus is central to the PID story.

This video above is not offered as an endorsement but rather an example of the way Kenneth Anger and Aleister Crowley are viewed in some quarters.

Freemasonry and Lucifer

According to The Memoirs of Billy Shears, Freemasonry is the glue that holds the whole McCartney replacement saga together.

The story goes like this:

1. Paul McCartney is killed, either in a car crash or a murder.

2. William Shepherd's uncle, a high-ranking Freemason, contacts George Martin, a lower ranking Freemason, and orders that there be an immediate replacement, his nephew Billy. Some have speculated that this was the "Uncle Albert" referenced later during Billy Shepherd's Wings era.

3. Billy Shepherd is a high-ranking Freemason himself, who worked behind the scenes to help The Beatles achieve the success that they had up to that time, and his qualifications as a musician had earned him the opportunity to assume the role of Paul McCartney.

4. By the time George Martin contacted Brian Epstein to tell him Billy Shepherd was to replace Paul, someone had already gotten to Epstein with the news and Epstein was dolling out cash to a reporter to keep the story under wraps.

For those who believe this story, the account is based on an understanding of a Freemasonry hierarchy depicted in the following graphic.

The idea is that Freemasonry is a control mechanism used by the non-human Lucifer to manage humans and human affairs. They believe the organization initiates regular people into its lodges, and elevates them to the status of 3rd Degree Master Mason, to create an impression that the secret society is a benign civic fraternity, which it most certainly is. Freemasons do an extraordinary amount of civic work, like raising funds for hospitals.

Rising up through the rituals of the Scottish Rite, a Freemason who achieves the 32nd degree comes into possession of "the Royal Secret".

What is the Royal Secret? Does the graphic suggest anything?

One who has achieved the 32nd degree vows himself to be a “True Soldier” who "seeks truth and knowledge, demands freedom of voice, vote, and opinion for all people, combats spiritual tyranny with reason and truth, encourages men to be self-reliant and independent, and performs zealously his duties to God, his country, his family, his brethren, and himself." That last part was quoted from the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite Masonry, US Southern Jurisdiction.

None of that sounds particularly evil, but there is a thought among some that Freemasonry reveals its true nature the higher an initiate moves up through the degrees. There are 20 degrees at the top, according to this account, that are largely unknown to human beings, so who are the Freemasons who have achieved those secret degrees?

Are they all accountable to Lucifer, as Billy Shepherd says in The Memoirs of Billy Shears?

And who, exactly, is Lucifer?

Who is Lucifer?

The answer to that question has changed over time.

As with everything that eventually takes on its own meaning in the context of a religion, the word Lucifer initially referenced an astronomical phenomenon. People noticed that the planet Venus would move in the sky in a pattern that led it to be thought of as the "morning star".

Lucifer was a Latin name for the planet Venus, which translates to "morning star" or "shining one", rather than as a proper name, "Lucifer" (Wikipedia).

Christians think of Lucifer as the devil, based on the Hebrew word הֵילֵל‎ in Isaiah (Isaiah 14:12) given in the King James Version of the Bible. That interpretation has always been subject to question because, as depicted in the story of Adam and Eve, the temptation the serpent devil brought to the Garden of Eden was knowledge and intellectual curiosity. These are evil impulses?

In an environment in which the Catholic Church, and eventually other denominations, were doing their best to discourage any questioning of church authority, Lucifer certainly must have represented evil to them.

In more modern conspiracy theory, that "all seeing eye" at the top of the pyramid in the graphic above is a Reptilian overlord, one of the Annunaki who created our hybrid human race and has ruled Earth for the past 450,000 years.

Or, possibly related and jumping back to Venus for a moment, there are those who believe our sister planet Venus is populated with an advanced race of humanoids. Is it an overlord from Venus who eyes us from the top of the pyramid?

I don't suppose that is "the Royal Secret" of Freemasonry, is it? In The Memoirs of Billy Shears, Lucifer's rule over the planet is part of the big reveal.

The Aquarian Conspiracy

The Aquarian Conspiracy is a concept put forward by a man named John Coleman.

It is his notion that there is an Illuminati that has a totalitarian agenda to take control of education in America for the purpose of destroying it through rock music and drugs, rebellion against the status quo, and the destruction of the family unit.

Coleman is essentially at war with Marxism, as he believes that Tavistock Institute and military intelligence agencies work hand-in-hand to achieve their Marxist purposes.

A key aspect of that has been the creation of cultural icons, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, to create societal disorder and cultural disassociation.

Brian Epstein and George Martin

Who Were They?

Whatever happened with The Beatles and Paul McCartney, these two were at the root of it all: Beatles manager Brian Epstein (left) and producer George Martin.

The Beatles had been knocking on the doors of record labels since 1960 and getting nowhere until they attracted the attention of Epstein. Here is how Wikipedia describes him:

"Epstein was born into a family of successful retailers in Liverpool, who put him in charge of their music shop. Here he displayed a remarkable gift for talent-spotting, and got a strong intuition about the potential of an unknown 4-man group, The Beatles, at a lunchtime concert at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in 1961. Although he had no experience of artist management, Epstein put them under contract and insisted that they abandon their scruff-image in favour of a new clean-cut style, with identical suits and haircuts. He then persuaded George Martin of the prestigious EMI group to produce their records."

So how is it that Epstein had this connection with George Martin?

This is how Wikipedia introduces Martin:

"Sir George Henry Martin, CBE (3 January 1926 – 8 March 2016) was an English record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, audio engineer, and musician. He was referred to as the "Fifth Beatle" (by Paul McCartney and various commentators) in reference to his extensive involvement on each of the Beatles' original albums...Martin produced comedy and novelty records in the early 1950s, working with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Bernard Cribbins, among others... In recognition of his services to the music industry and popular culture, he was made a Knight Bachelor in 1996."

Conspiracy-minded people seem to tie all conspiracies back to Freemasonry, and so it is that some claim that Epstein and Martin were high-ranking Freemasons. There is no obvious proof available, no public record of them or any of the The Beatles being involved in that secret society. Then again, would you know if someone was a member of a secret society? Actually, probably yes in the case of the freemasons, who often wear Masonic rings and display the Masonic symbol.

Something linked these two refined elites and led them to journey down into the Cavern Club to see these young tuffs, The Beatles, play a music that was not native to the sensitivities of either man. Was it just a day in the life of an entrepreneur and a record producer, searching out new talent?

One might chalk that Cavern visit, that resulted in the signing of the band, up to business as usual, except that The Beatles were the first band Epstein had managed. Was his access to producer Martin just the kind of connections that wealthy people make, as they maneuver through their elite society? Probably. On the other hand, Epstein was Liverpool and Martin was London, so when were they crossing paths?

