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The Memoirs of Billy Shears: The Nine After 9-09 Edition
The Memoirs of Billy Shears brings many astonishing facts to light that have been hidden for decades. It is the source for Billy's Back!, Beatles Enlightenment, and The Talent Contest, and also includes nine chapters that were not selected for those compilations. Billy's Back! has the best of the Memoirs' "Paul is Dead" material--excluding those chapters with enough philosophical significance to be included in Beatles Enlightenment, and also excluding those that were considered too dark to be included in either compilation.
Some of the Memoirs' chapters that were excluded from compilations contain material that many readers would find disturbing--such as some Biblical humor (about the 666 beat with four heads), the Beatles involvement in Satanism, and, of course, their Paulism. We highly recommend that no one read this book until after reading Billy's Back!, which, by the end of that book, puts all such things in context.
The Memoirs set world and regional records for its writing and encoding sophistication. Just as the Beatles heavily encoded many of their songs with clues about Paul's death, so too is this book, which explains those songs, also encoded throughout. Although this book reads like an extraordinary autobiography, the encoding methods used technically make it a poem, the longest one ever written in the Americas.
Until The Memoirs of Billy Shears, the longest poem ever written in the Americas was Herman Melville’s, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Clarel, although reaching almost 18,000 lines (longer than the European classics, The Iliad, Aeneid, and Paradise Lost), is surpassed by about a thousand lines by The Memoirs of Billy Shears.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears, with over 156,000 words, also sets the record for the longest poem currently in print that was written in English worldwide. The out-of-print world record for the longest English poem is held by John Fitchett (1766-1838) and his editor for their 129,807 lines on the life of King Alfred. The death and replacement of Paul McCartney is surely more fascinating.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears also has the world's longest published acrostic. It runs for 612 pages, with about 8,500 acrostical lines. The previous record for the longest acrostic was set in France, in 2006, by Patrick Huet, with his 7,547 line poem, Pieces of Hope. You can read the secret acrostical text of The Memoirs in the booklet, Billy Shears Acrostical Decoding.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears refers to over 200 songs, setting the record for the most songs referenced in any narrative in any language. These songs establish narrative context, and show the hidden meanings about Paul McCartney's death in Beatle songs, and in several songs by their friends in bands including The Rolling Stones, Donovan, The Bonzo Dog Band, The Who, and Elton John.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears is the first novel that invites the reader to participate in a real talent contest. Readers upload their cover of original songs (selected from the unabridged text) for an upcoming CD. It will be the first time that the lyrics of an album of new material will have been read by thousands or millions before the CD's release, assuring success. The Talent Contest chapter of this book is also sold separately.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears, the first fully encoded full-length book, is also the first to create messages by word-stacking. On every page of the narrative, with over a thousand instances in all, words are arranged on separate lines to add extra meaning to that chapter.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears, with its many historically significant revelations about the Beatles that have been hidden since the Sixties, and with its record-breaking elements of writing sophistication (such as including the world's longest acrostic, word-stacking, et
Some of the Memoirs' chapters that were excluded from compilations contain material that many readers would find disturbing--such as some Biblical humor (about the 666 beat with four heads), the Beatles involvement in Satanism, and, of course, their Paulism. We highly recommend that no one read this book until after reading Billy's Back!, which, by the end of that book, puts all such things in context.
The Memoirs set world and regional records for its writing and encoding sophistication. Just as the Beatles heavily encoded many of their songs with clues about Paul's death, so too is this book, which explains those songs, also encoded throughout. Although this book reads like an extraordinary autobiography, the encoding methods used technically make it a poem, the longest one ever written in the Americas.
