One of the biggest rumors in rock history is that Paul McCartney died in the 1960s and was replaced by a look-alike who eventually turned out to be a better musician than the original.
This speculation arose from the public’s interpretation of John Lennon’s songs on Beatles albums, which were believed to contain subliminal messages. Lennon responded to the rumors on the White Album with the song “Glass Onion.” In a text written by Paul himself, to The Guardian, to promote his new documentary “Man on the Run”
Paul McCartney talks about the crazy theory that he was dead
“The strangest rumour started floating around just as the Beatles were breaking up – that I was dead. We had heard it long before, but suddenly, in that autumn of 1969, stirred up by a DJ in America, it took on a force all its own, so that millions of fans around the world believed I was actually gone.”
“At one point, I turned to my new wife and asked, ‘Linda, how can I possibly be dead?’ She smiled as she held our new baby, Mary, as aware of the power of gossip and the absurdity of these ridiculous newspaper headlines as I was. But she did point out that we had beaten a hasty retreat from London to our remote farm up in Scotland, precisely to get away from the kind of malevolent talk that was bringing the Beatles down.”
He continued:
“But now that over a half century has passed since those truly crazy times, I’m beginning to think that the rumours were more accurate than one might have thought at the time. In so many ways, I was dead … A 27-year-old about-to-become-ex-Beatle, drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows that were sapping my energy, in need of a complete life makeover. Would I ever be able to move on from what had been an amazing decade, I thought. Would I be able to surmount the crises that seemed to be exploding daily?”
“Three years earlier, I had bought this sheep farm in Scotland on the suggestion of one of my accountants. At the time, I wasn’t very keen on the idea – the land seemed sort of bare and rugged. But, exhausted by the business problems, and realising that if we were going to raise a family, it would not be under the magnifying glass that was London, we turned to each other and said, ‘We should just escape,’” Paul McCartney said.