Why did The Beatles suddenly seem like a good bet to them, when the band had been passed over by so many others? Rory Storm and the Hurricanes (great band name) initially had a bigger following. Why weren't they Epstein's chosen ones?

Whatever their connection, Epstein and Martin put The Beatles on a media ride unlike any band had ever received up to that time. Epstein purchased a large volume of records to put their first release, "Please, Please Me", on the record charts and create a sense of momentum around the group. Eventually, girls would be hired to scream at their shows to incite that behavior in other teenaged girls.

Money and connections launched The Beatles. The vast majority of music lovers would likely tell you it was one of the nicest things that has happened in the modern world.

A few others see a sinister hand at work, and the science of social engineering. To them, the success of The Beatles all points to the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Tavistock Institute.

______________________

What is the Tavistock Institute?

The Wikipedia page answering that question starts out innocently enough: "The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations or TIHR is a British not-for-profit organisation which applies social science to contemporary issues and problems."

An extension of the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Tavistock Institute grew out of Tavistock Clinic, which was founded in 1920. Freud lived until 1939, promoting his techniques showing that people could be cured of mental illness by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus allowing them to gain "insight" into themselves. Through psychoanalysis therapy, Freud sought to release his patients' repressed emotions and experiences, and to make their unconscious conscious. He seemed to have recognized keys, or triggers that could be used to affect a person's unconscious thoughts.

During World War II, Tavistock Clinic got a golden opportunity to further study unconscious thoughts in patients suffering from severe trauma disorders, allowing their researchers to gain extraordinary insights into human psychology and behavior modification. And they also became an arm of the military, working with the Royal Army Medical Corps and the British Army to create War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs) and Civil Resettlement Units (CRUs).

They also did research into psychological warfare.

Tavistock Clinic became Tavistock Institute in 1947, founded with the aim of researching improvements in Britain's National Health Service. With objectives too expansive for funding under the NHS budget, TIHR got startup funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefellers spent hugely on psychiatric funding programs in the 1930s and beyond, and TIHR benefited from their largesse.

TIHR turned their programmatic development of the NHS into a consultancy with deep-pocket clients in major manufacturing companies, including Unilever, the Ahmedabad Manufacturing and Calico Printing Co., Shell, Bayer, and Glacier Metals.

They developed two research arms: The Human Resources Centre (HRC) and the Centre for Applied Social Research (CASR), established in the 1950s, and the Institute of Operational Research (IOR) was established in 1963 in conjunction with the British Operational Research Society. TIHR has continued to morph over the years, with the development of The Centre for Organisational and Operational Research (COOR), the Self Help Alliance project, and the Evaluation Development Review Unit (EDRU).

Tavistock's research has tentacles that reach into Stanford University, throughout the world's political think tanks, and throughout intelligence organizations.

TIHR is an elite force in behavior modification technologies.

What is Blackburn?

The question of when somebody got control of The Beatles is answered for some by a group called Blackburn, which is part of the British Intelligence MI-5 organization. They supposedly took over The Beatles in 1962, sponsored their development in Germany, and then were behind the media campaign that launched the band into the spotlight in 1963.

What is EMI?

The corporation that signed The Beatles was Electric and Musical Industries (EMI), a British-owned multi-national corporation engaged in music publishing and recording, and an electronics-device-and-systems manufacturing company. They came into existence in 1931 and owned Parlophone and Capitol Records, both Beatle labels. They were sold in 2011 to Sony, and are said to have long ties to British Military and Intelligence.

Sgt. Peppers

A Funeral and the Birth of the Psychedelic Era

In retrospect, it seems so obvious. The 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, particularly as expressed through its cover art, was a funeral and a reincarnation event. It was loaded with occult imagery and it ushered in the Psychedelic Era with all of its attendant drug use, particularly LSD.

The Fab Four are shown in their wax mannequin forms, looking down at a grave site, sad and forlorn. Front and center is a new incarnation of the band, not "The Beatles" but simply "Beatles", their evolution depicted in the form of orchestra instruments, which were not a part of the old sound, but would be a big part of the new.

Gone were our lads from Liverpool, ironically replaced by a second generation Beatles who turned a celebration of their childhood experiences in their native port town into a mind altering experience that invited the listener into a world where nothing is real. John Lennon had opened a portal to a new musical consciousness with "Tomorrow Never Knows" from Revolver - back-masked monks chanting from mountain tops - and then with "Strawberry Fields Forever" had invited the world through the looking glass. Paul McCartney had leveraged Lennon's device of recalling simple, more innocent times with "Penny Lane", and he died with material left unrecorded, like "When I'm Sixty-Four", which The Beatles had played since their Hamburg days. It fit right in with the inviting narrative of the Sgt. Peppers album.

Whether or not he was the real Paul McCartney, Sgt. Peppers was McCartney's album in all aspects of artistic direction, from the album concept (it was perhaps the first "concept album") to the art direction of the cover.

It could be said that with Peppers The Beatles became even more accessible than they had been in their Fab Four heyday. Where once they had specialized in love songs sung to teenaged girls, they won a new legion of older fans with songs that were emotionally honest, whimsical, fantastically imaginative, and sentimental. Those traits had existed in Lennon's songs all along, but with Sgt. Peppers those elements were elevated to the level of art. That was McCartney's doing, whoever he was.

What About that Cover?

According to Beatles lore, the cover was the work of British pop artist Peter Blake and his then-wife, Jann Haworth. They were working on an idea presented by Paul McCartney, but stories about how that album, with all of its complex imagery came together, sound apocryphal. The story that Paul is Dead conspiracy people tell is that William Shepherd dictated every aspect of that cover, which is reportedly rich with Masonic symbols and geometries that are designed not only to tell the story of The Beatles' evolution, but also to unlock the powers of a range of occult symbols.

There are eleven known Freemasons on the cover: Aleister Crowley, H. G. Wells, Karl Marx, W. C. Fields, Sir Robert Peel, Aldous Huxley, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Tom Mix, Oscar Wilde, and T. E. Lawrence. Wells and Marx were known to be 33rd degree Freemasons, and supposedly if you hold a compass over the cover you find Wells and Marx separated by 33 degrees.

One of the images in the funeral crowd is of a Legionnaire from The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes (RAOB), a fraternal and Masonic society in the UK in which John Lennon’s uncle Charlie is said to have been a member.

The internet is full of analyses of this famous record cover, including the one at https://thenumbernineblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/the-greatest-enigma-part-i/.

John Lennon Went Along with This?

The hardest thing for anyone to swallow about this whole story - a knee-jerk reaction in some - is a sense that John Lennon would have never gone along with something like this. There is a popular perception, at least among Baby Boomers, that Lennon was a truth teller and honest to a fault, a tough guy not inclined to suffer fools gladly, let alone frauds.

