-Back of Bee Gee’s “Main Course” album, oddly-placed picture of McCartney’s head is X’d out.
-1971 photo of Paul’s bedroom shows two single beds-- Linda refused to acutally sleep with the stand-in.
-The end of a 1976 BBC interview with George Harrison, George mysteriously says “A tin pie-pan man can lap up delicacies.” Played backwards, this says “I killed Paul, alert parliament.”
-At a 1977 concert in Baltimore, ‘Paul’ calls the crowd a bunch of ‘suckers!’
-According to a waiter, while vacationing in Bermuda in 1988, the man everyone knows as Paul paid for dinner with a credit card issued to William H. Shears.
-Tombstone in a Nigerian field reads: “Here lies P. McCartnie (sic)– he was a cutie”
-Everytime Ringo says the name “Paul,” he winks.
-Pizza Huts in Liverpool have half-off large pizza day every Jan. 18 in honor of “The Late Paul McCartney.”
-The name of Stella McCartney’s yacht is the “That Ain’t My Dad.”
-In a 1969 photo of Eric Clapton, he’s flipping off the camera; written on his middle finger are the words “No Mac.”
-From 1968 onward, John was quite often seen kissing “Paul” on the lips. Something he previously vowed never to do due to McCartney’s notorious cold sores.
I think we’re supposed to add others a la 99 facts about Cecil Adams, an earlier mmpims thread. In that spirit:
The real Paul had a phobia about walking around barefooted. He was deathly afraid of snakes. He would never have allowed himself to be photographed barefooted for the cover of Abbey Road.
The real Paul was born in bred in Liverpool. He only spoke English. The imposter was frequently heard to converse in fluent Hebrew. The mystery deepens as one can only wonder where he learned it and who were those “alleged” fans he conversed with.
The imposter only had 4 fingers on his right hand. He wore a prosthetic in concert and when in public. We know this because he left it on a hotel bedside table after a Wings show in Denver in the late 1970s.
Paul’s name does not show up in the index to the (still-sealed) New York County Surrogate files on John Lennon, which he otherwise would have participated in.
If you play the 45 to “Coming Up” at 78, the phrase “I’m a hoaxer” keeps poping up.
Murray Kaufman (better known as “Murray the K”) confessed in 1978 to using Paul’s corpse in 1967 to play a joke on fellow DJ Scott Muni.
The fake Paul recorded “The Girl Is Mine” with Michael Jackson. The real Paul liked cheesy music sometimes, but this is ridiculous.
On the cover of Revolver, in the upper left hand corner is a picture of Paul in which he appears to be screaming. He is. That picture was taken a split second before the real Paul’s fatal car accident.
Clue # 69: One day, I was walking along Washington Square Park when I happened to spot a guy who looked like Paul McCartney. “Are you Paul McCartney?” I asked. He smiled, chuckled, and answered “No I’m just the guy the Beatles hired to imposter Paul after he died in that horrific car crash back in '66.”
Clue # 32: In an unaired Mike Douglas episode from the week John & Yoko co-hosted, George Harrison stopped in to reminisce about the Beatles. John asked him “Remember the time that Paul died in that horrific car crash?” George replied “Oh yeah, and we had a hell of a time trying to find a good-enough lookalike to replace him.”
Clue # 21: When Lorne Michaels went on air begging for the Beatles to get back together for a reunion on “Saturday Night Live”, John Lennon replied to him “Gee, we’d like to help your show out, but we can’t get back together - because Paul is dead. It happened in a horrific car crash back in '66.”
Clue # 17: From a news clipping from the “Blackburn Lancashire Gazette” dated Sept., 1966: “Famous rock star Paul McCartney killed in horrific car crash.”
THERE. I knew it. I was afraid of George Harrison when I was a kid. I thought he looked like someone who would sneak up while you were in bed and strangle you. And why does he look like a deranged killer? Because he was a deranged killer. Logic, simple logic. At least he’s pushing up daisies now so I know he can’t get me.
-In the first hardcover edition of “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest,” the first letter of each line in the first chapter spells out “The walrus was Paul.”
-In 1966, Ann Landers took a sudden 3-week sabbatical; she and Linda were good friends.
-At 11 seconds into the opening credits of “The Graduate” is a drawing of Paul with an arrow through his head.
-At one point in the Let it Be sessions, you can see George saying to ‘Paul,’ “Who the bloody bollocks do you think you are telling me how to play guitar?” George would’ve never dared said this to the real Paul.
-Jello ran a “Legends of Rock: Gone Before Their Time” series on their boxes in the early 70s. Paul McCartney was #11 before being replaced by The Big Bopper a week later.
On a never-rerun episode of “What’s My Line,” Bennett Cerf was in the lead, having guessed that the mystery contestant was Paul McCartney. However, when host said “Would the real Paul Mc Cartney please stand up,” first none, then ALL THREE contestants rose to their feet. The contestant on the far right was visibly giggling.
None of them was the real Paul. He was dead.
A small Anglican church was the site of a notorious stampede of hysterical teenaged girls on Ash Wednesday, 1966, when word leaked out that they were distributing Paul’s ashes in lieu of burnt palm fronds.
A recent Ebay-UK auction was stopped after it became widely known that the seller was offering a bootlegged version of “Obla-di, Obla-da” in which the words “life goes on, but not for Paul” can clearly be heard.
Coming up on Oprah’s Book Club, a rare non-fiction pick: “My Life as Paul,” by Udon Nomi
Surprisingly, one of the most intriguing “clues” goes back centuries to the writings of Nostradamus.
Quite clearly, a bulls-eye prediction for Mr McCartney’s demise.
Nostradamus scholars originally thought this was an allusion to Jimmy Nichol’s replacing Ringo Starr during his 1964 tonsilectomy.
Others have thought it may have been a reference to Frankie Valli.
Yet others feel it is a reference to:
the 1906 San Francisco earthquake;
the events of Sept 11, 2001;
Hitler’s rise to power;
the invention of the Hostess Twinkie;
the Hula Hoop craze, and so on.
Clue 18: The melody for “Yesterday” is actually taps played backwards.
Clue 55: The French words in “Michelle” really mean “they buried me in the churchyard in the rain.”
Clue 73: During the second chorus of “Band on the Run,” you can clearly hear Ringo saying “Yeah, he’s dead alright. But I never liked him anyway. Say, what’s with the microphone?”
A very famous London lawsuit is Senotsbmot’s Tombstones vs. The Estate of Paul McCartney for one unpaid tombstone bill.
When John Lennon was being transported to the hospital on December 8, 1980, the police officer remarked “You’re going to be the first Beatle to die.” John said “Nope.”