Another "young Faul" Photo

Mirror.co.uk is the online edition of The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid newspaper.  In a June 18, 2012 article commemorating Paul McCartney's 70th. birthday--and remember, there really was a real Paul McCartney who, if he had lived until 2012, which I don't think he did, would have been 70 years' old--they had a positively intriguing photo of the current Faul in a group student photo. 

There is no way of knowing where this was taken, when this was taken or even if it is a genuine group photo, but it definitely is an image of the young Faul, so again, you have to figure the man is getting the urge to get his own story out there. 

Other Voices, Part 21: The Pink Floyd's 1967 "Arnold Layne"

The Pink Floyd (later just Pink Floyd) was a London psychedelic rock-pop band.  Their first single was called "Arnold Layne", recorded January 29, 1967 and released in the UK on March 10, 1967.

It wasn't the first song I would look for backmasking on, but someone in a YouTube comment said there could be a Paul-Is-Dead clue in the video of the song and I listened to the song---and found backmasking.

The YouTube video of the song [see it at-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQTFRq1hjtM ] has The Pink Floyd assembling, disassembling, and dressing and undressing a 3-sectioned mannequin.  The only direct hint the song is about a Beatle is at 0:30-0:31 in the video where the mannequin is "standing" on the trunk of a Volkswagen BEETLE.

The song is about a cross-dresser who steals women's clothes off clotheslines, is caught, and spends time in jail for doing it.

My theory about what happened to our Paul is that the British government wanted him out of the group and arranged some sort of plot to get their hands on him.  It could have involved cross-dressing--or something else.

The song itself is a boring tune when you hear it forwards.  Backwards, it has a very nice melody.  So nice, I'm thinking The Pink Floyd was hoping it would be played backwards.

The producer of the song, Joe Boyd, said that the song was a complex recording with some tricky editing.  Boyd said the instrumental section, for example, was a separate effort that was spliced into the final mix.

The instrumental "separate effort section" at 1:15-1:29 is a very reminiscent sound-alike of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" from the Revolver album.

Put in context, here is what you hear backmasked on "Arnold Layne":
          At 1:12-1:14   -   Paul
               1:15-1:29   -   The "Tomorrow Never Knows" sound-alike segment
               2:22            -   Paul
               2:25-2:27   -   Paul would not

The Pink Floyd's Syd Barratt, who wrote "Arnold Layne", had mounting problems with the English social regime, so he probably knew enough about Paul's problems to want to comment about them.


                          P.S.  In the post just preceding this one, I give you complete instructions on how to convert a YouTube video-audio into an mp-3 audio, upload it onto the popular Audacity audio tool and reverse it so you can listen to all the "Other Voices" tracks I've found that are telling a ugly tale about what happened to our Paul. 
                                    If you want to go digging into 1960's British groups' tracks and find other backmasking, please let me know what you find.
                                                                         ---paulumbo

A Primer On How To Listen To Backmasked Songs

At present it is complicated to put audio in blog posts, but I'll tell you how I listen to YouTube video songs backwards.

1. Download the audio tool Audacity at:  http://audacityteam.org/ .  As of this writing (January 22, 2016) you'll be downloading Audacity 2.1.1   .  It's free and it's easy to download.
2. Find the song-video on YouTube.
3. Click on the video.
4. Right-click on the address bar (where it says https://www.youtube.com ---et cetera.)
5. Click copy.
6. Click the home button in the upper left of your screen and go to:  www.youtube-mp3.org and click on the sample video and X it out.
7. Right click and paste the YouTube address.
8. Click "convert video".
9. It will say, "video successfully converted to mp 3".
10. Click on download.
11. At the bottom of your screen it will ask if you want to open or save the song.  Save it.
12. It will tell you the download has completed.  Click the X on the right.
13. Click X on the upper right of you screen, taking you to the Audacity icon on you start screen.
14. Double click on the icon and click on the double square on the upper right of the screen to put the Audacity tool on the right of you start screen.
15. Double click the files icon at the bottom left of your start screen.
16. The "This PC" screen comes up with a list of 6 folders. 
17. If the "This PC" screen fills your start screen, click on the square icon at the top right of the screen.  This will put that screen to the left of the Audacity screen on your start screen.  Double click on the downloads folder.
18. Click on the song in your download list and drag it to the right and drop it in the Audacity screen.
19. X out the download screen and click on the rectangle (maximize) symbol on the upper right of the Audacity screen.
20. The Audacity tool will fill your screen.
21. Click on "effect" on the top line of the tool.
22. Click on "reverse" in the list.
23. If the track is in stereo, I like to listen to it first in stereo and then in mono.  To listen in mono, click on "tracks" on the top line of the tool and click "stereo track to mono".
24. Plug in your earbuds, click on the green triangle play button and listen the backward track.

It sounds involved, but once you get the hang of it, it is very easy to do, and you're unlocking the concealed messages that British groups were trying to communicate about our Paul during the mid-1960's.

Speaking Of Photos . . . Here's A Photo I Just Found Of Young Faul

If you've ever wondered how Faul---the Paul from late 1966-to present looked when he was a boy, I've found an early photo.  You have to figure Faul got this photo out there because he must be tired of seeing photos of the young real Paul and none of him.  There are no points of reference as to when or where this was photographed but you will notice that he is playing a guitar and--unless the photo was flopped--he is left handed.

