I was thinking about this today. Like, perhaps it was some plan where Paul could go on holiday somewhere without the press following him, so he hired a look-alike - a “theory” I’d not heard.
A lot of the “clues” that he’d died in 1966 were pretty far-fetched: Holding a black clarinet - Death! Wearing black and being barefoot - Dead man! I don’t even think the rumors had begun, yet in Glass Onion on the White Album, John sings, “Here’s another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul” and walruses (somewhere) represent Death!
Yet one did kind of spook me when I was younger: If you use a mirror to “split” the LONELY HEARTS on the bass drum on the cover of Sgt. Pepper it spells
I ONE IX HE DIE
meaning he died on 11/9 (September 11 using British D/M/Y)
I don’t believe the band ever made any official comments, yet Paul did get a bit of a laugh by naming an album “Paul is Live” around 1993.
The closest thing I can think of is The Grateful Dead’s album “Live from the Mars Hotel” back cover has some scrawl that held up to a mirror says “Ugly Rumors” about, well rumors the band was going to break up so no myth there.
I reckon either that or the black armband he wears on Sgt. Peppers was related to their manager, Brian Epstein dying that year.
Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him (something played backwards on the White Album.)screech No, that was the end of “I am the Walrus” and supposedly it’s “I buried Paul”. John said he was saying Cranberry Sauce.
There have been rumors over the years that members of The Residents include (or have included) Les Claypool, Mark Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale, and even George Harrison.
And, I learned from a Rick Beato interview a while ago, Jimi was given that right-handed guitar by Skunk Baxter (later of Steely Dan and the Doobies) as a swap for a left-handed one he didn’t like. Skunk was penalised 2 weeks’ pay for the swap by the store he worked for, as the two guitars were not at all of equal value.
It wouldn’t be much of a challenge to track his German lineage in detail: It only went back 2 generations in Germany. His real detailed lineage would be in Belgium, where Grandpa came from.
The reason the Yes album title Tales from Topographic Oceans is unintelligible is that the name was altered from their original. It was going to be “Tales from Toblergraphic Oceans,” because they were so fond of Tobler’s chocolate. But a lawyer for the Tobler company sent them a letter, so they had to change it.
…
OK, I confess I made that up. I was hoping to start a rumor and see if it spreads. In fact, the original title was going to be “Tobergraphic,” from October with the Oc- clipped off, a word Jon Anderson invented for Fred Hoyle’s astronomical theories of outer space. Ahmet Ertegün changed it to “Topographic” because that sounded better and had the advantage of being a real word. But in my mind I really had misremembered it as “Tobler” and thought it was about chocolate, until I looked it up again.
When asked what M.G. stood for in “Booker T. and the M.G.s” Stax Records’ publicity department said it stood for “Memphis Group”. For years fans were calling BS on that saying that it really stood for “Mixed Group” (Two black musicians and two white). The fans were only half right. Many years after the band’s debut, producer Chips Moman confirmed that Stax’s in-house band took its name from his sports car. (The previous in-house band was called the Triumphs after Moman’s previous British sports car.) Stax didn’t want to deal with a trademark lawsuit from the car company, so they cooked up “Memphis Group”. Bassist Duck Dunn, who didn’t join the group until after it got its name assumed it stood for “Musical Geniuses”.
We tend to imagine the towering figures of Classical and Romantic era music as stoic, powdered-wig types locked in metronomic seriousness. But truth is, these folks could swing when they wanted to—just not in the way we think of today. Case in point:
Take Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1: a whirlwind of shifting tempos, menacing arpeggios, and pulse-pounding momentum that borders on swing when a bold pianist unleashes it. And Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2? Liszt wasn’t just ahead of his time—he bent time itself. Its rhythmic sparks and improvisational flair beg for reinterpretation. Jazz musicians ran wild with it. Even Bugs Bunny gave it a go—because why should humans have all the fun? (I kind of wish a cat, say Sylvester, did so, but whatever).
And then there’s Chopin, the undisputed emotional architect of the piano, who had a way with rhythm and phrasing that jazz musicians later tapped into. His Mazurkas (Polish folk dances), pulse with syncopation, offbeat hits, and unexpected twists. In the hands of bold players, they definitely swing.
Jazz greats like Bill Evans, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock owe more to Chopin and Liszt than most folks realize. From harmony to touch, their influence runs deep.
And then there’s the matter of representation. Imagine how music might’ve evolved had more Black composers and musicians been given space and visibility earlier on–women, too. I wish Beethoven was discovered to be Black. The African American influence on jazz and swing is seismic—revolutionary! Had those voices been heard sooner, early jazz would have arrived decades ahead of schedule. But once the gates opened, the flood of brilliance changed music for ever.
… for Brahms, subdividing a measure of time into different units and layering different patterns on top of one another seemed to be almost a compulsion.
There’s also the intriguing story of his discovering the banjo towards the very end of his life, played by a young American student .
After supper Herr Klengel asked me to play on the banjo, and just as Herr Klengel
had expected Brahms had never seen or heard a banjo before. After I had played a piece Brahms said he was astonished to find the instrument capable of so much.
He examined it carefully and took one of the brackets as a remembrance of “die kleine Amerikanerin,” as he called me. After I had played several pieces he told Herr Klengel he could now see where Anton Dvorak found his melodies for his American symphony. Brahms said he enjoyed hearing the banjo very much and that he would like to hear me play the 'cello.
If you dig deeper, you’ll find sources that claimed he considered writing a piece for the instrument, using some of those new-fangled ‘ragtime’ rhythms, but it seems spurious. So, the idea of Brahms ragtime sonata for banjo is a myth, unfortunately.
Meanwhile, Mozart was probably chuckling when he composed “Ein musikalischer Spaß” (A Musical Joke), and Rossini was listening to his cats meow in perfect harmony when he wrote “Duetto buffo di due gatti” (Cat Duet), and who knows what Thomas Tallis was up to when he wrote “Spem in alium”—but he sure couldn’t spell very well.
