“I’m not old or retired,” Paul McCartney said in an interview with London’s BBC radio last year.
He’s still making records (the latest, McCartney III, is from 2020), working on new projects (Lyrics 1956 to the Present is a book of his lyrics published eight months ago) and entering the stage (he’s in the middle of a US tour) McCartney doesn’t seem to be turning 80 this Saturday (18).
The musician survived John Lennon (19401980) by more than 40 years and his Beatles companion George Harrison (19432001) by more than 20 fourth member Ringo Starr will be 82 in three weeks.
From 1970, when he announced the end of the Beatles at a press conference, McCartney worked hard: seven albums with the band Wings and 16 solo albums were released, as well as various collaborations and forays into classical music.
But since the 1990s at the latest, it has increasingly become a bastion of memory for the rock band considered to be the best and most popular rock band of all time, with whom McCartney recorded 12 albums and countless singles between 1963 and 1970.
Perhaps the first step in this direction was the 1995 multimedia project Anthology, which included a sixhour documentary about the band and three double CDs salvaging rarities and important moments in the studio.
More importantly, it was then that he reconciled with Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow, and used Lennon’s home recordings to reunite the remaining Beatles and record two previously unreleased songs, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.”
More recently, he recorded the sixpart miniseries McCartney 3, 2, 1, in which he provides a moving account of the Beatles’ songwriting process. And he was directly involved in Peter Jackson’s eighthour film Get Back, which is the footage from the Let It Be album and was released last year.
Aside from that, their shows are practically a parade of Beatles hits. Lo and behold, there are many shows. In Brazil he performed in 1990, 1993, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2019. He is rumored to be returning to the country in February 2023.
He not only survived Lennon and Harrison. McCartney survived himself, according to one of the craziest conspiracy theories in music, the artist died beheaded in a car crash on November 9, 1966.
Known as Paul Is Dead, the theory goes that the tragedy prompted record label EMI and British intelligence agency MI5 to join forces to stage a hoax. Some didn’t want to reduce record sales and others feared mass suicides by desperate fans.
So the way out was to force the remaining Beatles to keep the tragedy a secret and even use a lookalike said to have been chosen in a competition on points such as similarity, musical talent and cheerful spirit.
The strangest thing, however, was yet to come. John Lennon, dissatisfied with the worldwide farce, would have started spreading tips denouncing the mystery in The Beatles’ songs and covers. The first came out in late 1966 when the band was recording Strawberry Fields Forever.
In the last section, when the song comes back, Lennon can be heard saying “I buried Paul”. You can test it, listen there. In other songs, Lennon would have inserted tracks that could only be heard when records were played backwards.
Dozens of leads have surfaced over time, including some even before the date of his supposed death, which doesn’t seem to make any sense. Examples include the cover of Rubber Soul (1965), in which the boys were photographed from below as if looking at a grave, and the cover of the collection Yesterday and Today (1966), in which Paul coauthored a decapitated doll on his shoulders and his head in his lap.
In 1967, the warnings were on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Clubs Band”. A single instrument appears on the flowercovered floor: Paul’s bass guitar. A hand behind the musician also seems to bless him.
And also in a scene from the special “Magical Mystery Tour” when the Beatles dance with red roses in their lapels. Paul’s, on the other hand, is black.
The 1969 Abbey Road cover became the most famous piece of evidence of Paul McCartney’s death. Check the hidden bids;
1) The four Beatles walking in a row indicate a funeral procession. In white, Lennon would be an angel; Ringo Starr, in black, the undertaker; and George Harrison, in jeans, the gravedigger;
2) Paul is the only one who is barefoot, which has led believers in the theory to say that in some cultures people are buried that way;
3) Paul holds a cigarette in his right hand, but oh my god, the real Paul was lefthanded;
4) A Beetle has the registration number LMW 28IF on the left side. The first part is the initials of Linda McCartney Widow. The second can be read as “28 if” which leads us to the statement that “Paul would have lived to be 28 IF he had been alive”. Oh, but wouldn’t he actually be 27? Ah, that’s right, but the conspirators claim that in some cultures a person’s age is counted from conception rather than nine months later;
5) On the right, a police car represents the agency that requested the montage of this scam;
And the back too:
1) The girl in the blue dress would be the fan who was in the car with Paul at the time of the accident and survived. Here she seems to pass by as if fleeing the scene of the tragedy;
2) The Beatles nameplate has a crack in the S, spelling out the end of the band as it existed;
3) A series of dots on the side of the board, when connected, form triangles indicating the remaining three original musicians. That was weak…
The story grew so much that the band had to release an official statement in 1969 denying the rumor.
So today we can say with certainty that Paul McCartney, 80, is not old, retired or dead.