Somewhere, there are photos of our Paul as a young man.  I'll keep looking.

Paul In Los Angeles In June, 1966 -- Is This A Photo Of Him There?

In my post of September 30, 2012, I talked about Los Angeles radio station's KRLABeat magazine mentioning that Paul was in L.A. in June, 1966.  The article had him in L.A. alone.

I have been trying to get any photo or any other article or mention about Paul being there at that time.

I was digging around a deep website's images and found a photo in Photobucket with the label "Paul 1966."  As you see, he is in casual clothing (unusual for him) and he has a camera in his hand.

I've seen a photo somewhere of the 1966's touring Beatles with the Paul in the tour wearing a striped top.  The photo below, though, does look like our Paul.  Is it a photo of our Paul taken on his visit to L.A. in June, 1966?

Other Voices, Part 20 (continued)

The Kinks' Dave Davies, brother of Ray, recorded with the other Kinks a song he wrote called "Susannah's Still Alive."  The song was recorded in August, 1967 and released as a single in November, 1967, two months after The Kinks album mentioned in my last post.

As I said in the previous post (and others), the name Susannah, and variations, are considered by many Paul-Is-Dead/Replaced researchers as a codeword for Paul.

The lyrics in "Susannah's Still Alive":  "She's got a picture on the table of a man who is young and able" was probably supposed to be Paul, before he was replaced.

Reversed, there are no direct references to Paul.  However, the reversed song has:  "The sergeant's slow" spoken nine times from 0:15-0:16 through 1:54-1:55.  Again, there's speculation that Paul had the outline for the Sgt. Pepper concept before he was replaced.  Remember, "Yellow Submarine"'s brass band interlude introduced with:  "And the band begins to play"?

And, I have a still of the emcee announcing the song taken from a Youtube video of Dave Davies singing a live version of "Susannah's Still Alive."  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUJ5A2932B4  )
Look at the photo behind and to the right of the emcee.  Hint?


Whether Paul was actually still alive as late as the end of 1967 remains to be seen, but Dave Davies wanted to weigh in with his comments.

Other Voices, Part 20: 1967--The Kinks Couldn't Help But Comment Again

The point I've made in past posts is that rock and pop groups were observing the tragedies of The Beatles and commenting on them in their music.

The Beatles as American fans knew them (1964-1966) kicked off backmasking in songs and the new, new Beatles (1966-1970) used that medium to comment on events that happened to our Paul.  Other bands followed suit as I've pointed out in the series of "Other Voices" posts.  The fact that our Paul was the topic of most of the backmasking showed how strongly his still yet to be publicly detailed travails affected these musicians.

Enter Ray Davies of The Kinks who prided himself on being the Greek chorus of British life.  He observed the British rock band scene with both imitation and distance.  Their The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society album was their hopping on the new, new Beatles Sgt. Pepper bandwagon and the distance dated back to 1965 when Davies wrote the snide little song, "Where Have All The Good Times Gone".  The song lampooned The Rolling Stones and The Beatles with lyrics like:
     1.)  "Time was on our side . . ." --alluding to The Rolling Stones' song, "Time Is On My Side".
     2.)  "Let it be like yesterday" and "Yesterday was such an easy game for you to play" --taken from
            The Beatles' "Yesterday".
     3.)  " . . .  get your feet back on the ground" --referencing The Beatles' song, "Help".

Little wonder that Davies would pick up where he left off in 1965 and comment--forward and backwards--about our Paul.

The album Davies used was Something Else By The Kinks, recorded between the autumn of 1966 and the summer of 1967 and released in September, 1967.

The Kinks' song with direct backmasking references to Paul was "Situation Vacant". 

It is supposed to be a Davies' character study of a young couple.  The woman's mother is overbearing and to keep peace with the mother-in-law, the man quits his job and looks for another in the help wanted (situations vacant) ads.  The man doesn't find a job, ends up penniless and separated from his wife, who goes home to her mother.

I am clueless to speculate how much of the song is autobiographical of Paul.  Paul was forced out of The Beatles and according to the Beatles' 1967 Christmas fan record there was a "situation vacant" for the position of Paul McCartney that was filled after some auditions.  The only suggestive forward clues in the lyrics are:
     1.)  "Then he had to leave the apartment and sought a less plush residence"  --which hints that the man had had money to afford a plush residence.
     2.)  "Johnny's in a great big hole"  -- a grave?

There has been a lot of speculation--mine included--that Suzanne, Susannah and other variations of the name are codewords for Paul in songs at the time, so we can puzzle over whether the wife in the song--named Suzy--is Paul.  Or is Johnny, Paul?  Or both Suzy and Johnny are Paul and the little mama mentioned in the song (the mother-in-law) is a codeword for someone or something else.  (Remember The Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" where "big fat mama" was the tax-gobbling British government?)

But what is clear in the song is what you hear backwards.
     At 1:21-1:23, 2:05-2:07 and 2:42-2:43 in the reversed song you hear:  "fancy for Paul".
     At 2:32 and 2:42 you hear:  "Paulie"
     And at 3:04-3:05 you hear:  "He bad".

I also heard stray words like:
     At 1:05-1:06:  "marmalade";
     At 2:17-2:18 and 2:21-2:22:  "share with this*;    (*pronounced "dis")
     And at 3:02:  "Monday night".

So "Situation Vacant" was  about Paul.