Saturday, May 29, 2010

Of Contracts and Kings or Paul's Little War

The Beatles had a recording contract with EMI that expired on June 4, 1966.  On June 3, 1966, the New Musical Express, an English music magazine, published an advertisement promoting the upcoming Beatles' single, Paperback Writer and Rain.  On June 4, 1966, the Disc and Music Echo another English music magazine published the same ad.  The photo in the ads was the famous "butcher cover":  The Beatles dressed in butcher coats, draped with meat and doll parts.  Paul was sending a message to the world.
Capitol Records was owned by EMI and that company distributed The Beatles' recordings in the US.  In a 2002 interview in Mojo magazine, Alan W. Livingston, the former president of Capitol Records, commenting on the "butcher cover" Yesterday and Today album said:

          "The reaction came back that the dealers refused to handle them.  I called London and we went
           back and forth.  My contact was mainly with Paul McCartney.  He was adamant and felt very
           strongly that we should go forward.  He said, 'It's our comment on the war.'  I don't know why
           it was a comment on the war or if it would be interpreted that way."

I don't think it was Paul's comment on the Vietnam War, but, instead, a comment on what was happening to Paul during that time.   Paul's little war.

There's a YouTube video that shows Paul looking at negatives from the "butcher" photo session:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS-SKwutP_g    
At 0:45-0:46 in the video, the camera is pulled back, and you can see Paul hurriedly reaching for the photo negatives.  At 0:52-0:53, you see Paul holding the negative up to his face.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Sgt. Pepper Drumskin

The beauty of having your own blog is that you can make comments unsullied, as it were, by the silly comments of trolls and wannabees.
On another board presumably devoted to the Paul replaced mystery, a person has logged on claiming to be a relative of the designer of the Sgt. Pepper drumskin. She did some genealogical research, she says, and she says that her grandfather couldn't have possibly placed a clue on the drumskin.
My guess is that this is a kick-off of an idea (a plan?) to discredit the legitimate information that has been collected concerning the replacement of Paul McCartney.
I wouldn't believe her.

Friday, May 21, 2010

When was Paul removed from the group?

Some people believe Paul was on the last American tour (1966), but I believe he was taken out of the group in Hong Kong on July 3, 1966 when The Beatles stopped there for a plane refueling before going to the Philippines. 
Life magazine had an article about The Beatles in its July 15, 1966 issue titled "Beatles Under Wraps in Tokyo."  It talks about Japanese merchants visiting The Beatles in their hotel room and the purchases they made.  The article describes how one bystander watched Paul's purchases pile up and finally asked:
                                                "What are you collecting?"
Paul's answer?                     "Just dust," he replied softly, "just dust."

. . . lived a man who sailed to sea .

Paul said his song, Yellow Submarine was a children's song, but there is strong evidence that the song was about the Vickers hyperbaric oxygen (Lotus bed.)  In the April 10, 1968 London Times there is an article about experiments at Westminster Hospital, London using the Lotus bed.  It is described as resembling "a midget submarine."  Paul's yellow submarine?

Friday, May 7, 2010

He Blew His Mind Out in a "Car"

The Beatles' song, A Day In The Life claimed to be about Tara Browne, the Guinness heir who died in an automobile accident in 1966.  The car he was driving was a Lotus.  In 1968, the Beatles recorded a song Glass Onion that has gained notoriety as a "Paul is Dead" song.  It's very possible that (what I believe was replacement) John was talking in both songs about the Lotus bed, a single-man hyperbaric oxygen chamber.  Photo is above.  Discussion will follow.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Sgt. Pepper, Poppies, and Flanders' Fields Forever

The Sgt. Pepper drumskin date has been interpreted as September 10th. or October 9th., but I think it's November 10th.  I mentioned in the first post that Paul wanted to clue people in that he was both Paul and Ian Iachimoe.  The drumskin has 10 and IX, the backward Roman numerals for the number ELEVEN.  So given the English way of putting day before month in dates, the drumskin reads November 10th. 

The Beatles--with I believe both Paul and John replaced--began work on the Sgt. Pepper album on November 25th., 1966 with the recording of Strawberry Fields Forever.  They (or what I believe was Paul's replacement) worked on Penny Lane beginning December 29, 1966.  The executives at the Beatles' recording company, EMI, wanted a new single, and George Martin packaged SFF and Penny Lane, not coincidentally, I believe.

On Penny Lane, there's a line about a pretty nurse selling poppies from a tray.  Artificial poppies have been sold in England since 1921 by The British Legion (now called The Royal British Legion) to support programs to help ex-service men and women and their families.  They chose the poppy as their symbol because the poppy was the only thing which grew in the Flanders and Picardy regions of Belgium and Northern France when those areas were devastated after fierce fighting during World War 1.  John McCrae, serving in the Canadian armed forces, saw the war-torn areas and the fields of poppies and wrote In Flanders' Fields:
          In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
          Between the crosses, row on row,
          That mark our place; and in the sky
          The larks, still bravely singing, fly
          Scarce heard amid the guns below.

          We are the dead.  Short days ago
          We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
          Loved and were loved, and now we lie
          In Flanders' fields.

          Take up our quarrel with the foe;
          To you from failing hands we throw
          The torch; be yours to hold it high,
          If ye break faith with us who die
          We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
          In Flanders' Fields.

Another poem that is often recited at Remembrance Day ceremonies is For the Fallen:
          With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
          England mourns for her dead across the sea.
          Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
          Fallen in the cause of the free.

         Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
         Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
         There is music in the midst of desolation
         And a glory that shines upon our tears.

          They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
          Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
          They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
          They fell with their faces to the foe.

         They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
         Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
         At the going down of the sun and the morning
         We will remember them.

          They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
          They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
          They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
          They sleep beyond England's foam.

         But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
         Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
         To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
         As the stars are known to the night;

          As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
          Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
          As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
          To the end, to the end, they remain.



The two significant tie-ins to the Paul mystery are that the day World War 1 officially ended (and when Poppy Day is held) is NOVEMBER 11TH., the day after Paul was officially pronounced dead in the rumors.  If you look at the fields of red Flanders Fields poppies (as in the poster above), you can easily see them as STRAWBERRY FIELDS of poppies.  And it was at the end of SFF that you can hear someone saying, "I buried Paul." 

I think the (new) Beatles wrote remembrance tributes to Paul McCartney.