Friday, February 04, 2005
Detroit News February 3, 2005: Thirty-six years ago Detroit disc jockey Russ Gibb found himself at the center of a burgeoning conspiracy theory. Was Paul McCartney of the Beatles dead?
The human love of a mystery, a fascination with death and Beatlemania all came together to whip U.S. teenagers into a frenzy... In the past month, Gibb has been interviewed by two crews, one from a Russian TV production company, and one from the Netherlands, about his role in kicking the "Paul is Dead" rumor into overdrive by airing "clues" to his death on his WKNR-FM radio show.
Why the renewed interest decades later? The rumor of McCartney's death, raised... in the fall of 1969, now wends its way across the Internet, where there are scores of "Paul is dead" Web sites...
The durability of the "Paul is dead" legend amazes Gibb. It was several lifetimes ago when he was a disc jockey for underground radio station WKNR-FM on Michigan Avenue in Dearborn.
[...]
A Russian TV crew visited Gibb in January, and last week, a group of Dutch film students led by Wouter van Opdorp, 24, of Amsterdam followed Gibb around and quizzed him for a documentary on the "Paul is dead" phenomenon that will air on Dutch public TV.
"I first heard the 'Paul is dead' story when I was 12," says van Opdorp. He was already a Beatles fan, having heard his parents' records.
[...]
The "Paul is dead" rumor had started in a few college newspapers in September of 1969, but picked up steam when an Eastern Michigan University student, Tom Zarski, called Gibb on his WKNR-FM nighttime show on Oct. 12 and asked if Gibb had heard about it. After that, listeners called in every night to discuss it and mull over messages that came up when Beatles records were played backwards.
Newspaper articles followed, and there was even a November television special taped by RKO Television in Los Angeles and hosted by F. Lee Bailey, on which the famed lawyer quizzed Gibb and others in a mock courtroom setting.
[...]
In early November 1969, J. Marks wrote an article for the New York Times ... Marks had worked with Linda Eastman in 1967 and told Reeve that she expressed interest in meeting Paul. But, Eastman told Marks, she'd heard that he'd died and had been replaced by a double. Later, Eastman moved to London and, of course, met McCartney. When the couple married in March 1969, Marks sent a note saying "Congratulations, whoever you are."
[...]
When Flint native and former Grand Funk Railroad manager Terry Knight was murdered in Texas last November, allegedly by the boyfriend of his daughter, a vital piece of the "Paul is dead" puzzle died with him.
In early 1969, months before the "Paul is dead" rumor, Knight, who was both a disc jockey and recording artist, had a song out called "St. Paul" that seemed to hint at McCartney's demise. The song was a minor hit in Detroit.
Most intriguingly, author Reeve discovered in the Library of Congress that Knight's song was published by Maclen Music, the Beatles' own company.
He never found out why. Reeve tracked the reclusive Knight to Arizona and hammered him with letters and phone calls, but Knight wouldn't talk.
Meanwhile, although he is proudest of his work as a teacher, Russ Gibb's phone continues to ring with people wanting to know, "Is Paul dead?"
[...]
 Clues to McCartney's 'death'
There are innumerable "clues" amassed by fans over the years that they felt (and some zealots still insist) point to an alleged McCartney death and substitution by an alternate Paul. Here are just a few:
• The cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road supposedly shows Paul's funeral, with John Lennon dressed all in white portraying God, Ringo Starr dressed in black as the undertaker, a barefoot Paul McCartney is of course the deceased, and a blue-jeaned George Harrison is the gravedigger.
• Backwards tracking. There are several instances of messages supposedly embedded in Beatles records, but you have to have a turntable and a vinyl record to hear them. The most famous one is in "Revolution No. 9," when John Lennon repeatedly says "number 9...number 9...number 9..." Played backwards under the right conditions, it sounds like he's saying "Turn me on, dead man." ...
• The cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is rife with "clues," since it's the Beatles assembled at a funeral.
• To hear some of Russ Gibb's 1969 broadcasts on WKNR-FM, including his talks about the "Paul is dead" clues with student Tom Zarski, go to www.keener13.com Labels: beatles .....---
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