Until The Memoirs of Billy Shears, the longest poem ever written in the Americas was Herman Melville’s, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Clarel, although reaching almost 18,000 lines (longer than the European classics, The Iliad, Aeneid, and Paradise Lost), is surpassed by about a thousand lines by The Memoirs of Billy Shears.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears, with over 156,000 words, also sets the record for the longest poem currently in print that was written in English worldwide. The out-of-print world record for the longest English poem is held by John Fitchett (1766-1838) and his editor for their 129,807 lines on the life of King Alfred. The death and replacement of Paul McCartney is surely more fascinating.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears also has the world's longest published acrostic. It runs for 612 pages, with about 8,500 acrostical lines. The previous record for the longest acrostic was set in France, in 2006, by Patrick Huet, with his 7,547 line poem, Pieces of Hope. You can read the secret acrostical text of The Memoirs in the booklet, Billy Shears Acrostical Decoding.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears refers to over 200 songs, setting the record for the most songs referenced in any narrative in any language. These songs establish narrative context, and show the hidden meanings about Paul McCartney's death in Beatle songs, and in several songs by their friends in bands including The Rolling Stones, Donovan, The Bonzo Dog Band, The Who, and Elton John.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears is the first novel that invites the reader to participate in a real talent contest. Readers upload their cover of original songs (selected from the unabridged text) for an upcoming CD. It will be the first time that the lyrics of an album of new material will have been read by thousands or millions before the CD's release, assuring success. The Talent Contest chapter of this book is also sold separately.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears, the first fully encoded full-length book, is also the first to create messages by word-stacking. On every page of the narrative, with over a thousand instances in all, words are arranged on separate lines to add extra meaning to that chapter.
The Memoirs of Billy Shears, with its many historically significant revelations about the Beatles that have been hidden since the Sixties, and with its record-breaking elements of writing sophistication (such as including the world's longest acrostic, word-stacking, et
671 pages, Paperback
First published September 9, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 29, 2019
Enjoyed the book. Quite lengthy and somewhat redundant but it could just be for emphasis. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the PID conspiracy theory in hopes to search deeper for visible evidence of the claims. I have not made up my mind if this is true though I'm still doing research. I purchased the audiobook which made it easier to work through.
May 3, 2021
Imagine a parallel universe…
In this parallel, Paul McCartney dies in a car crash in late 1966 (11th September if you're American, 9th November if you're not). He is replaced by a near lookalike by the name of William Shepherd/Campbell (aka “Billy Shears”) who becomes an exact double after plastic surgery.
Now imagine you're this double. It’s well into the 21st Century and you've lived as McCartney more than twice as long as the ‘original' Paul. It’s time to set the record straight: to tell the world about The Beatles from 1967, the split, the rumours, Linda, Wings, John’s death, Linda’s death, and much more. You can't do this openly so you do it by means of the world’s longest poem, this memoir.
By the same confidentiality clause you can't even tell it straight, so you must put some fiction into the account so that the lawyers aren’t involved. What in this account is fiction and what is “fact” is never made clear, but some of the fictions are obvious:
1. You say you also played the part of Viv Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Band. As Stanshall’s life is independently verifiable, this is clearly fiction.
2. You say you were a far better musician (songwriter; singer) than Paul who mostly wrote ‘silly love songs’. This of course ignores the fact that the ‘original' Paul wrote I Saw Her Standing There, Can't Buy Me Love, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, For No-one, Here There & Everywhere, so chalk this up as fiction.
3. You say Paul was deeply loved by the other 3 Beatles and his death left a huge hole that was not filled by the arrogant, ambitious, coercive, workaholic you. Again, there is no evidence of this, but there is evidence in our universe that even by Rubber Soul and Revolver, Paul - much more than the other three - was becoming quite deeply involved in the recording process, which in turn led to his becoming the de facto leader of the band after Epstein’s death.
4. You claim several leading artists of the day were also “in the know”, and made references to it in some of their work. ‘Mellow Yellow’ (Donovan), ‘Ruby Tuesday’, ‘We Love You’, and other songs by The Stones, ‘’I Can See For Miles’, Won't Get Fooled Again' (The Who). There is no independent evidence for any of this, so again… fiction!
