The story as to Paul McCartney's so-called 'demise' begins back on Wednesday November 9th, 1966. Due to the 2-album contract deal that they had with EMI, they had decided to release a compilation album (later to be called 'Oldies… but Goldies'). This was done because the group was too busy working on a project for a concept album that would later hit the shelves with the title 'Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band'. However, things weren't going smoothly, and being the perfectionist that he was, Paul was getting increasingly angry over a particular song of his that he couldn't quite get to sound right.
The session rang long into the night, and ended in a blaze of fireworks. An arguement broke out between Paul and the others and after some heated words Paul stormed out of the studio. The time was just before 5am.
During the time that the group was in the studio, the sky had begun to cloud up and when the group left Abbey Road Studios it was raining pretty heavily. Paul got into his white Austin Healey car and drove off in the rain. During his travel he noticed a woman walking on the pavement, and seeing that she was cold and miserable, he pulled up alongside her and offered her a lift. At first, the woman (who it transpired was called Rita) did not know who the person was driving the car, but when it dawned on her she went hysterical; grabbing him and pulling him in a fan-frenzy.
This inevitably caused Paul to lose control of the car. He sped through a red light and his car rammed into a yellow lorry causing it to flip and smash into a telegraph pole. Rita survived and managed to get out of the vehicle and turned to try and rescue Paul, but the car caught fire and Rita was forced to back off. Paul's fingers were broken and so he couldn't pull the handle that would open the car door and ensue his escape. He was trapped inside, and nobody in the already gathering crowd could do anything until the fire engines came to extinguish the blaze. They duly came and tried to put out the fire, but suddenly the car exploded, decapitating the trapped victim. Paul was dead at 5am on Wednesday 9th November, 1966.
The crowd that had turned up to see what was going on was oblivious as to whom they were watching. They all thought that he looked familiar, but since his hair was burnt off in the fire they couldn't tell for sure. Later, it also transpired that identifying the Paul using dental records would be impossible since all of his teeth were knocked out during the crash.
A local reporter had been following Paul from when he left Abbey Road, and so saw the whole tragic accident. When Paul had been removed from the car and taken to hospital, He immediately went back to where he worked at wrote an article for that morning's newspaper. During this time, the police had run a number-plate check on the car and discovered who the driver was. Shocked, they immediately contacted Brian Epstein with the news so that he could handle the situation and decide what to do next. Frightened that a newspaper may have discovered who was in the crash and subsequently write a story about it, Brian phoned up all the local newspaper printers to see what the main headline was to be. When he found the newspaper that was to print the story, he bribed them into stopping the press and to destroy the copies that had already been printed. Then Brian's next step was to bribe the policeman who had done the number-plate search. His plan was to give himself time so that the situation could be discussed with the group and all the possible options contemplated.
The rest of the group were shocked, and contemplated disbanding in respect of their friend. However, it was counter-argued that the Beatles were at the top of their creative peak, and that they were tied to too many agreements and contracts to end it, so the decision was made to stay together. Then the problem came up as to how they were going to fill in the bass player spot. This would prove tricky. If a new person appeared in the line-up then fans would be hysterical over the demise of 'The Cute Beatle' and would be angry over the groups choice not to let this information public. There was only one option - replace Paul with a look-a-like to take over.
Finding a look-a-like was difficult, but was possible under the guise of an innocent looking 'Paul Look-a-like' competition that was judged by people who were unaware of the overall seriousness of their task. The eventual winner of the competition was a person called William Campbell, and just after he had won reports of his mysterious disappearance began appearing on local news. William Campbell lived in Ontario, Canada and worked for the Ontario Provincial Police. He had disappeared because he was no longer William Campbell - he was Paul McCartney.
Although William looked a lot like McCartney, there were a small number of imperfections that needed to be eradicated. Amongst these improvements the top lip had to be fattened up a little, but there was a doctors error which left a scar. The eyebrows were also worked on. At the end, the new McCartney was pretty much indistinguishable from the old McCartney, and it was only then that the group were beginning to believe that their plan would work.
But there were other problems. William spoke with a Scottish accent, and so he had to undergo speech therapy to give him the trademark Liverpudlian accent. He was also right handed and so had to literally swap hands! He could already play bass guitar, and so in the studio he could play however he liked. However, in public and in music videos he'd have to mime whilst playing left handed.
In the end, the new McCartney could have fooled anyone, and in reality it did - several billion fans to be precise!
For mor information look at this website:
http://homepages.tesco.net/harbfamily/opd/story.html
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