What George Said: His 1968 song, Badge

In George Harrison's 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, he described writing the song that was later named Badge.  Some of the lyrics are:
     I told you not the wander 'round in the dark
     I told you 'bout the swans
    That they live in the park.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, swans figure into the rumor that Paul was involved in an accident near Milton Keynes because Buckinghamshire--the county Milton Keynes is located in--has a swan in its badge and the Buckinghamshire Constabulary had a swan on its badge.
As George's story goes, Ringo Starr contributed the lines about the swans in the park and Eric Clapton contributed the title to the song because he mistook the word "BRIDGE" in the song and thought it was BADGE.  I talked about how The Beatles were fond of puns and I think the bridge and badge references were sly puns:  " . . . follow her down to a bridge by a fountain" from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. (See my February 13th. post.)  Confirmation of the hidden references in the song came from Jack Bruce of Cream who told a reporter from the English pop music paper, New Musical Express:  "The lyrics are very interesting if you can fathom them out.  They are very dark and devious with hidden meanings but you'd have to ask Eric about that." (quoted in Rolling Stone magazine of April 5, 1969.)

George is talking to someone in the song and he could have been talking to our Paul.  He was telling him to "pick himself up from the ground before they bring the curtain down."  That would suggest that our Paul was alive in 1968.  But George talks about telling this person in the song:
     Then I told you 'bout our kid
     Now he's married to Mabel
     [and in the handwritten copy of the lyrics, this line is added]:
     (In a bottle and  labled [sic] dis-abled.)
As I wrote in a Paul-Was-Replaced forum, the Mabel George is referring to is a fictional spokesperson for a beer that was popular in England (and Canada and America) at the time called Carling Black Label beer.  So since our Paul wasn't George's Paul, George is pointing to an earlier Paul in the group and saying that he had survived into 1968, too.

And George makes a reference to multiple Pauls when he put these lyrics in the song:
     Talkin' 'bout a girl that looks quite like you,
     She didn't have the time to wait in the queue.

Another interesting note is that the flipside of the single Badge had a song called, What A Bringdown.  It is filled with hidden references in the lyrics and one line of it says:
     Water in a fountain doesn't get me very high. 
Again, you can link that back to the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds line.

So, it's looking more and more that the Paul car accident rumor I found has validity to it.

There Beneath The Blue Suburban Skies--More On The Rumor

As I said in my January 7th. post, the city of Milton Keynes was a grand design by the English government to build a planned city.  The M1 highway in the area has many roundabouts.  Here is a nice view of one from a 1967 British Pathe film.  Was one of them mentioned in the song Penny Lane?
 Milton Keynes started out in 1967, effectively, as a suburb of London.  Remember the lyrics in Penny Lane: "Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes/There beneath the blue suburban skies"? 
Before the big plan began, the area was made up of villages and rural areas.  As I said in my February 13th. post, the Grand Union Canal ran through the area.  I found a book called Walking Canals (David & Charles Inc., 1984) that describes the area around the canals in the summer:
     "Summer is the least satisfactory season of the year for towpath walking.  Canalside vegetation tends to grow with extra luxuriance and the aggressive greenery conceals objects of interest such as mileposts and boundary markers.  The smaller canalside buildings may be completely obscured and the surrounding countryside screened from view."  Remember the lyric from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds that describes an area where "you drift past the flowers that grow so incredibly high"?

So my point is that I think the rumor that Paul was involved in a car crash--or in some other incident--in the area of Milton Keynes is true.  I think the 1967 songs Penny Lane, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, and A Day In The Life describe incidents from his mishaps.
                                More on this later.
                                ---paulumbo  

More On The Accident Rumor

Beginning with my January 7, 2012 post and continuing with posts on 1/22 and 1/29, I have been looking into the rumor that Paul was involved in an accident off the M1 highway near Milton Keynes.  From my research, it's looking more and more like there is validity to the rumor.

1.)  There is a 286 mile canal that runs from London to Birmingham called the Grand Union Canal.  It runs through the area where Paul would have had the accident and one of the features of the canal are many bridges over it.  Pennyland is in the area of the village of Great Linford and the village has several bridges running over the canal.
On the right is a photo of bridge #77.  Remember the lyric from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds:  "Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain"?  I'll look more into the area and the features surrounding the canal in that area, but according to a book I read, The Plan For Milton Keynes (Milton Keynes Development Corporation, 1970), the area was parkland.
2.)  The area around Milton Keynes was known for its brick clay mining and brick manufacturing.  There was a brick manufacturing plant southwest of the town of Bletchley, which is in the area.  Here is a photo of old brick kilns from the area. (Bottom right.)
And here is a photo of the famous back of the
album of Abbey Road, with the brick wall that
spelled out 3 Beatles. 

There could very well be a connection.

Yellow Submarine Revisited

In the search for the truth about what happened to Paul, I have been finding persistent clues involving deep-sea diving or something simulating it.  In several posts--like the one of May 21, 2010--I speculated that Paul may have used--or had used on him--a machine called a hyperbaric oxygen chamber (which simulates the atmospheric pressure of deep-sea diving.)  Alternately, I thought he might have owned a personal submarine (see my March 27, 2011 post.)

I was looking for videos about Buckinghamshire made by the English news company, British Pathe and I came across an extraordinary video filmed in 1966.

First take a look at the video at:  http://www.britishpathe.com/ .  Type French seismic in the search box and you'll find the film titled "30 Seconds News:  French Seismic Tests & One Man Submarine (1966)." 

I think Paul used the song, Yellow Submarine to describe something real that was happening to him in 1966.  The British Pathe video talks about an English aircraft engineer who invented a one-man submarine that he demonstrated in Black Lake, near Slough, Buckinghamshire.  Here are two photos from the video.

Notice that the sub's flag has an X on it.  In my July 8, 2010 post I showed a video where Paul crossed his arms and wrists in an X signal.

The second part of the video describes explosions done at Lake Negre--Negro(!)--in the French Alps to test what was below the Earth's surface.

I think this film is linked with events in Paul's life in 1966.  My overall premise is that there were serious attempts to manipulate and control The Beatles:  a definite conspiracy that involved the British government and the English ruling class.  I think the English media were in on the conspiracy, but made indirect comments about it and I think this film was one of them.