PAUL McCARTNEY REALLY IS DEAD: THE LAST TESTAMENT OF GEORGE HARRISON
Directed by Joel Gilbert
Released 2010
Directed by Joel Gilbert
Released 2010
Do bear in mind that this movie is supposed to be funny.
Just when you think that the idea of conspiracies being used to discredit proper analysis can't get any more hysterical, someone named Joel Gilbert comes along and releases Paul McCartney Really is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison. The first reek of this rather grim jest emerged from the crypts back in October 1969 when a listener contacted a Detroit Disc Jockey, informing him of all sorts of odd "clues" about the death of Beatle Paul nearly three years earlier. Because that was a time when a lot of decent people had some legitimate concerns about the nature of their own reality, the story was deemed to have legs, as it were, and became the subject of all sorts of speculation. After all, the argument went, if THEY could lie about the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, then surely THEY could be lying about McCartney. In a flash, all sorts of evidence sprang up, from album cover symbolism to straight-forward lyrics to hidden meanings to backward masking on the vinyl LPs. Finally, Paul McCartney stepped out of his Scottish farm house and denied that he was dead, that he had ever been dead, or that being dead anytime soon was on his list of immediate plans.
Then in 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed.
Then in 1999, George Harrison was stabbed.
Then in 2001, George Harrison died.
Then in 2005, a company called Highway 61 Entertainment and headed by a guy named Joel Gilbert, reportedly received a package containing two audio cassettes with a narration claiming to be from one Mr. George Harrison. Gilbert--or someone purporting to be Gilbert--appears briefly at the beginning of this documentary to state that he has been unable to successfully authenticate the voice on the tapes as being that of Beatle George. The rest of the film is the narration accompanied by a mix of some fairly common and a bit of rare footage, most of it familiar to Beatles fans, although the story that comes out is as wild as anything we've heard lately, I must admit.
Naturally I've heard all of this before. Chances are you have as well. Gary Patterson published a neat book a few years back called The Walrus was Paul, all about this great hoax and the clues that substantiated it. This film, however, takes things to an absurd extreme, in the process, it pains me to admit, evoking a few guilty laughs along the way. For instance? Well, when the MI5 guy, Maxwell, takes George, John and Ringo to the scene of the tragedy, he points to Paul's decapitated body and says, "Looks like a walrus, don't he?" to which a horrified and furious Lennon responds, "I am the walrus!"
The narrating Harrison further claims that all of Lennon's post-Beatles activities were intended to prove that Lennon was insane and hence should not be held responsible for leaving all those ghastly clues all over the bloody albums.
Similarly we learn that the Paul impostor, William Campbell, was taken by the three real Beatles to India under the pretext of seeking enlightenment, the REAL reason being that they hoped to channel the dead soul of McCartney through the body of Campbell, or "Faul" as he became known.
Likewise, it turns out that photographer Linda Eastman blackmailed Faul into marrying her once she discovered that he was a fake. Indeed, the reason for Lennon's assassination was that he had dared defy Maxwell by threatening to finally reveal the truth to that galaxy of fans.
It's all quite ridiculous and not a little ghoulish, especially when you notice that the narrator--who sounds more like someone doing a parody of a Beatle voice than any actual member of the group--gets the chronology for many of these events wrong. Still, it's kind of quaint listening to the backwards stuff, like "Turn me on, deadman," although I for one refuse to believe that Harrison had originally planned to name "Taxman" "Taxidermist," as this movie claims.
All in all, it's a stupid concept for a documentary and if I had actually paid anything to watch it you can bet I would have felt ripped off, although not entirely disappointed. After all, Gilbert is the guy who claims to have discovered the real live Elvis and who is certain that Bob Dylan's famous motorcycle accident was staged to allow the singer to go through drug rehab.
Mythology has its place, even in pop music. It might have been more clever, however, to have staged an original hoax rather than to dig up this old tripe after so many years.