That may just be popular myth. Young people tend to see Lennon as a hypocrite who was violent and abusive to women, even as old people think of him as an icon of rebel divinity. But was he? Many books about The Beatles have described Lennon as the driving force in the band's success, because he had started the band, over time replacing its original members with McCartney, Harrison, and Starr. He is often depicted as a desperate young man, both parents dead or gone from his life, who would have done anything for success in the music industry, and to achieve fame.

By 1966, exhausted from The Beatles success, Lennon is said to have been losing interest. He went to France for a role in the film "How I Won the War", and it was during this time that the Paul we all knew disappeared and a new Paul was put in his place.

The story is told that Lennon wouldn't accept the news of McCartney's death, and when just days after the revelation he was confronted with William Shepherd, who was demanding control of the band he had created, Lennon was furious. He is said to have stayed drunk for days, but to have finally given in, committing himself to the ruse. Why would he have given in to it? Was he afraid of losing his career, or worse?

Supposedly the Shepherd replacement was to be a temporary thing, and The Beatles organization was shocked that no one seemed to notice the change. Certainly part of that was because Shepherd was keeping out of sight, supposedly in Africa having reconstructive surgery to more closely approximate the look of the real Paul McCartney. And part of it was because all The Beatles were changing their looks. Was it part of the deception to diminish the impact of the changes people might have noticed in Paul?

We first see Shepherd performing as Paul McCartney in the historic "Our World" global satellite presentation (the first such telecast in history), from which the following footage came (June 25, 1967).

This was clearly Lennon's moment, and the Paul in this video has only a sideman's role. I would never have looked at this footage and come away with the impression that the Paul McCartney I was watching was anyone other than the Paul McCartney of the Fab Four era. On the other hand, it has the broadcast quality of the time, which wasn't good, and there are no lingering shots of McCartney's face. We do see that he has abandoned the Hofner bass so closely associated with Paul and the Fab Four, opting instead for the Rickenbacker he would use on the "Magical Mystery Tour".

Was "All You Need Is Love" a Surrender Song?

In many respects, "All You Need Is Love" is a strange song for a rock band to be singing while at the peak of their powers. It is a song of surrender, of acceptance of the world as it is. That is an odd bit of sage insight for a 27 year old songwriter, almost an end-of-life retrospective piece.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy

Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy

All you need is love, all you need is love
All you need is love, love, love is all you need

What strikes me about the lyric is that it is the wisdom of age, the understanding one learns over time. It is an acceptance that allows one to age, and eventually to die, gracefully. Lennon was preternatural, in that way, as was the young Paul McCartney, penning musical insights well beyond what their years of experience would seem to have qualified them to do. Songs like "Yesterday" and "In My Life" are extraordinary examples of young composers who were somehow floating in time, seeing things way into the future, and gathering knowledge beyond what anyone could logically expect such young dudes to have attained. "The Long and Winding Road" also has a wistful, end-of-the-line feel about it, but it feels a little more generic, like a facsimile of Lennon-McCartney insight. Is that because it is not a Lennon-McCartney tune, but rather a William Shepherd composition?

Do the Clues Tell the Story?

The answer to the question about John Lennon above is addressed by the raft of clues that became a standard part of every Beatle release after the Paul Is Dead story started. On the other hand, they create more questions than they resolve.

In 2004, McCartney described how all the clues came to exist in an interview he did with Beatles historian Bruce Spizer. Check out this article at http://www.beatle.net/paul-mccartney-admits-beatles-planned-death-hoax/ that depicts the whole Paul Is Dead thing as a hoax suggested by Brian Epstein as a panic reaction to the new musical direction the band began taking with the Revolver album. Convinced the public would have little interest in songs like "Paperback Writer" and "Rain", he is said to have concocted this marketing rumor that was then executed by Lennon and the Beatles recording engineers.

That explanation makes sense to me, but imagine that story, told almost 40 years after the fact, is a smokescreen to cover the true story and the reason for all the bizarre clues in Beatles material.

Why would they rat themselves out?

It is easy to imagine that John Lennon was haunted by the dishonesty of the Paul replacement scheme, and that he sought to absolve himself of any guilt of complicity by being "honest" through the clues he embedded in his late-Beatles-era songs. It may have seemed to him to give him culpable deniability.

That seems sketchy on many levels, not the least of which is that Lennon would have needed engineering assistance to add those back-maskings into his recordings. It wasn't something he could have done secretly or surreptitiously, which probably means the whole clues trail was the clever execution of another plan all its own.

Lennon wasn't, after all, just tucking secret nuggets into tracks, he was constructing whole narratives around the deception. "Glass Onion", for instance, off the White Album is comprised of references to earlier Beatles songs and the entire replacement scenario. He is telling us to peel off the layers, to "look into the glass onion," but why?

More than alluding to a "Paul is Dead" scenario that no one had yet caught onto, Lennon was clearly extending a narrative, pushing mystery out into the future. That makes me think that, after a period of adjustment, Lennon gave himself to the replacement plan.

Buckminster Fuller: "You've been used"

I cannot source this story for the life of me, but I have read that Buckminster Fuller, the Canadian futurist and inventor of the geodesic dome, once told John Lennon that he and The Beatles had been used as pawns in a social engineering program. Lennon was known to be in the company of Fuller and other intellectuals during his years living in New York City. The story goes that Lennon was furious at being talked to in that way, and stomped off, but he thought about what Fuller had said to him and the next day he came back to Fuller and confessed that after giving it some thought he had come to the conclusion that Fuller was right.

In his later solo, post-Beatle years, Lennon stopped dropping clues and started lobbing bombs, most notably with "How Do You Sleep At Night?" That song was clearly aimed at Paul McCartney (aka William Shepherd), but one wonders if a little of it wasn't aimed at himself.

All that said, May Pang, Lennon and Yoko Ono's personal assistant, who lived with Lennon in Los Angeles and New York City while he and Yoko were separated in the 1970s, wrote a memoir in which she tells of "hanging out" with "Paul and Linda" all the time, suggesting that all that talk of animosity between the former Beatles was all press fabrication.

Was Lennon's public feud with McCartney just an extension of a phony storyline?

Who Is Yoko Ono?

Yoko Ono, now 85 years of age, is the daughter of a wealthy Japanese banking family who are of the Yasuda clan, which is a strain of Samurai warrior.

She showed up on the scene with The Beatles around the time of Paul McCartney's alleged accident. A denizen of the international underground art scene - not an important player, but a connected one - she pursued Lennon, who was married when they met, and eventually succeeded in ending his marriage to Cynthia Lennon.

