Clapton's guitar solo in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

[WordMan]

@blondebear

The ‘Paul is dead’ myth

Wow - thanks! That’s a helluva breakdown of the story. When people get their Beatles facts down, they don’t mess around.

[74westy]

@Don_Draper

If I might slightly hijack this thread, another long-time rumor I’ve heard about this song is that there’s a “Paul is dead clue” in it. Towards the end of the song, Harrison is singing/chanting something through the fadeout that almost sounds like “Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! (etc.)” And the song itself was supposedly an ode to the “late” Paul McCartney – Harrison was supposedly “weeping” for his dead friend.

When did this rumor start up? Was THIS something people were discussing when the “white album” came out? Or was it something that people thought of years later?

The White Album has Glass Onion which has the lines

Here’s another clue for you all.
The walrus was Paul.

So not only was the rumour current but the Beatles were already mocking it.

[RTFirefly]

@blondebear

The ‘Paul is dead’ myth

@WordMan

Wow - thanks! That’s a helluva breakdown of the story. When people get their Beatles facts down, they don’t mess around.

I don’t see any mention in there, though, of the fact that at least some of those clues were deliberately planted. I won’t argue that some interpretations of album jacket photos were probably people seeing clues where none were intended. But to give one for-instance of a deliberately planted clue: if you’ve got a phonograph, and an old LP of the White Album, you can still spin it backwards and hear it clearly say, “Paul is dead.” There were a few others like it, though.

I’ve only seen one explanation of those clues, but it was published on April Fool’s Day, 2004, so who knows?

[Voyager]

@74westy

The White Album has Glass Onion which has the lines

Here’s another clue for you all.
The walrus was Paul.

So not only was the rumour current but the Beatles were already mocking it.

I think that was a reference to all the people trying to find hidden meanings in John’s songs. The link says that the rumors started in late 1969, which is when I first heard them. I had just started college and it was a big thing with some very smart people in my dorm. I think the Abbey Road cover really started it off, along with what could be interpreted as grave digging in Come Together. If you want to find evidence of something, it isn’t hard.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Voyager

I think that was a reference to all the people trying to find hidden meanings in John’s songs.

That’s my understanding too. FWIW, here’s what Lennon said about it years later (source):

LENNON: “Well, I heard some Beatles stuff on the radio the other day and I heard ‘Green Onion’ …no, ‘Glass Onion,’ I don’t even know my own songs! I listened to it because it was a rare track…”

PLAYBOY: “That was the one that contributed to the ‘Paul McCartney is dead’ uproar because of the lyric ‘The walrus is Paul.’”

LENNON: "Yeah. That line was a joke, you know. That line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko, and I knew I was finally high and dry. In a perverse way, I was sort of saying to Paul, ‘Here, have this crumb, have this illusion, have this stroke… because I’m leaving you.’