Have you ever listened to Stairway to Heaven played backwards? There IS a satanic message in there; you can check it for yourselves with a nice MP3 and some music program. But that’s not the point. There’s another Beatles song (and i cannot remember the name right now, complete blank!!!) that, when played backwards, allow you to listen to John Lennon saying “Paul is dead, man. Miss him, miss him”. All the b.s. about ‘Paul McCartney is dead’ aside, who’s this “Paul” Lennon is talking about?
Tsk, tsk. These kids today. Let an old fogey clue you in.
Stairway to Heaven was not a Beatles song, It was by Led Zeppelin.
The Paul that was rumored to be dead was Paul McCartney, the other major songwriter in the Beatles who co-wote most of the songs with John.
Around the time of the Abbey Road album (68?) there was a wild rumor that Paul had been killed in a traffic accident. Wild eyed fans saw clues under every rock. One of the biggest was Abbey Road’s cover. Paul was without shoes, supposedly because no one is supposed to be buried with shoes on. Also the license plate on a VW bug was “28 IF.” Paul would have been 28 if he had not been killed.
Kids my ass. I’m 42, and I even saw Led Zeppelin live here in France.
Fact: all this “Paul is dead” stuff is bull. Macca is alive and riched than God.
Fact: you listen to the song backwards, you’ll hear John saying “Paul is dead man, miss him”. Course, it’s NOT Macca. So, he must be another Paul. Who is this Paul, the one who’s dead and John Lennon misses so much?
It’s just one of those coincidences of reversed speech sounding semi-intelligible; there is no backwards message here (or in Stairway to Heaven, either). John is really saying, forwards, “Monsieur, Monsieur, Monseiur, how 'bout another one (unintelligible to me after this)”.
Uninteligibble? Dude, there’s EIGHT very clear phrases in Starway to Heaven! This cannot be coincidence!
Well Uniball, the song you are looking for is called “I’m So Tired” and it’s on The White Album. At the end of the song is the “Paul is dead now…Miss him, Miss him” part recorded backwards. Hope that helps.
Course it does. Fact is: I don’t believe in all that hoopla about “Paul (McCartney)” being dead. BUT, backmasking IS a reality, and a lot of bands do that on purpose - as a JOKE. I belive this track IS a joke, OR maybe John is talking about a friend called Paul (not Macca) who is, indeed, dead.
I’m not sure what angle Uniball is coming from. 
John IS talking about Paul Mcartney. There are about 200 clues to the “Paul is dead” thing, and the “clues” aren’t coincidences: The Beatles put them there! They played the P-I-D (Paul is Dead) thing to the hilt and sold millions more records than they otherwise would have. 32 years afterwards people are still buying them to look for clues. A genius marketing plot if you ask me. Simply brilliant!
Now, Uniball, since you & I share a weird but wonderful hobby (spinning songs backwards to find messages) I have one for you:
In 1980 John Lennon released his album “Double Fantasy”, months BEFORE his death by gunfire. At the very begining of the song “Kiss, Kiss, Kiss” Yoko says something unintelligable (possible in Japanese). Spin this backwards and it says “I SHOT JOHN LENNON”!!!:eek: Remember: This came out BEFORE his death.
Explain that!
Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?
Of course they do, but it’s nowhere near as common as some would have you believe. I guarantee you there is no backwards message in “Stairway to Heaven”, nor in The Beatles track you mentioned in the OP. Listen to “Rain” by The Beatles; that’s what real backmasking sounds like. Is it so hard to believe the coincidence that forward speech, when reversed, can be interpreted in a meaningful way in many instances?
OK, I hope you’r being sarcastic here, because this is wrong on so many levels, it’s . . . gah. OK.
Look above your post, to Padeye’s. The significant information is there. The “Paul is Dead” rumors didn’t start until late 1969, by which point the band had for all purposes broekn up, and were involved in recording their last album, “Abbey Road.”
The recently-releases “Beatles Anthology” book shows, on pages 341-342, copies of telegrams received by Derek Taylor, Apple’s press officer, regarding the rumors. They are from 1969-1970, and the first reads “RUMORS HERE SAY PAUL MCCARTNEY DEAD PLEASE EXPLAIN DEATH SYMBOLS IN ALBUM COVERS, SONGS I E PAUL NOT WEARING SHOES SARGENT [sic] PEPPER HAND OF DEATH URGENT REPLY REQUESTED ALAN SUTTON INDIANA DAILY STUDENT BLOOMINGTON INDIANA.”
Since the telegram references “Paul not wearing shows,” which appeared on the cover of “Abbey Road,” we can only assume this telegram comes from 1970. So, while the story itself went that Paul was killed in an accident pre-“Rubber Soul,” the rumors themselves did not arise until the Beatles were no longer a band.
Therefore, unless we are postulating that the band or its representatives went back in time to alter album covers and songs lyrics, well, that should put the kibbosh on that.
As far as the “Paul is dead, miss him” deal, Cabbage has that right. It’s John mumbling, in mock-drunken style, “Monsieur, monsieur, may I have another one.” In case it has escaped some people in the thirty years since the Beatles broke up, John could be kind of a cut-up, throwing in all sorts of extemporaneous stuff while recording. On “Let it Be,” listen to the “Sweet Loretta Fart, she thought she was a cleaner . . .” bit at the beginning of “Get Back,” or the “I dig a pygmy” bit at the front of the album, or his between- and during-song bits on the “Anthology” discs (“Paul’s broken a glass, broken a glass . . .”).
The answer to this is simple!
Disregard all of the above… Paul was killed in a traffic accident in 1969, and zombified by the remaining Beatles!
This pissed Paul off, so he spent the next few years trying (subtly) to tip off the public… seems to have backfired on him, tho…
That does explain a lot, particularly Mac’s decision to have Linda sing.
Nope. Paul would have been 27 at the time.
Ringo, Paul, George and John
Played a trick and put us on.
Dropped hints Paul was dead as nails
and rocketed their record sales.
Can’t speak to pld’s comments on the timing of the whole thing, but I’ve always thought that, their denials to the contrary, there were simply too many of the darn hints to be anything but intentional.
So if these hints were being dropped as early as 1964-65, and the rumors didn’t arise until 1969-70, explain how they knew to put them there?
They’re only “hints” if one chooses to apply the most tortured possible logic, silliness and outright falsehood to them. It still amazes me that at The Straight Dope, some people are devoted to holding on to easily disproveable bits of urban legendry.
The “Paul is Dead” craze started in Michigan in early October, 1969, spread rapidly around the country, peaked around the end of the month, and the LIFE magazine with the death-rumor story on the cover was the November 7 issue.
By an odd coincidence, ABBEY ROAD was released in the U.S. on October 1, 1969.
On a “Chris Farley Show” segment on SNL, Farley once interveiwed McCartney. He brought up the ‘Paul is dead’ rumors, and then asked, “That was a hoax, right?” Durned funny.
the original scam, as i understood it, was that, at some point, the beatles pretended that paul was dead and put little clues in some songs, like ‘i bury paul’ in strawberry fields.
so, pldennison, what you’re saying is that that the things that sound like clues don’t really say anything about paul being dead? don’t get me wrong - i’m not saying i think you’re wrong. i had thought the scam and the clues happened at the same time.
so what is it they say at the end of strawberry fields?
“Cranberry sauce.”