Yoko Ono was always viewed as a divisive influence on The Beatles, if only because she accompanied John everywhere, including to the recording sessions with the band. This broke with Beatle protocol which had previously not allowed girlfriends and wives anywhere near the workspace.

The person who didn't seem to mind was Paul McCartney, who defends Yoko to this day against charges that "she broke up The Beatles".

The one thing that is obvious is that Yoko Ono controlled John Lennon from the moment she entered his life, which was perplexing to watch because big changes came over him. The young man who was once the epitome of an alpha male became a milquetoast under Yoko's spell. He changed physically and his creative output throughout the 1970s was unfocused, to the minds of many fans, and a shadow of his work with The Beatles.

John and Yoko married in 1968, but by the mid-70s they weren't even talking to each other, even while working out of offices in the same New York City building. Yoko assigned their assistant May Pang to go live with John in Los Angeles so the two could be apart, but John kept under surveillance.

May Pang and John Lennon bonded, and according to Pang he normalized out from under Yoko's influence. That all changed when, back in New York City, Yoko insisted that John come to their Dakota apartment to undergo hypnosis to quit smoking. He went and never returned to May again, eventually dying in the entryway to the Dakota in 1980, shot dead by a fan, Mark David Chapman, who appeared to act in a trance state.

Was Yoko brought in, by whoever pulled the strings behind The Beatles, as a handler for John Lennon, particularly to control him through the McCartney transition?

Who Was Linda McCartney?

The short answer is that she was the daughter of an influential American family who ran a powerful law firm on the East Coast. Married, with a daughter and the security of her inheritance, she turned a photography job with Town & Country magazine into a celebrity assignment with Rolling Stone, photographing a long list of Rock and Soul celebrities for the magazine. Those included The Rolling Stones and, in 1966, The Beatles at their final appearance in San Francisco.

She attended the Sgt. Pepper release party in London in 1967 and got to know Paul, supposedly nursing him through a depression he was suffering at the pending breakup of The Beatles.

Like Yoko, her arrival on the scene with The Beatles coincides with the beginning of the "Paul Is Dead" story. She was about as welcomed by Beatles fans as was Yoko. She was the post-Jane Asher girlfriend, and not the act people wished had followed. She and McCartney married, lived on a farm in Scotland, and had three kids together. Her brother became Paul's attorney.

The youngest of their children - James, born in 1977, and who has recorded with his dad - looks quite a lot like the man people say replaced Paul McCartney, Billy Shepherd. Surely Linda knew who she married, right?

She and her man went on to found the band Wings, with Billy Shepherd's old friend Denny Laine, who initially found fame as a singer with The Moody Blues. She died of breast cancer in 1998.

Down In Monterey

The Monterey Pop Festival

There have been many Monterey Pop Festivals, but anytime you mention that name people's thoughts flash immediately to the original, in 1967.

That festival kicked off the Summer of Love and put the Psychedelic Era on a little stamp that you could lick and trip on. The festival included a performance by The Grateful Dead, who was not well known at the time, but they had a sound man named Owsley Stanley who would go down in history as the all-time largest individual producer of LSD. Monterey, as a result, was special.

The organizer of the festival was producer Lou Adler, aided by Derek Martin, and it was reported in the newspapers at that time that also playing a key role in organizing the event was Beatle Paul McCartney. Is that a head-scratcher? Can you imagine Beatle Paul of the Fab Four as a concert organizer?

Certainly one can imagine a concert organizer using Paul McCartney as a tool for drawing attention to the event, and to engage other acts. It is said that he steered The Who and Jimi Hendrix to that stage.

The Magical Mystery Tour?

If the entire Beatles operation was managed by operatives of British intelligence, was the 1967 Beatles film a further attempt to normalize the reincarnated band?

The film used, as its trope, the British institution of signing on to a bus tour to an unspecified location, a brief holiday excursion into the unknown. It is the kind of thing the working class could afford, and in using that device it reminded UK viewers of their working class roots.

Musically, the band invited us all along for the ride with the theme song - "The Magical Mystery Tour is hoping to take you away..." - and then reintroduced the band as something new through Paul's enigmatic "Hello/Goodbye" - "I don't know why you're saying goodbye, I'm saying hello..."

Body Count

As with most conspiracy theories involving murder and deceit, the Paul Is Dead story has a body count, a list of deaths by unusual circumstances, and at interesting times:

• Kevin MacDonald - owner of Sibylla's nightclub - died October 15, 1966 in a fall from a 10th story window
• Tara Browne - Heir to Guinness fortune - died December 18, 1966 following a car crash - supposedly inspired "A Day In the Life"
• Brian Epstein - Beatles manager - died August 27, 1967 of a drug overdose
• David Jacobs - McCartney's personal lawyer - died December 1968 - hanged
• Dr. Richard Asher - Father of former girlfriend Jane Asher and rock star Peter Asher - died April 25, 1969 - suicide
• John Reilly - cosmetic dentist - died in a car crash
• Mal Evans - Beatles roadie and sometimes musical collaborator - died February 5, 1976 - shot by police
• John Lennon - died December 8, 1980 - shot by assassin

The Rolling Stones

The Beatles were not the only pop band being used for social engineering purposes. Their counterparts were The Rolling Stones, another Tavistock creation according to Paul Is Dead conspiracy theorists.

There is an article at https://www.wxhc.com/?p=39208 that describes the synchronicity between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, who in the 1960s timed their frequent record releases to ensure that neither negatively affected the other. Lennon and McCartney gave the Stones their first U.K. hit, with "I Wanna Be Your Man", and Jagger always credited Lennon for the help he gave the Stones in planning their first U.S. tour. Far from rivals, they were associates.

For that reason, it seems odd that in Keith Richards' 2010 biography he wrote that he and Paul McCartney became close friends earlier in the decade. So, after knowing each other for 50 years they suddenly became friends? Is it possible that Richards had known Paul McCartney in the early 1960s, but didn't really get to know Billy Shepherd until fairly recently?

Who Is Heather Mills?

The short answer is that she is an ex-Mrs. Paul McCartney, having married "Sir Paul" in 2002, becoming "Heather, Lady McCartney" befitting the wife of a royal knight, which is what McCartney is.

The two divorced in 2008 after having a child together.

Mills was apparently the woman McCartney's children warned against. The two had a tumultuous relationship that sent them to marriage counseling.

Heather walked away from the marriage with around $31.7 million plus another $35,000 in annual child support.

She claims to be in possession of a secret that revealed would shock the world. More than that, she claims to be in fear of her life because of the explosive nature of what she knows.

She has it all in a box that she has shared with a trusted confidante in case she meets an untimely end.

