Lezioni Americane, Italo Calvino, Palomar/Mondadori, 1993
“After taking LSD I opened my eyes. We use only one-tenth of our mind. Imagine what we could do if we could bring out the hidden part. We would have a completely new world if politicians took LSD. There would be no more wars, no more poverty, no more hunger.”
Paul McCartney, interview published in Queen and reprinted in Life, June 16, 1967
One evening, like so many others, Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman joined the band for dinner.
Paul himself recounted the episode to Musician Magazine in October 1986:
“‘Do you want to try trepanation?’ John asked out of the blue. Paul, caught off guard, replied, ‘Well, what’s that?’
‘Basically, they make a kind of hole in your skull; it’s supposed to relieve pressure,’ John said. Paul was momentarily speechless, surprised that his friend would propose such a crazy idea with such a serious tone. John wasn’t joking.
‘Let’s go next week, we know a guy, this Bart, he can do it, and maybe we could all go together.’
‘Look, you go and get it done, and if it works, fantastic, you’ll tell us all about it, and we’ll come do it with you.’”
When he shared the anecdote with Musician Magazine, Paul McCartney concluded:
“…John was the most open of us to this kind of thing.”
The Beatles, Fixing a Hole, written by Paul McCartney, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967
and stops my mind from wandering
where it will go
I’m filling the cracks that ran though the door
and kept my mind from wandering
where it will go
And it really doesn’t matter
if I’m wrong I’m right
where I belong
I’m right where I belong
see the people standing there
who disagree and never win
and wonder why they don’t get in my door
I’m painting my room in a colorful way
and when my mind is wandering
there I will go
And it really doesn’t matter
if I’m wrong I’m right
where I belong I’m right
where I belong
silly people run around
they worry me and never ask me
why they don’t get past my door
I’m taking my time
for a number of things
that weren’t important yesterday
and I still go
I’m fixing a hole
where the rain gets in
and stops my mind from wandering
where it will go
where it will go
I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in
and stops my mind from wandering
where it will go
From La Q di Qomplotto. Qanon e dintorni. Come le fantasie di complotto difendono il sistema (2021) by Wu Ming 1:
On Wednesday, November 9, 1966, at five in the morning, Paul McCartney had died in a car accident. Before announcing the news, Brian Epstein and the surviving Beatles held a somber meeting. What would happen next? The grief of the fans, especially the female fans, would be immense. There would be mass hysteria; the emotional wave would rise to overwhelm the band, effectively bringing its end.
That morning, Brian, John, George, and Ringo reasoned like structuralists: the symbolic order had constant structures. The positions in that space came before the things and people who occupied them. “Father, mother, etc., are first and foremost places in a structure.” Fathers and mothers would come and go, but the place of the father and the place of the mother remained.
In that order, the band occupied a slot that, without Paul, could not be maintained. The Fab Four could not become the Fab Three. Even less could they openly replace Paul…
“No, wait,” John said. “They cannot replace Paul openly. But they could do it secretly!”
In the desperation of the moment, everyone clung to that idea. Brian had contacted the winner of a contest from a few months prior, a Paul McCartney lookalike competition. He was a Scottish man named William Shears Campbell, nicknamed Billy. By fortunate coincidence, he also played music and sang, and he had talent. They met him and offered him Paul’s life, prestige, and wealth on a platinum platter. They offered him a place in the Beatles. He would have to give up his real name and past, but the life that awaited him was exhilarating. His voice was slightly different from Paul’s, and the resemblance wasn’t perfect, but a bit of vocal training and minor plastic surgery would fix those issues. So, what did he think? Billy accepted immediately.
John continued to ponder. That death and replacement carried so many implications and undertones… It could be turned into a mysterious cult. Esoteric. Knowing about it would give fans access to the second level of Beatlemania. Symbols to interpret. Hidden messages in the music and album covers. The fulfillment of that Evening Standard interview: the Beatles as a new religion. A Gnostic religion.
John would organize an alchemical treasure hunt of the Beatles.
The very first article on Paul’s death and replacement by a lookalike was titled “Is Beatle Paul McCartney Dead?” and was published on September 17, 1969, in The Drake Times Delphic, the student newspaper of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The author, Tim Harper, had picked up the rumor just as it started circulating. But to spread it widely, radio was needed.
On October 12, Russ Gibb, a disc jockey at WKNK in Detroit, received a live call from someone named Tom, who asked him for his opinion on McCartney’s death. McCartney’s death? Gibb didn’t know anything. Tom suggested he take the White Album, listen to Revolution 9, and, at the point where “number nine” repeated, play the record backward.
Curious, Gibb did so live on air. Reversed, the phrase became: “Turn me on, dead man.” Turn me on, dead man? Tom gave further instructions, which Russ followed. At the end of Strawberry Fields Forever, John seemed to intone “I buried Paul.” In reality, for some unknown reason, he was chanting “cranberry sauce.” But “I buried Paul” certainly made more sense. Thousands of people were listening.