Here is some Sunday morning fun for you. It is a 1964 interview with the Beatles. It is a mere seven minutes, and so will not tax your resources. Keep in mind that they are all hiding a secret, that there is a fifth Beatle, Mike* McCartney. The implications are a bit severe, as young men at age 21 or so are not sophisticated enough to pull off such deception which includes, as we shall see, plastic surgery. That is being done by their handlers. These boys are each selected for various reasons. Like the American group The Monkees, they were assembled by experts.
Plastic surgery is apparent in this photograph to the left, where the skin lines are a huge tell. This photo is of “Mike,” and not the “Paul” who appears in the YouTube above. He has had plastic surgery about the eyes, and age is exposing it. He will have to have yet more to hide those lines again. He is now almost 73 years old, so that his skin must be like hard rubber. Imagine the makeup he needs to appear in public! The price of fame.
Paul is the photo to the right, and the same type lines are apparent, but not as severe, indicating that Mike was the one who endured the most facial reconstruction to look like the other.
I watched this clip in earnest because I was looking for signs of nervousness and lying. For the most part, they are straightforward and honest. George shows no signs of deception. Ringo too seems candid. Paul seems nervous throughout.
However, and some basic body language reading ability helps here, at about three minutes in, John and Mike/Paul begin to engage in eye darting and evasive gestures. She is asking them about how they write their music. I mentioned in my Sir Faul post that the origins of the Lennon/McCartney music is a separate subject that needs exploration. It is simply quite impossible that these two lads, even as they play and sing well by this time, are turning out pop hits by the score. They are too young, are touring anyway** and so taxed to the hilt, and so have neither ability nor time. As George says when asked what he does with spare time, he says “sleep.”
Now step back and take in the body of work of the Beatles. If you have a discerning ear you will hear a cacophony of writers, from She Loves You to A Day in the Life to Lady Madonna to Yellow Submarine to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Come Together, many voices, many writers. It is a committee, or an office of song smiths somewhere in the bowels of London. Such efforts are probably still underway with a young woman said to hatch new hit songs in bushel baskets, Taylor Swift. Not very damned likely at her age or apparent current level of intelligence.
The deceptions behind The Beatles go far beyond twins and body doubles and are still mostly hidden. They did not form by accident. Nor do most of the pop stars, then and now, appear and gain fame in an accidental world. Our entertainment, like our news, is controlled.
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*We have no way of knowing who is Mike or Paul, so the man parading around these days as Paul McCartney could indeed be Paul McCartney. That would be funny. For writing purposes, I use “Paul” as the one we knew in early times, and “Mike” as the one who took over from the movie Help! forward.
**It could be that Paul is doing public appearances while Mike is doing studio work at this time, just as with the two Presley twins, Elvis and Aron, one singing on stage while the other was making movies. This is one advantage of using twins in the music business.
The image to the left here is John Lennon, age 68, in my never-humble opinion. If you find that shocking, or imagine I must be insane, then you should probably stop reading at this point. What I have to say will challenge your assumptions not just about him, but about pop culture and the notion that our tastes are generated from the bottom-up. Quite the opposite, our cultural tastes are handed to us from above, and by power of suggestion we adopt and perceive talent as others think we should. Thus do mediocre talents like Swift and Dylan become cultural icons.
I never occurred to me until I recently slapped my forehead with Hawking that the man to the left here is a different person than the one to the right, a body double, and not even a good one. Look at the nose! And, fer Chrissakes, he’s white.
Of course it is disturbing that I did not suspect that replacement MJ was being foisted upon us due to our gullibility. But then again, power of suggestion is highly effective when we are not paying close and critical attention. If there is a motorcade going down the streets of Denver and I am told on the news that it is the president, no matter who is in that limousine, I will think it is the president. I have no reason to suspect otherwise.