John Lennon, calling the same Detroit radio station on October 26th, fumed, “It’s the most stupid rumor I’ve ever heard. It’ll probably be the best publicity we’ve ever had, and I won’t have to do a thing except stay alive. You’re dead.’ And so I said, leave it, just let them say it. As he told Rolling Stone, “They said, ‘Look, what are you going to do about it? It’s a big thing breaking in America. With a newborn baby to care for (a first for Paul), he was in no mood to indulge the media frenzy. He was in seclusion on his Scottish farm with Linda, Heather, and their six-week-old daughter Mary, known to the world as the infant cradled in his leather jacket in Linda’s most famous photo. When the rumor blew up, Paul was neither dead nor a walrus. And bringing up the rear, George in blue denim as the grave-digger-man, even in the conspiracy theories, George gets shafted with the dirty work. Two days later, the Michigan Daily explained the Abbey Road cover as a funeral procession: the Preacher (John in white), the Undertaker (Ringo in black), the Corpse (poor Macca). But after the Detroit radio broadcast, people pounced on the story. Needless to say, it wasn’t true - Paul is not just gloriously alive, he’s still peaking as a songwriter and performer, debuting at Number One last year with Egypt Station. As Paul told Rolling Stone in 1974, “Someone from the office rang me up and said, ‘Look, Paul, you’re dead.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t agree with that.’” It became a permanent part of Beatles lore-a totally fan-generated phenomenon that the band could only watch with amusement or exasperation. Fifty years later, “Paul is dead” remains the weirdest and most famous of all music conspiracy theories. The rumor spread like wildfire, as fans searched their Beatle albums for clues. It meant the Beatles were hiding a secret: Paul McCartney got killed in a car crash back in 1966, and the band replaced him with an imposter.
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