Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 25 years, and he stll buries Paul Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 15:13:22 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD 25 years, and he stll buries Paul \BY Wayne Bledsoe \CR KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL Yesterday was the 26th anniversary of the death of Paul McCartney. What? The cute Beatle is still alive and is Bill Clinton's favorite? Well, you would've had trouble telling that to Beatle fanatics in 1969. On Oct. 12, 1969, just before the release of the band's "Abbey Road" album, Detroit disc jockey Russ Gibb got a mysterious call from someone who claimed that the fade-out on the Beatles song "I Am the Walrus" includes a voice saying "I buried Paul." Sure enough, Mr. Gibb listened and heard it. That set off legions of Beatles fans scouring their record collections for clues to Mr. McCartney's death. The whole mess only ended when a Life magazine reporter tracked down Paul and found him very much alive. But today Gary Patterson is stirring the whole thing up again. Mr. Patterson, a high school teacher, was himself in high school when the first rumor hit. For the past two years, he has taught students how to think creatively and pay closer attention to what they hear and read by looking for death clues in Beatles albums. And he's written a so-far unpublished book called "Turn Me On Dead Man: The Great Beatle Death Clues from 1969." The cryptic cover of the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, released 25 years ago, gave original sleuths the most evidence: On the back, Mr. McCartney is the only Beatle not facing forward. He wears a patch with the letters "O.P.D." - the British police abbreviation for "Officially Pronounced Dead." A hand over a person's head supposedly is a symbol of death in some Eastern cultures; on the cover, the hand of British comedian Issy Bonn hovers over Mr. McCartney's head. Mr. Patterson found more clues. The Beatles chose most of the famous people pictured behind them on the funereal "Sgt. Pepper" cover. The teacher decided to examine those selected by John Lennon. Among them were writer H.G. Wells, whose "War of the Worlds" was adapted by Orson Welles into a radio show that convinced the nation that Martians had landed; famed mystery writer Edgar Allen Poe (who also composed anagrams); and Lewis Carroll, author of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice Through the Looking Glass." Carroll's presence inspired Mr. Patterson to scan the cover of "Pepper" with a mirror. He decided the drum skin looked a little like a tombstone. When he placed a mirror in the middle of the drum, bisecting the words "LONELY HEARTS" at a slight angle, the mirror image matched with the letters above it read "I ONE IX HE DIE." Mr. Patterson concluded the I and ONE should be read together as 11, as in November, and IX was the Roman numeral 9. Flip the cover over and you'll see George Harrison pointing to a line from "She's Leaving Home" - "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock." Several books document that on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 1966, Mr. McCartney left the Abbey Road recording studio - where the band was working on what would become "Sgt. Pepper" - and at 5 a.m. wrecked his Aston Martin. Also on the "Pepper" cover, on the leg of the Shirley Temple doll, is a tiny model of an Aston Martin. Then there's that reference to a man "who blew his mind out in a car" in the song "A Day in the Life," and the line from "Good Morning, Good Morning" that says "Nothing to do to save his life, call his wife in." Later albums contained other supposed clues. The "Abbey Road" cover had a barefoot Mr. McCartney out of step with the rest of the Beatles. But it was "The Beatles" (commonly referred to as "The White Album") that contained the watershed for death theorists, "Revolution 9." Among Mr. Lennon's unnerving jumble of backward and forward tapes, one might heara car crash, a fire, cryptic bits of poetry and conversation. Connecting it all is a voice repeating the words "Number nine." Played backward, it occasionally sounds like "Turn me on dead man." A voice seems to say "Let me out!" during the sound of a fire. The Beatles dismissed the whole thing as coincidence. "I buried Paul," Mr. Lennon said, was "Cranberry sauce." Another source said it was "I'm very bored." But then there was Mr. Lennon's line, "And here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul" - in the song "Glass Onion," released before the Detroit DJ received the "I buried Paul" call. "I think it was the greatest hoax ever put on," Mr. Patterson says. He believes that 10 percent of the apparent clues, including the words on the "Sgt. Pepper" drum, were planted intentionally. Still, the teacher admits it's hard for him to believe the former Beatles could've kept the secret so long. At any rate, Mr. Patterson's hourlong presentation gets students analyzing what they hear and read more closely. And figuring out their own clues, he says, might send kids to the work of Lewis Carroll, James Joyce and some of the others who inspired the Beatles. SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM