Paul McCartney is the subject of perhaps the most famous hoax in music history: Supposedly, the Beatle died back in the 1960s and was replaced by an imposter. McCartney has heard all about this, of course, and over the years, he has gained a fresh perspective on the situation.
McCartney discusses it in a new piece for The Guardian published over the weekend. It starts, “The strangest rumour started floating around just as the Beatles were breaking up — that I was dead. We had heard it long before, but suddenly, in that autumn of 1969, stirred up by a DJ in America, it took on a force all its own, so that millions of fans around the world believed I was actually gone. At one point, I turned to my new wife and asked, ‘Linda, how can I possibly be dead?’ She smiled as she held our new baby, Mary, as aware of the power of gossip and the absurdity of these ridiculous newspaper headlines as I was.”
He later adds:
“But now that over a half century has passed since those truly crazy times, I’m beginning to think that the rumours were more accurate than one might have thought at the time. In so many ways, I was dead… A 27-year-old about-to-become-ex-Beatle, drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows that were sapping my energy, in need of a complete life makeover. Would I ever be able to move on from what had been an amazing decade, I thought. Would I be able to surmount the crises that seemed to be exploding daily?”
The feature offers more interesting perspectives from McCartney, so check it out here.