However, your thesis that Paul died and you - similar in some ways but very different in others - replaced him in autumn 1966, is made much easier to swallow by the fact that The Beatles stopped touring in late summer 1966; that they became in effect a very different band from then on - studio-based, not touring, and as individuals all looking completely transformed from the moptops who went on tour. How much more convincing to promote a 'Paul Is Dead' myth that dates from then and not before or after?
You serve up some content with a knowing smile, for example the chapters on numerology, and the mentions of the Illuminati so beloved of conspiracy theorists. I get the impression we are quite possibly meant to take these as fictional?
Talking of conspiracy theories, many of the ‘Paul Is Dead’ clues have now been discredited, so you acknowledge a lot of these ‘from a distance’. To give one example, the OPD patch Paul wears on the sleeve of Sgt Pepper’s (‘Officially Pronounced Dead’) is now known to be OPP (Ontario Provincial Police), so you say that you leant forward so that it LOOKED like OPD.
Anyway. Throw in a lot of additional typically Paul psychology and philosophy of life, gleaned no doubt from many sources, and here you are: the Memoirs of Billy Shears.
Is there any truth in it? Of course. Paul is on record since 1966 for much more than before that year, so a lot of it is uncontroversial. As for the rest of it - that’s for you, dear reader, to decide.
In this parallel, Paul McCartney dies in a car crash in late 1966 (11th September if you're American, 9th November if you're not). He is replaced by a near lookalike by the name of William Shepherd/Campbell (aka “Billy Shears”) who becomes an exact double after plastic surgery.
Now imagine you're this double. It’s well into the 21st Century and you've lived as McCartney more than twice as long as the ‘original' Paul. It’s time to set the record straight: to tell the world about The Beatles from 1967, the split, the rumours, Linda, Wings, John’s death, Linda’s death, and much more. You can't do this openly so you do it by means of the world’s longest poem, this memoir.
By the same confidentiality clause you can't even tell it straight, so you must put some fiction into the account so that the lawyers aren’t involved. What in this account is fiction and what is “fact” is never made clear, but some of the fictions are obvious:
1. You say you also played the part of Viv Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Band. As Stanshall’s life is independently verifiable, this is clearly fiction.
2. You say you were a far better musician (songwriter; singer) than Paul who mostly wrote ‘silly love songs’. This of course ignores the fact that the ‘original' Paul wrote I Saw Her Standing There, Can't Buy Me Love, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, For No-one, Here There & Everywhere, so chalk this up as fiction.
3. You say Paul was deeply loved by the other 3 Beatles and his death left a huge hole that was not filled by the arrogant, ambitious, coercive, workaholic you. Again, there is no evidence of this, but there is evidence in our universe that even by Rubber Soul and Revolver, Paul - much more than the other three - was becoming quite deeply involved in the recording process, which in turn led to his becoming the de facto leader of the band after Epstein’s death.
4. You claim several leading artists of the day were also “in the know”, and made references to it in some of their work. ‘Mellow Yellow’ (Donovan), ‘Ruby Tuesday’, ‘We Love You’, and other songs by The Stones, ‘’I Can See For Miles’, Won't Get Fooled Again' (The Who). There is no independent evidence for any of this, so again… fiction!
However, your thesis that Paul died and you - similar in some ways but very different in others - replaced him in autumn 1966, is made much easier to swallow by the fact that The Beatles stopped touring in late summer 1966; that they became in effect a very different band from then on - studio-based, not touring, and as individuals all looking completely transformed from the moptops who went on tour. How much more convincing to promote a 'Paul Is Dead' myth that dates from then and not before or after?
You serve up some content with a knowing smile, for example the chapters on numerology, and the mentions of the Illuminati so beloved of conspiracy theorists. I get the impression we are quite possibly meant to take these as fictional?
Talking of conspiracy theories, many of the ‘Paul Is Dead’ clues have now been discredited, so you acknowledge a lot of these ‘from a distance’. To give one example, the OPD patch Paul wears on the sleeve of Sgt Pepper’s (‘Officially Pronounced Dead’) is now known to be OPP (Ontario Provincial Police), so you say that you leant forward so that it LOOKED like OPD.
Anyway. Throw in a lot of additional typically Paul psychology and philosophy of life, gleaned no doubt from many sources, and here you are: the Memoirs of Billy Shears.
Is there any truth in it? Of course. Paul is on record since 1966 for much more than before that year, so a lot of it is uncontroversial. As for the rest of it - that’s for you, dear reader, to decide.
March 27, 2020
Thought provoking. This book took me down a rabbit hole to wonderland. I’ve never read a book encoded with several layers of meaning and found that intellectually stimulating. This book is unlike any other book I have read.
May 3, 2021
Imagine a parallel universe…
In this parallel, Paul McCartney dies in a car crash in late 1966 (11th September if you're American, 9th November if you're not). He is replaced by a near lookalike by the name of William Shepherd/Campbell (aka “Billy Shears”) who becomes an exact double after plastic surgery.
Now imagine you're this double. It’s well into the 21st Century and you've lived as McCartney more than twice as long as the ‘original' Paul. It’s time to set the record straight: to tell the world about The Beatles from 1967, the split, the rumours, Linda, Wings, John’s death, Linda’s death, and much more. You can't do this openly so you do it by means of the world’s longest poem, this memoir.
By the same confidentiality clause you can't even tell it straight, so you must put some fiction into the account so that the lawyers aren’t involved. What in this account is fiction and what is “fact” is never made clear, but some of the fictions are obvious:
1. You say you also played the part of Viv Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Band. As Stanshall’s life is independently verifiable, this is clearly fiction.
2. You say you were a far better musician (songwriter; singer) than Paul who mostly wrote ‘silly love songs’. This of course ignores the fact that the ‘original' Paul wrote I Saw Her Standing There, Can't Buy Me Love, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, For No-one, Here There & Everywhere, so chalk this up as fiction.
3. You say Paul was deeply loved by the other 3 Beatles and his death left a huge hole that was not filled by the arrogant, ambitious, coercive, workaholic you. Again, there is no evidence of this, but there is evidence in our universe that even by Rubber Soul and Revolver, Paul - much more than the other three - was becoming quite deeply involved in the recording process, which in turn led to his becoming the de facto leader of the band after Epstein’s death.
4. You claim several leading artists of the day were also “in the know”, and made references to it in some of their work. ‘Mellow Yellow’ (Donovan), ‘Ruby Tuesday’, ‘We Love You’, and other songs by The Stones, ‘’I Can See For Miles’, Won't Get Fooled Again' (The Who). There is no independent evidence for any of this, so again… fiction!
However, your thesis that Paul died and you - similar in some ways but very different in others - replaced him in autumn 1966, is made much easier to swallow by the fact that The Beatles stopped touring in late summer 1966; that they became in effect a very different band from then on - studio-based, not touring, and as individuals all looking completely transformed from the moptops who went on tour. How much more convincing to promote a 'Paul Is Dead' myth that dates from then and not before or after?
You serve up some content with a knowing smile, for example the chapters on numerology, and the mentions of the Illuminati so beloved of conspiracy theorists. I get the impression we are quite possibly meant to take these as fictional?
Talking of conspiracy theories, many of the ‘Paul Is Dead’ clues have now been discredited, so you acknowledge a lot of these ‘from a distance’. To give one example, the OPD patch Paul wears on the sleeve of Sgt Pepper’s (‘Officially Pronounced Dead’) is now known to be OPP (Ontario Provincial Police), so you say that you leant forward so that it LOOKED like OPD.
Anyway. Throw in a lot of additional typically Paul psychology and philosophy of life, gleaned no doubt from many sources, and here you are: the Memoirs of Billy Shears.
Is there any truth in it? Of course. Paul is on record since 1966 for much more than before that year, so a lot of it is uncontroversial. As for the rest of it - that’s for you, dear reader, to decide.
