Here's A Summary of My Theory on The Beatles' "Personnel Changes"

                      -----Happy New Year and Let This Be The Year We Find The Truth-----

It's a given that sometime in mid-to-late 1966 our Paul (the Paul McCartney American fans knew) was replaced by the third and final Paul.  The whole mystery dogging our memory of The Beatles is what happened to the first two Pauls (and Johns.)  Some people focus on the why of their replacement, but for our Paul I believe the official why would be a lying pretense.

For the first and real Paul and John, I think you can focus on the Royal Command Performance The Beatles gave in London on November 3, 1963.  John's "applause from the cheap seats, jewelry-rattling for the royals" comment  doomed the real Beatles.  If the real Beatles continued their growing popularity, the British ruling class might lose their grip on power, and they weren't going to allow that to happen.  There were Paul and John replacements waiting in the wings, and so our Paul and our John made their debuts November 4, 1963.

I don't think it took long for the ruling class to fathom that the same group that might sink the English power elite could also be used to advance an agenda of control over the vast post-war generation, so they tried the new Beatles out in America, Europe and Australia with astonishing success.  Imagine, they thought, imagine what a well-focused message from The Beatles could do to sway the Baby Boomers any way the ruling class wanted Boomers to go.  So, I believe as early as the Help! movie filming in April, 1965, they started pushing The Beatles to advocate a sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll agenda.  It clearly unnerved our Paul at that time from the period photos.

At some point, Paul decided to put up at fight and figured The Beatles' popularity would keep them from being--as the final Paul's wife, Heather Mills so charmingly called it during their divorce--topped (killed.)  Remember the Christmas record our Paul made for his bandmates in 1965.  It had the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" on it.  The telling lyrics are:  My friends and I are getting real well known,
                                                        Yeah, the bad guys know it and they leave us alone.
Paul and John wrote "The Word" for the Rubber Soul album.  "The Word" was a bland, mocking little nod to the future peace-love-and-global-understanding wing of the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll drive.

Then our Paul and our John stepped up their war on the bad guys with the butcher cover and strong religious and social comments aimed to incite a backlash amongst American fans.  The "more popular than Jesus" comment by John and the "America is racist" comment by Paul both conveniently showed up in the American fanzine, Datebook right before the third version of The Beatles launched the 1966 American tour.  The Revolver album debuted at the time of the 1966 tour.  The psychedelic song, "Tomorrow Never Knows"  on the album contains Paul's mocking laughter sped up to sound like seagull calls.  Slow "Tomorrow Never Knows" down and listen--it's delightfully malicious.

At the same time, I think our Paul and our John were planning their exits from the group. John toyed with Spain and I think  finally landed in Palm Beach, Florida.  Paul, I think, scouted out France, but crucially I believe he was way-layed by a car "accident" and ended up in the hands of  the British government.

What happened to real Paul and real John?  I think real Paul died--through suicide, accident or murder--in late 1965 or early 1966.  There is strong anecdotal evidence (that I'll cover in a future post) that real John survived but was crippled . . . somehow.

It is a tragedy that a collection of fine musicians who brought such happiness to so many people were so abused and were unable to reach out to millions of fans around the world for help.