Who Is Nancy Shevell?

The short answer is that she is Paul McCartney's third wife, having married the former-Beatle in 2011. She is much younger than McCartney, born in 1959.

Nancy came into the marriage rich. She is the daughter of a transportation conglomerate magnate, and she has been a Vice President and board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). The MTA operates public transit throughout downstate New York and they were centrally affected by the 9-11 World Trade Center events of 2001. They were central to letting the contracts for reconstruction of the area.

She and McCartney met at soirees in the Hamptons, where they both own estates. Both got out of marriages in 2008 and became inseparable.

Not a lot is publicized about her, other than that she is a wealthy socialite with a fashion sense, including a penchant for wearing Jackie-O sunglasses. Unlike Heather Mills, Nancy Shevell seems to be the wife the McCartney kids feel okay about.

I wonder if she knows who her husband is?

So Who Is Paul McCartney?

I suspect, at this point, that Paul McCartney is as much a business identity as an actual person. Or I can imagine that Sir Paul sees it that way, because otherwise how could he comfortably carry on the deception?

Then again, consider this. If the "Paul Is Dead" story is true, the real Paul McCartney was only alive for 26 years. His replacement has been Paul McCartney for more than 50.

The replacement Paul has written as many Beatles classics as has the real Paul.

One can see where Billy Shepherd, if that's who Paul McCartney really is, might feel he has as much of a claim as anyone to the McCartney name. Certainly the Queen of England, the world's most powerful elite, has honored his service to the crown with his CH MBE designations.

CH is the Order of the Companions of Honour, which is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded in June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements and is "conferred upon a limited number of persons for whom this special distinction seems to be the most appropriate form of recognition, constituting an honour disassociated either from the acceptance of title or the classification of merit." (Wikipedia)

MBE is the the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. (Wikipedia)

Note that in royal circles there is precedent for honoring someone who isn't really who they are presented as being. Queen Elizabeth II is descended from the German House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and the family did not have a surname when her father, King George V, became King of England, so they took the name Windsor, from the castle. The Royals are different, often not using surnames but rather association with Royal houses.

______________________________________

This video below is extremely useful in considering the question at the top of this section. We see film footage of The Beatles being their relaxed public selves, and you get a lot of opportunities to see young Paul McCartney, and then the older Paul. There do appear to be physical differences, but who looks at 26 the way they looked at 21? Can age account for what seem like subtle changes? Or is it possible that Paul doubles were doing interviews (seems unlikely)? Why does Paul seem like the only Beatle who goes through physical changes? Lennon, Harrison and Starr all get hairy, but their physical features don't change - they always look like the same people. So what's with Paul, whose hair parts differently as The Beatles morph into Sgt. Peppers' band?

About that Cosmetic Surgery

Whoever Paul McCartney is, he must be at least 76 years old, and possibly as old as 81 as of the time of this writing. And most people would likely say that he looks great, though they might add that he has obviously had a lot of "work done", that is, cosmetic surgery. He would have had to have gone through numerous procedures to look that good at his present age.

Cosmetic surgery is, of course, fundamental to the "Paul is Dead" story, so that people generally accept that Sir Paul has obviously been "under the knife" does nothing to put to rest the notion that he is a construction, a cosmetically altered replacement. It doesn't prove that he is Billy Shepherd, but it doesn't help to refute the claim, either.

Has a Crime Been Committed?

Presenting yourself to be another person, or assuming the identity of another person, may be a felony resulting in prison time. In the United States, it tends to be enforced on a state-by-state basis.

Presumably, if Billy Shepherd or someone else assumed the identify of the Beatle Paul McCartney, he did not also take over the business and personal accounts of the real Paul. There must have been lawyers in place protecting the royalty rights of the McCartney family, and setting the replacement up with his own royalty stream on the tunes he composed and published. That probably means there is an audit trail that could determine how the returns are distributed.*

Paul McCartney did wage a protracted legal battle to get Lennon & McCartney songwriting credits switched to McCartney & Lennon with regard to songs he wrote himself. That was a royalties thing, apparently, but in the end the songwriting credits remained the same.

But what about the fraud of misrepresentation? Why would someone have tried to pass a replacement off as Paul McCartney when that would be such a difficult and high risk thing to pull off? Why not just introduce a replacement band member, like other bands do all the time? Why was it so important to keep the Paul McCartney identity alive?

Clearly all of these questions could be answered, were there a proper investigation. McCartney is asked the question all the time, about whether he is the original Paul McCartney, and he is skillfully evasive, suggesting that he benefits from the continuance of the rumors and mystery.

But what if the reason for the stealth replacement has been to cover up a larger crime? What stakes would be so high that it would convince a person to undergo reconstructive surgery and give up his entire life to a lie?

Or what if the person we know as Sir Paul made a deal there is no way out of, like the one Bob Dylan told "60 Minutes" Ed Bradley he had made with the captain of this world and others we can't see?

And if that is the case, what exactly does the captain want from these guys?

*The Memoirs of Billy Shears leaves the impression that the McCartney family - really just Paul's father, his mother was dead - willingly turned over everything of Paul's, from his accounts to his dog to his girlfriend, to Billy Shepherd. The motivation for that would need to have been extraordinarily compelling, and the reader is left to connect dots to figure out why Paul's father might have gone along with any of this. It is certainly not ordinary human behavior.

Conclusion

I don't see how one can ignore the combination of exhibits, from the DNA and fingerprint records, to the voice and physical forensic analyses. Moreover, I cannot watch that "Hey Jude" video and see the Paul McCartney we were introduced to on the Sullivan show in 1964, and watched in A Hard Days Night and Help. When I watch interviews of early McCartney, and McCartney in 1967, they not only look physically different in terms of frame and bearing, but also personality-wise. Young Paul was pleasantly thoughtful, cautiously introspective, while the later Paul seems more Type-A, cocky and sure of himself.

I don't know if "replaced" is the right word, but I have come to believe that the Paul who sang "Yesterday" is not the Paul who sang "Hey Jude". That replacement Paul, who is with us today, wrote great songs that were hugely entertaining, but why exactly he did it while passing himself off as the real Paul McCartney is beyond my comprehension.

I doubt the Vivien Stanshall connection, or how that guy who was so well known to the British public and to the entertainment community of his time could (or would) have carried on two careers, one portraying a famous Beatle, the other a vaudevillian. Would people not have commented on the reconstructive surgery?  I think that might be a smokescreen to somehow imagine that Stanshall himself was a created character, later in two parts, and another presentation starring Billy Shepherd.

The Billy Shepherd connections, on the other hand, seem really compelling. People who know Paul McCartney refer to him as "Billy", and through his Mersey Beat albums he seemed primed and pumped for infusion into the band.

