Paul is not dead (PIND)
It seems odd to need to explain this to some people, but Paul McCartney has always been two people, a set of twins who, for lack of better information, we call Paul (the original crooner seen far more often in the early days) and Mike (who turned out to be a much better stage performer).
The people behind the Beatles, some very talented musicians, artists, psychologists and writers, knew that the two did not look enough alike that they could pull off the ruse forever. But professional propagandists as these also knew that lying is not an effective tool for misleading people. It is far better to misdirect. So with McCartney they started, even as the group was still touring, placing clues on the albums indicating that Paul might have been killed and replaced. Lyricists planted words in some of the songs (“He blew his mind out in a car”), and even George Martin did his part, knowing a camera was running, by referring to McCartney as “Billy.” (Part of the misdirection was that a lookalike named Billy Shears had become the new Paul.)
As Ab said to me this morning in a message, “I agree it’s all fun, like a cat playing with mice.”
