Friday, July 16, 2010

The Rutles' All You Need Is Cash Clues

In 1978, Eric Idle (of Monte Python's Flying Circus comedy group) and Neil Innes (of Monte Python and Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band satirical groups) wrote and starred in a satire about The Beatles called All You Need Is Cash.  They covered the Paul Is Dead story with a  mixture of George, Paul and replacement Paul references.

In the video on YouTube:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6PgzRizr6o  they cover the rumor that Stig--the George character--might have died.  At 0:06-0:16 in the video, the commentator (Eric Idle) says,
       "Stig had hidden in the background so much that a rumor went around in 1969 that he was dead.  He was supposed to have been killed in a flash fire at a water bed shop and replaced by a plastic and wax replica from Madame Tussauds."  My interpretation of this is that they were alluding to:  the Lotus hyperbaric chamber bed I've mentioned in previous posts; and to the man who replaced Paul who needed plastic surgery to resemble Paul enough to convince a world audience.

The movie talked about the Paul Is Dead clues.  Beginning at 0:27-0:30, they say :
      ". . . he'd not said a word since 1966."
At 1:30-1:38 (in a reference to, apparently, Linda Eastman, who married the man who replaced Paul):
      "He'd fallen in bed with Gertrude Strange . . . whose father had invented the Limpet mine." 
 Limpet mines were naval mines developed in England during World War II that were attached by frogmen (underwater divers) to enemy ships.  Again, I think this was an inside joke about Paul and the hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So...is the idea that Faul was put in the hyperbaric chamber to make his plastic surgery heal more quickly (and learned the diving signals as a way to tell the medical administrator that he needed to get out of the tank)? or are you thinking Paul #2 (the one you believe to be John Black) wound up stuck, for some period of time, in a coma or semi-conscious state due to his injuries and a hyperbaric tank was part of his treatment? Or that he was being held in a hyperbaric tank against his will?