I think the Masonic connections are a stretch, including the language around "Lucifer". I find there to be a more compelling argument around the involvement of Tavistock and British intelligence.

I find compelling the possibility that the replacement Paul McCartney is, on some level, an intelligence operative. The entertainment industry has long been a source for agents and spies, enlisting the likes of Harry Houdini and others who could travel and be welcomed widely. Intelligence agency funding of popular culture offerings is also old news. A 2016 article in The Atlantic discussed CIA involvement in the making of popular films, including Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, Argo, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Syriana, and many others. (See this article for more.) The television show Alias is a CIA propaganda piece, as is the HBO hit Homeland. They are designed to create the narratives that suit their handlers.

So, is Sir Paul an agent in her majesty's secret service, or is he, as he said on Letterman in 2009, "just a really good double"? - RAR

Looking for something in the RARWRITER.com archives? Type the item you wish to find in the custom search field below, then click on the magnifying glass to see a list of previously published articles relevant to your query.

Anatomy of a Black Op

There is plenty to be skeptical about in the "Paul Is Dead" story - more "Whys?" than will bear the weight of scrutiny. Some might suspect that is part of the program.

How could our lads from Liverpool have possibly been co-opted as agents of Britain's military intelligence operations (MI-5 and MI-6)? Probably through the application of opportunity, drugs, and money. It could have happened like this.

STEP 1: Use Blackburn, a division of MI-6, to select the band in their formative period (1962) based on their charisma and commercial potential.

STEP 2: Sponsor their development in the U.K. and Germany and introduce the boys to recreational drugs, primarily speed and downers. Make the use of drugs an aspect of their lives.

STEP 3: Sign them to a management contract with Brian Epstein's NEMS Enterprises.

STEP 4: Refine the look and sound of the band through personnel changes (Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe are out, Ringo is in) and art design.

STEP 5: Sign them to a recording contract with Electronic Music Instruments (EMI), a company with close ties to the British defense industry, and provide them with classical music and comedy album producer George Martin.

STEP 6: Introduce them to European audiences through media campaigns and regular appearances, throughout 1963, on British radio and television.

STEP 7: Purchase releases of their early singles to get them on the record sales charts.

STEP 8: Stage scenes of hysterical girl fans, including one at Heathrow Airport for the benefit of American television host Ed Sullivan, who is inspired to bring them to the U.S. as The British Invasion. Create a frenzy behavior in young female fans that would be aped by impressionable others.

STEP 9: Expand the media blitz globally, and tour the world. Evolve fan magazines to constantly promote The Beatles through images to support their regular record releases.

STEP 10: Develop Beatles doubles for fan diversion and publicity purposes. The chaos surrounding the boys is frightening to them and everyone around them.

STEP 11: Develop Beatles sound-alike bands and promote the sound of the Mersey Beat, further reinforcing the idea that what The Beatles represent is special. Have Paul McCartney's songs recorded by additional Mersey Beat artists.

STEP 12: Introduce the band members to drugs, principally marijuana and LSD, to open their minds to ideas they would likely not otherwise consider. Introduce them to occult symbols and practices.

STEP 13: Choose a songwriting Beatle (Paul) who could be replaced by another musician working as an agent for the operation. Go to work on his mental condition, giving him dreams of pending death, and encourage him to talk openly about it.

STEP 14: Make Paul McCartney's premonitions of death come true, traumatizing the other Beatles and leaving them with feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty.

STEP 15: Work through Brian Epstein to pay off the press and make arrangements to keep McCartney's death out of the papers.

STEP 16: Have Brian Epstein introduce McCartney's replacement to the band, and have George Martin accept the replacement without question. William Shepherd is chosen because he is a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter who has recorded Beatles covers. And he is pushy and sure of himself, providing the leadership qualities the psychically damaged Beatles need at this time.

STEP 17: Put replacement William Shepherd through a series of reconstructive surgeries to give him features similar to those of Paul McCartney, and coach him on behaviors.

STEP 18: Leverage eastern mysticism to promote the idea, within the band, that the replacement Paul is an incarnate of the original Paul. Send them on a trip to India to help place the soul of the deceased Paul into the body of the new.

STEP 19: Bring Yoko Ono in as a "handler" for John Lennon, whose mind is already prepared through extensive use of LSD. Her role is to keep John distracted while William Shepherd commodores The Beatles' musical and thematic direction.

STEP 20: Evolve the look of the band to include the facial hair and looks associated with the Psychedelic Era of Rock, and to mask the personnel change.

STEP 21: Use sophisticated messaging in Beatles recordings to manipulate listeners to the operation's purpose: destroy the family unit, destroy the will of the public through the encouraged use of recreational drugs, promote the idea that reality is in the eyes of each of us, surrender to the void, and place all hope in the power of love.

Before there was any of that...

Those who suspect that The Beatles were an occult phenomenon tied, in some way, to freemasonry, consider this.

Called The Quarrymen at the time, The Beatles formative years were spent in the basement of drummer Pete Best's home. There, his mother, using the winnings from a 33-1 bet at a racetrack (according to The Beatles Anthology) had opened a cellar club she called the Casbah Coffee Club.

She imagined her club in the mode of London's The 2i's Coffee Bar. Opened in 1956, that was the place noted for the emergence of Skiffle music and young stars including Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard.

Paul-is-Dead devotees will note that "33" - a key number in freemasonry - and will likely suspect that there is the genesis of the early connection between that secret society and the Fab Four.

Hello Goodbye

Revolver was The Beatles album that signaled that the Fab Four was morphing into a whole other type of vibe. They began getting cryptic with their lyrics, making clever allusions and references, and mining their insights and experience with life in ways that were not always easy to comprehend. It made reading Beatles lyrics an exercise similar to reading ancient texts, supposing that they are encoded with hidden meaning. They purposely created a wash of images, and all the disorientation that might engender, and said to listeners that it was okay to feel dizzy. They used mirrored wordplay, such as in McCartney's ingenious "Hello Goodbye", which ends with a chant, as if to conjure spirits:

[Verse 1]
You say yes, I say no
You say stop and I say go go go, oh no

[Chorus]
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello

[Verse 2]
I say high, you say low
You say why and I say I don't know, oh no

[Chorus]
You say goodbye and I say hello
(Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye) Hello, hello
(Hello, goodbye) I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
(Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye) Hello, hello
(Hello, goodbye) I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
(Hello, goodbye)

[Bridge]
Why why why why why why do you say goodbye?
Goodbye, bye bye bye bye
Oh no

[Chorus]
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello

[Verse 3]
You say yes (I say yes)
I say no (But I may mean no)
You say stop (I can stay)
And I say go go go (Till it's time to go)
Oh, oh no

[Chorus]
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello, oh, oh
Hello

[Outro]
Hela, heba helloa
Hela, heba helloa, cha cha cha
Hela, heba helloa, woo!
Hela, heba helloa, hela!
Hela, heba helloa, cha cha cha
Hela, heba helloa, woo-hoo!
Hela, heba helloa, cha cha cha
Hela, heba helloa, cha cha cha

_______________

Who Was Derek Taylor?

Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, who by all accounts was a beloved figure in The Beatles saga, was only with the organization for a brief time in 1964, but during that time was instrumental in creating the media buzz around the band.

Taylor left The Beatles for America, where he worked as your classic promotions man, helping to pull together the legendary 1967 Montreal Pop Festival. Producer Lou Adler was a major driver of that event, reported in news articles at the time to be supported by Paul McCartney, who steered The Who and Jimi Hendrix to the event.

In 1968, Taylor reportedly got a call from George Harrison asking him to come back to The Beatles as press officer for the newly-formed Apple Corps.

Taylor's first big rollout was the release of the single "Hey Jude", which he put in gift boxes, along with three other Apple singles, that he then had delivered to Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother, and the Prime Minister.

"Hey Jude" was a seminal event in Beatles history, because the video that was released, which consisted largely of close-ups of the singing Paul McCartney, would became one of the most heavily analyzed videos in music history. It essentially introduced the green-eyed McCartney.

Acrimony ensued, not just between the boys in the band but especially between the mild-mannered and gentlemanly Taylor and Paul McCartney.

"During this period, Taylor frequently clashed with Paul McCartney, about whom he later wrote: 'I don't think I ever hated anyone as much as I hated Paul in the summer of 1968.'" (Wikipedia)

Taylor died on September 8, 1997, while working on The Beatles "Anthology".

Casbah Coffee Club

Was Mona Best's basement venue an incubator for Tavistock cultural engineering projects?

To people who accept the Paul-is-Dead conspiracy, there doesn't seem to be a great need to provide evidence to support their general acceptance of The Beatles being a tool of "the Illuminati". The idea is a central theme from The Memoirs of Billy Shears, where William Campbell makes the claim.

To PID people, the Illuminati is a very real governing body that manipulates events globally to manage the world toward a New World Order. They seem certain that Tavistock Institute created the master plan for the elevation of a number of teen icons to be used for cultural engineering. They believe freemason and British government operatives executed the plan.

The question some might ask would be, when would these young punks from Liverpool and the edge of British society come to rub shoulders with elites? These are supposedly high-ranking freemasons with whom the Fab Four entered into a Luciferian pact, according to the most recent Shears book.

Some conspiracy buffs find the name of John Lennon's first outfit, The Quarrymen, to be an obvious clue. Freemasons were stone workers. Did Lennon come from a family of freemasons?

It seems unlikely. Lennon hardly had a family at all, and his delinquent dandy of a father hardly seems like a guy who would be invited into an elite fraternity.

Still, Lennon's band was known as The Quarrymen when they were first booked to play a private coffee club that had been opened in the basement of the home of a well-connected Liverpool family: the Bests.

India-native Mona Best had been widowed in World War II and left alone to raise a son, Pete, until she met army officer and middle-weight boxer Johnny Best. His family was prominent in Liverpool - sports celebrities who operated Liverpool Stadium. Mona married Johnny Best, giving her son a last name, and Johnny continued a successful career in sports promotions. The family was like royalty in Liverpool, and all their position and notoriety eventually landed them in a large Victorian house, with a cellar.

Inspired by a popular coffee club in London, The 2is Coffee Bar, that had spawned teen idols Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard, Mona created her own members-only venue - the Casbah Coffee Club.

She had three teenaged musicians - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison - paint the place before paying them for an extended residency for their band.

When her son Pete expressed an interest in playing music, Mona bought him a drum set, and he soon became a member of John Lennon's previously drummer-less group.

The Beatles would outgrow the Casbah Coffee Club and move on to bigger venues, and replace Pete Best with Richard Starkey, but that incubator in Liverpool would serve as the training ground for other young bands that would represent the Mersey sound: Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Searchers.

Is it possible that the influential Best family were a part of a larger operation to shape the world through pop music? Mona's members-only club certainly had the ring of an exclusive, if not exactly secret, society. And it had an outsized influence on pop culture worldwide, in the 1960s, rather like the club it was opened to emulate, the 2is.

Paul's Families

There's no place like home.

The other part of the conspiracy that remains vague, other than in the minds of the PID crowd, is the behavior of the family figures in Paul McCartney's life.

McCartney lost his mother when he was in his early teens, as did John Lennon. His father seems to have been a more stable influence that was Lennon's, but there is certainly nothing that would indicate any connection to freemasonry. Paul's dad was a fireman, reflected by the band (The Firemen) that McCartney has anonymously produced.

Paul effectively had a whole other family from 1964 to 1966, when he was living with the Asher family. Besides seeming like an odd arrangement - a famous rock star living in the home of his actress-girlfriend's family - it put McCartney in direct connection with elites who were involved in cutting-edge research into the psychology of traumatized patients.

It seems to be at some point during this period that McCartney became interested in the occult.

Paul's girlfriend Jane Asher was the daughter of Dr. Richard Asher, whose research revealed a malady he dubbed "Munchhausen Syndrome" in which the afflicted feign illness or disease to call attention to themselves.

Dr. Asher committed suicide in the family home in the late '60s.

Another of his children - Peter Asher, of Peter & Gordon fame - has played a major role in The Beatles story, and today hosts a radio show on Sirius XM reinforcing the legend of the band, including his friend Paul McCartney.

What is Apple Corps?

Apple Corps was established in 1968 as a tax shelter for The Beatles' revenues, and it was the direct result of the death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

Epstein had been in the process of developing a corporation for this purpose, but under the umbrella of NEMS Enterprises, his family's business. When he died unexpectedly in 1967, of an overdose of sleeping pills, a new plan had to be developed, and fast. NEMS was being purchased by Robert Stigwood, who The Beatles detested, and they wanted to shield their earnings from his Australian self.

Paul McCartney came up with Apple Corps, described in Wikipedia as a "multi-armed multimedia corporation".

The company was born in chaos and with wide-ranging interests. Their electronics division didn't accomplish much, but tech wizard Alex Mardas did develop Apple Studios. It was a second home for artists associated with the Abbey Road facility, including Vivien Stanshall.

Apple Films had numerous productions, including the Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and Let It Be films.

Apple Publishing dealt primarily with music, but did have a largely inactive books division.

Apple Records became the label of Marianne Hopkins, James Taylor, Billy Preston and many others.