Oh, by the way: the license plate on the VW on the Abbey Road album that reads 28IF--indicating that McCartney would have been twenty-eight years old if had he lived--is fallacious. Paul would have been twenty-nine. Sorry.
Just when you think that the idea of conspiracies being used to discredit proper analysis can't get any more hysterical, someone named Joel Gilbert comes along and releases Paul McCartney Really is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison. The first reek of this rather grim jest emerged from the crypts back in October 1969 when a listener contacted a Detroit Disc Jockey, informing him of all sorts of odd "clues" about the death of Beatle Paul nearly three years earlier. Because that was a time when a lot of decent people had some legitimate concerns about the nature of their own reality, the story was deemed to have legs, as it were, and became the subject of all sorts of speculation. After all, the argument went, if THEY could lie about the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, then surely THEY could be lying about McCartney. In a flash, all sorts of evidence sprang up, from album cover symbolism to straight-forward lyrics to hidden meanings to backward masking on the vinyl LPs. Finally, Paul McCartney stepped out of his Scottish farm house and denied that he was dead, that he had ever been dead, or that being dead anytime soon was on his list of immediate plans.
Then in 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed.
Then in 1999, George Harrison was stabbed.
Then in 2001, George Harrison died.
Then in 2005, a company called Highway 61 Entertainment and headed by a guy named Joel Gilbert, reportedly received a package containing two audio cassettes with a narration claiming to be from one Mr. George Harrison. Gilbert--or someone purporting to be Gilbert--appears briefly at the beginning of this documentary to state that he has been unable to successfully authenticate the voice on the tapes as being that of Beatle George. The rest of the film is the narration accompanied by a mix of some fairly common and a bit of rare footage, most of it familiar to Beatles fans, although the story that comes out is as wild as anything we've heard lately, I must admit.
Naturally I've heard all of this before. Chances are you have as well. Gary Patterson published a neat book a few years back called The Walrus was Paul, all about this great hoax and the clues that substantiated it. This film, however, takes things to an absurd extreme, in the process, it pains me to admit, evoking a few guilty laughs along the way. For instance? Well, when the MI5 guy, Maxwell, takes George, John and Ringo to the scene of the tragedy, he points to Paul's decapitated body and says, "Looks like a walrus, don't he?" to which a horrified and furious Lennon responds, "I am the walrus!"
The narrating Harrison further claims that all of Lennon's post-Beatles activities were intended to prove that Lennon was insane and hence should not be held responsible for leaving all those ghastly clues all over the bloody albums.
Similarly we learn that the Paul impostor, William Campbell, was taken by the three real Beatles to India under the pretext of seeking enlightenment, the REAL reason being that they hoped to channel the dead soul of McCartney through the body of Campbell, or "Faul" as he became known.
Likewise, it turns out that photographer Linda Eastman blackmailed Faul into marrying her once she discovered that he was a fake. Indeed, the reason for Lennon's assassination was that he had dared defy Maxwell by threatening to finally reveal the truth to that galaxy of fans.
It's all quite ridiculous and not a little ghoulish, especially when you notice that the narrator--who sounds more like someone doing a parody of a Beatle voice than any actual member of the group--gets the chronology for many of these events wrong. Still, it's kind of quaint listening to the backwards stuff, like "Turn me on, deadman," although I for one refuse to believe that Harrison had originally planned to name "Taxman" "Taxidermist," as this movie claims.
All in all, it's a stupid concept for a documentary and if I had actually paid anything to watch it you can bet I would have felt ripped off, although not entirely disappointed. After all, Gilbert is the guy who claims to have discovered the real live Elvis and who is certain that Bob Dylan's famous motorcycle accident was staged to allow the singer to go through drug rehab.
Mythology has its place, even in pop music. It might have been more clever, however, to have staged an original hoax rather than to dig up this old tripe after so many years.
Oh, by the way: the license plate on the VW on the Abbey Road album that reads 28IF--indicating that McCartney would have been twenty-eight years old if had he lived--is fallacious. Paul would have been twenty-nine. Sorry.
