Paul McCartney Conspiracy Theory

This subject has been tackled many times, A quick Google search brought up loads of information that I had not heard before, I am only going into the basics on this but if you want to read any more about it then you can easily lose hours trawling the internet for this.

In the late 60’s a group of Beatles fans got together and revealed a conspiracy that was set to rock the world. Using “Clues” that were hidden in album covers, song lyrics and subliminal spoken sections behind the music they came to the conclusion that Paul McCartney had died and had been replaced by a look a like. The replacement was named as “Billy Spears” as the band introduce him during the song “Sgt Peppers lonely heart club band” The look a like, they presumed, was a good likeness but there were a few subtle differences so the new bassist had decided to cover up the differences by growing a beard and sporting a longer hair cut.
Starting with the album covers “Abbey Road” has a number of images that were picked apart. For starters the famously left handed bass player is shown on the cover with a cigarette in his right hand. The clothes the band are wearing and the order they are crossing the road is also scrutinised and is thought to be a funeral procession. John goes first as the priest all dressed in white followed by Ringo the mourner all dressed in black Then the corpse, barefoot and wearing a loosely fitted suit, follows and lastly the Grave digger, George, is the last one in his old jeans and long hair. A further hint on the cover is the VW Beetle parked down the road. At the time Paul owned a white VW Beetle but this one had the number plate containing “28 if”, the fans took this to mean that he would have been “28 if” he had lived.
 On the Sgt Pepper album the cover has a gathering of people in front of a flower bed. This was taken to be a graveyard scene but that could belong to anyone right? Well, on the soil in front of the crowd is a wreath that looks like it could be shaped like a left handed bass guitar in tribute to Paul, on the side of the album cover there is a doll seated with a small VW Beetle on it’s leg, the car is right up against the writing on the dolls jumper, specifically the word “Stones”. This was taken to be a metaphor that there had been a car crash. Also, there is a hand above Paul’s head, in some cultures this is a symbol of death. There are other hints on the front cover but to me they all become a little tenuous. On the inside of the gatefold sleeve there is a picture of the band in the Sgt Pepper costumes, Paul is seen sporting a badge with the letters OPD on it (for officially pronounced dead).
It is the back cover of the album that really let the fans imagination run away with them. The cover just shows a picture of the band with all of the lyrics to the songs over the top. Paul is shown with his back to the audience suggesting he is no longer with us but it is the lyrics themselves that were to be the most interesting as this gave then fans the time of his death and how it happened. George Harrison’s hand is pointing to the opening line of “She’s leaving home” which is “ Wednesday morning at five o clock” while there is another hand pointing to a line from “ A day in the life” where it tells us that “he blew his mind out in a car”. The last line actually had another couple of fairly decent explanations, there had been a high profile accident in the news in recent times but it is more likely that it was John in an Autobiographical mood recounting a time when he had been too drunk to drive and just sat there trying to see if the traffic lights were red or green as the following line is “ He hadn’t noticed that the lights had changed”. If you look at the clues they do all make sense but I wonder how much of this was coincidence and how much was added by the band “For laughs”. John Lennon was always a bit of a joker and I am sure he was giggling away to himself when he said “I buried Paul” at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever” (he claims that this was actually “Cranberry Sauce”) and again when he wrote the lyrics to “Glass Onion”, “Here is another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul”. The Walrus is a symbol of death in some cultures so this one well placed line certainly added fuel to an already raging fire. So, Did the Beatles lose a key member or were they just playing jokes on their fans? In all fairness we will never know how or why these hints came to exist and my opinion falls more towards a little tomfoolery rather than the death of an iconic figure in music.