The Beatles dissolved their partnership in 1975, but kept Apple Corps alive as an entity owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison.

Complicit in Coverup

When one considers the Paul McCartney replacement story, there are numerous persons who would know all about the Paul is Dead scheme. It is likely a little secret of show business known to many insiders. The following come to mind:

• The families of the other Beatles

• Yoko Ono and her family

• Linda Eastman's family, including her children

• Paul McCartney's family

• William Shepherd's family

• Eric Clapton

• The Rolling Stones

• Donovan

• Eric Idle

• Neil Inness

• Elton John

• Peter Asher

• Jane Asher

• Heather Mills

These people also know the truth, but they are dead:

• John Lennon

• George Harrison

• George Martin

• Brian Epstein

• Linda McCartney

• Geoff Emerick

• Phil McDonald

• Derek Taylor

• Dr. Richard Asher

• Mal Evans

• Neil Aspinall

• Billy Preston

Fred LaBour

Fred made the whole thing up.

He told lawyer F. Lee Bailey that in 1969, prior to filming an hour-long television trial to determine the truth of the "Paul Is Dead" rumor. Bailey reportedly told LaBour, "Well, we have an hour of television to do. You're going to have to go along with this."

The program aired locally in New York City on November 30, 1969, and was never seen again.

LaBour was a University of Michigan college student in 1969 who pieced together a bunch of clues from Beatles albums (67-69 releases) and wrote a satirical piece with the headline "McCartney Dead; New Evidence Brought to Light" for his college newspaper.

LaBour's article was picked up by other Michigan newspapers, which excited the interests of Beatles fans, who began calling in to local radio stations to get and give insights on this myth that was being read as fact.

LaBour went on to become a Grammy award-winning entertainer in the Country Western arena. He is a comic musician who, previous to hitting it big with Riders In the Sky, played bass in legendary songwriter Dicky Lee's band. Lee has written top-selling pop tunes since the early '60s, having particular success with songs celebrating urban legends, such as "Laurie (Strange Things Happen)". He was the king of the teen tragedy song.

_________________

Sage of Quay

Mike Williams is a YouTube channel host who has become the "Paul is Dead" guy. A Beatle fan and a musician, Williams did not initially accept the Paul is Dead conspiracy. His head seems to have been turned by a reading of The Memoirs of Billy Shears. He has a YouTube page that captures evidence convincing him that "Biological Paul", as he calls the real Paul McCartney, disappeared from the scene in 1966, and was replaced by William Shepherd. After The Beatles broke up in 1970, Shepherd continued on with this career he had been placed into, turning Paul McCartney into a corporate identity, not a real person but more like a human business, or an android programmed to perform a role.

Williams is such an enthusiastic supporter of Thomas E. Uharriet that I have wondered if he isn't the marking arm of MACCA CORP.

Williams seems like a sincere and honest guy, but he has aligned himself with some really sketchy interests, such as the "Flat Earth" conspiracy.

_____________

People Like Billy

According to The Memoirs of Billy Shears, it was Billy Shepherd who broke up The Beatles because he just couldn't make the deception work.

John, George and Ringo didn't like him. Besides not being comfortable with the secret replacement scheme, they didn't like Shepherd's pushy attitude. He reportedly felt that he was a better musician than any of the three remaining Beatles, and he would infuriate them by re-recording their parts, replacing their tracks with his own.

All that said, there are numerous clips on the internet that show well-known people addressing Paul McCartney, or discussing him affectionately, and calling him "Bill" or "Billy". The Sage of Quay has clips of George Harrison's widow Olivia and comedian Dana Carvey doing this.

One gets the sense that show business people like and respect William Shepherd, who is responsible for a raft of great songs. "Biological Paul" was known to the world for only three years (1963-66), where replacement Paul, "Faul", or William Shepherd, has been known to the world as Paul McCartney for more than 50 years (1967 to present).

White Album Poster

The White Album was a double-LP that included this poster. It has been suggested that this was a Lennon contribution that surreptitiously laid out the entire Paul replacement story.

_____

Klaatu

The Beatles' impact on the generation they were a part of and those that followed is unparalleled. They created a complete package of entertainment that was more than just music. They expressed, with incredible consistency, broad themes (let it be, all you need is love, there's nothing to get hung about), and they did it with such a rich musical presentation that it immediately became the gold standard for all of pop music. There are The Beatles, in a category by themselves, and then everybody else, and all those everybody else's are shooting to meet their impossible standard.

In 1976, an album was released by a Canadian trio who borrowed the name "Klaatu" from the 1951 science fiction class "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

Klaatu was a Beatles sound-a-like who skillfully wove mystery into their production, as this brief video describes.

Klaatu is a footnote in pop music history, but an example of how deeply everything about The Beatles drilled deep into the consciousness of young musicians around the world.

_____________

Band on the Run?

Are you one of the millions who can not imagine what the Wings tune "Band On the Run" is about?

Why would a band be on the run? What are they running from? And what would inspire these lyrics?

[Verse 1]
Stuck inside these four walls
Sent inside forever
Never seeing no one nice again
Like you, mama
You, mama
You

[Segue]

[Verse 2]
If I ever get out of here
Thought of giving it all away
To a registered charity
All I need is a pint a day
If I ever get out of here
If we ever get out of here

[Segue]

[Verse 3]
Well, the rain exploded with a mighty crash
As we fell into the sun
And the first one said to the second one there
"I hope you're having fun"

[Hook]
Band on the run
Band on the run
And the jailer man and Sailor Sam
Were searching everyone
For the band on the run
Band on the run
For the band on the run
Band on the run

[Verse 4]
Well, the undertaker drew a heavy sigh
Seeing no one else had come
And a bell was ringing in the Village Square
For the rabbits on the run

[Hook]
Band on the run
Band on the run
And the jailer man and Sailor Sam
Were searching everyone
For the band on the run
Band on the run

Yeah, the band on the run
Band on the run
Band on the run
Band on the run

[Verse 5]
Well, the night was falling as the desert world
Began to settle down
In the town they're searching for us everywhere
But we never will be found

[Hook]
Band on the run
Band on the run
And the County Judge, who held a grudge
Will search forevermore
For the band on the run
Band on the run
Band on the run
Band on the run

John Lennon on the Change

For those who find the Paul is Dead thing ludicrous, this edited together interview with John Lennon is useful.

In describing the end of The Beatles, he clearly says it was a death - that of Brian Epstein. Then, for some reason, Paul took over the band. One gets that whatever Lennon and McCartney once shared was gone. You get the sense that McCartney had changed. I don't get any sense from the very shaken Lennon that McCartney was replaced by an imposter, but I do get the sense that he felt the band had been taken over by a monster.

____________