PLEASE NOTE: I do not believe any of these conspiracy theories. I did not create them. This post isn’t to be taken too seriously…
Conspiracy theories. There’s a lot of them, about every single thing you could imagine. So it will be no surprise to you that there are a whole host of Beatles conspiracies! Sure, nearly every music fan has heard of Paul’s “death” in 1966, but the fun doesn’t stop there. Here are a few of the best theories concerning the Fab Four..
1. The infamous ‘Paul Is Dead’
Apparently proving that Paul was ‘replaced’ (hmm)…
Okay. Probably the most famous Beatles conspiracy. Also the oldest. And the one with the most clues. The ‘Paul is Dead’ conspiracy first reared its ugly head in 1969, after some slightly delusional college students in the US decided, after listening to Abbey Road, that there were many clues proving that Paul was DEAD. It runs like this: on the 9th of November, 1966, Paul supposedly got into an argument with John, George and Ringo and drove off angrily. He, however, crashed his car and was killed. And, of course, the other Beatles decided that this death needed to be covered up to spare the public the grief of just telling them. Paul was replaced with “William Campbell”, and clues telling of Paul’s death were included within every Beatles release from then on. Some of these were: “Paul”‘s bare feet on the cover of Abbey Road; the number plate on the Volkswagen Beetle on the cover of Abbey Road, LMW-28IF; the line ‘the walrus was Paul’ in ‘Glass Onion’ and his walrus costume in Magical Mystery Tour; the indecipherable speech at the end of ‘I’m So Tired’, supposedly saying ‘Paul is dead, man — miss, miss, miss him’ when played backwards; the various phone numbers that can apparently be made from the stars on the cover of Magical Mystery Tour, that were rumoured to be answered by various funeral parlours if rung in the ’60s; and a patch that Paul is wearing in the gatefold picture of Sgt Pepper that reads ‘O.P.D.’ (an acronym for ‘officially pronounced dead’). You can read more clues here.
William Campbell, or Faul, obviously went on to write some of “Paul”‘s best songs, come up with the entire concept of Sgt Pepper, and after The Beatles broke up, started and disbanded Wings. To this day, he loiters on this Earth, claiming to be the real Paul McCartney… 😉 And you know what? The Beatles weren’t even recording on the 9th of November, 1966. Making the entire conspiracy a piece of rubbish!
2. ‘The Fib Four’
The ‘tapes’ of the Fib Four
In 1971, a guy named Martin Lewis compiled a Beatles bootleg discography, naming not-yet-released tunes for ’70s fans to wonder about. Among these were ‘That Means A Lot’ and ‘If You’ve Got Trouble’ (both on Anthology 2), and the infamous ‘Carnival of Light’. Also among these songs were four numbers named ‘Pink Limitus Shirt’, ‘Colliding Circles’, ‘Left Is Right (and Right is Wrong)’ and ‘Deckchair’, all ‘outtakes’ from late 1966. ‘Pink Limitus’ was written by George, ‘Deckchair’ a member of Paul’s ‘granny music’ creations, and both ‘Left Is Right’ and ‘Colliding Circles’ were John’s. These songs were stored in the Abbey Road vaults, in case The Beatles needed some cash, pronto. They were never found, thus leaving devout fans of yesteryear to ponder over.
And there’s good reason why these ‘songs’ have never been found. They never existed in the first place! Turns out that Lewis couldn’t find enough outtakes to fill out the discography, so decided to create a bunch of outtakes to take up some space. These became known as ‘The Fib Four’, when everyone worked out they didn’t actually exist. Lewis later became a well respected Beatles scholar, believe it or not.
3. The Beatles were created by The Illuminati to brainwash the youth
No, John and Paul weren’t just being cheeky. Apparently.
According to this theory created by some dude named Dr John Coleman, The Beatles were not an actual band. They were, in fact, formed by The Illuminati. Their songs and actions were written and scripted by their ‘bosses’ with the sole intent of brainwashing the youth. The Coleman dude supposedly “proves” in his book (yes, book) on the conspiracy that The Beatles were a “psychological operation” created by The Tavistock Institute. Their creation apparently advanced the Illuminati’s goal of creating a Brave New World-esque ‘New Age Movement’ which “introduced soft drugs to middle-class American youth” and brainwashed them into rebellion. Clues for this conspiracy include the above pictures involving devil-ish hand-symbols, the band’s shadowed faces on the cover of With The Beatles, ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”s supposed references to Lucifer (or Satan!)…
Now, I think this is fairly obviously a load of rubbish. Though I can’t exactly disprove it (nobody has actually come out and responded), so… 😉
4. ‘The Lennon Prophecy’
The conspiracy’s book. Yes. Book.
Oh dear. I’d forgotten about this one. Basically, the entire theory resides on this: John, in a desperate attempt to become more famous than Elvis, made a pact with Satan on the 8th of December, 1960. This pact expired in 1980, hence what happened… The clues for this theory include John’s placement on the back cover of Sgt Pepper, the cover of Abbey Road, and many examples of backmasking. And why do these clues all sound familiar? Oh yeah, that’s right. They’re all Paul Is Dead clues, too. You can read more about this one here.
I think we can quite safely say that this, again, is a load of rubbish. I mean, if you’re going to create a conspiracy, at least be original about it!
5. ‘The Beatles, as they were presented to us, never existed’
“Proof” for John.
This is my favourite conspiracy of them all… The Beatles never existed! They were, in fact, played by a heap of different clones over the years! And clones, of course, can only be 95% – 99% accurate. Don’t believe the “researchers”? Luckily for you, they’ve compiled a bunch of photo comparisons, showing differences in height and eyebrows. And ears. And eyes. And guess what? They’ve also created a forum, just so you can discuss this — and all the other conspiracy theories which are definitely true! (Not.)
This theory got a lot of publicity late last year (I think it went viral on Reddit). I just went onto the website to find a picture for this post, and the actual website no longer shows proof! The website now only shows a page telling the reader to ‘please conduct your own personal research before believing what anybody says about anything’, and how all the articles written about their theory last year are not true and are ‘hatchet-jobs’. But thankfully, the forum still exists, and all their research will forever be preserved there. (You can find the website and forum here.) Again, I think we can quite safely say this is not true. Clearly the “researchers” have never heard of shoes, differences in posture and the ageing process…
And there we go! Have you heard of a particularly crazy Beatles conspiracy? Don’t forget to tell me in the comments!
I will be able to post a lot more than I have been very soon, so I should get my next post up (the next installment of ‘My Beatles Record Collection’!) here in less than a week! Yay! But until then, good day sunshine 🙂
