Stephanie Brown
The Signal
I was having a delicious meal with my amazing boyfriend and his family at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, and given the environment we were eating in, we were discussing music.
The conversation was quite pleasant when suddenly, out of nowhere, the subject of Paul McCartney’s alleged death arose. Apparently, he died in a crazy car accident in 1969 and a look-a-like took his place in the Beatles.
I nearly choked on my garden burger…this was the most ridiculous rumor I had ever heard! Surely there is no way anyone would actually believe such a monstrosity!
My dad is a Beatles fanatic, so when I returned home I brought up this horrifying topic. He laughed and provided me with a song the Beatles wrote as a sarcastic song in dispute. One lyric reads:
“I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grave
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph.
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They’d seen his face before”
Apparently, The Beatles found this rumor quite amusing! However, the rumors continued to circulate throughout the media for a little more than two years. No matter how hard spokespeople for the Beatles attempted to assure fans that Paul was alive and well, letters from distraught and outraged fans continued to overflow the Beatles’ mailroom. Apparently, Mr. McCartney’s look-a-like fooled the Queen of England herself; after all, she did knight him as Sir Paul McCartney!
Using Google, I did find some interesting clues hinting towards Paul’s death. The album cover of Abbey Road has been rumored to symbolize a funeral procession; John Lennon leads the group in a white suit, representing a priest. Ringo Starr is dressed in all black, symbolizing a mourner. George Harrison wears all denim, resembling a gravedigger. Paul McCartney is barefoot and is out of step with the other three, symbolizing a corpse. If the ending of the song “Strawberry Fields Forever” is played backwards, it sounds like John Lennon is saying, “I buried Paul.” However, Lennon later revealed that he is actually saying “cranberry juice.”
Keep in mind, however, that rumors took much longer to bloom into the media back then, and therefore, people were much more likely to believe the craziest of celebrity rumors. Today, we can’t walk into a grocery store without seeing celebrity scandals all over the covers of magazines. We can’t flip through channels on the television without hearing some form of celebrity gossip.
The media feeds on celebrity death hoaxes like candy; this month, Morgan Freeman died due to an artery rupture. Just last month, Eddie Murphy died in a tragic skiing accident. Late last year, Jon Bon Jovi was found in a coma in a New Jersey hotel. In July 2010, Lindsay Lohan overdosed on drugs and passed away. Harry Potter’s Emma Watson died in a fatal car accident in 2009.
All of these deathly incidents were immediately proven untrue, but they are merely a tiny fraction of hoaxes regarding the deaths of famous people that circulate regularly in the media. In fact, I’ve heard of so many false celebrity deaths that I refused to believe that Michael Jackson passed away for at least a month after the fact.
Along with the expansion of social media, bogus claims of celebrity deaths continue to grow. However, as these claims circulate, it becomes easier for the celebrities in question to quickly disprove these rumors. Or, maybe all of these celebrities are truly dead? Maybe everyone has a celebrity look-a-like standing by just in case, just like Sir Paul McCartney?