(George Martin’s son Gregory reads the audiobook. He gives a passable imitation of McCartney; not unnervingly close but acceptable.)
In this parallel, Paul McCartney dies in a car crash in late 1966 (11th September if you're American, 9th November if you're not). He is replaced by a near lookalike by the name of William Shepherd/Campbell (aka “Billy Shears”) who becomes an exact double after plastic surgery.
Now imagine you're this double. It’s well into the 21st Century and you've lived as McCartney more than twice as long as the ‘original' Paul. It’s time to set the record straight: to tell the world about The Beatles from 1967, the split, the rumours, Linda, Wings, John’s death, Linda’s death, and much more. You can't do this openly so you do it by means of the world’s longest poem, this memoir.
By the same confidentiality clause you can't even tell it straight, so you must put some fiction into the account so that the lawyers aren’t involved. What in this account is fiction and what is “fact” is never made clear, but some of the fictions are obvious:
1. You say you also played the part of Viv Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Band. As Stanshall’s life is independently verifiable, this is clearly fiction.
2. You say you were a far better musician (songwriter; singer) than Paul who mostly wrote ‘silly love songs’. This of course ignores the fact that the ‘original' Paul wrote I Saw Her Standing There, Can't Buy Me Love, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, For No-one, Here There & Everywhere, so chalk this up as fiction.
3. You say Paul was deeply loved by the other 3 Beatles and his death left a huge hole that was not filled by the arrogant, ambitious, coercive, workaholic you. Again, there is no evidence of this, but there is evidence in our universe that even by Rubber Soul and Revolver, Paul - much more than the other three - was becoming quite deeply involved in the recording process, which in turn led to his becoming the de facto leader of the band after Epstein’s death.
4. You claim several leading artists of the day were also “in the know”, and made references to it in some of their work. ‘Mellow Yellow’ (Donovan), ‘Ruby Tuesday’, ‘We Love You’, and other songs by The Stones, ‘’I Can See For Miles’, Won't Get Fooled Again' (The Who). There is no independent evidence for any of this, so again… fiction!
However, your thesis that Paul died and you - similar in some ways but very different in others - replaced him in autumn 1966, is made much easier to swallow by the fact that The Beatles stopped touring in late summer 1966; that they became in effect a very different band from then on - studio-based, not touring, and as individuals all looking completely transformed from the moptops who went on tour. How much more convincing to promote a 'Paul Is Dead' myth that dates from then and not before or after?
You serve up some content with a knowing smile, for example the chapters on numerology, and the mentions of the Illuminati so beloved of conspiracy theorists. I get the impression we are quite possibly meant to take these as fictional?
Talking of conspiracy theories, many of the ‘Paul Is Dead’ clues have now been discredited, so you acknowledge a lot of these ‘from a distance’. To give one example, the OPD patch Paul wears on the sleeve of Sgt Pepper’s (‘Officially Pronounced Dead’) is now known to be OPP (Ontario Provincial Police), so you say that you leant forward so that it LOOKED like OPD.
Anyway. Throw in a lot of additional typically Paul psychology and philosophy of life, gleaned no doubt from many sources, and here you are: the Memoirs of Billy Shears.
Is there any truth in it? Of course. Paul is on record since 1966 for much more than before that year, so a lot of it is uncontroversial. As for the rest of it - that’s for you, dear reader, to decide.
(George Martin’s son Gregory reads the audiobook. He gives a passable imitation of McCartney; not unnervingly close but acceptable.)
May 6, 2024
The Memoirs of Billy Shears (09-09-09) by Thomas E. Uharriet is the 'fictionalized' account of the “Paul Is Dead” theory, or, that Paul MacCartney was killed in a car crash the night of September, 11th, 1966. It is told in first person by William Shepherd (“Billy Shears”), the musician that supposedly took Paul's place in The Beatles. Memoirs is considered the “go to” book on the PID theory. In reading this book I split it in half, I read the first 300 pgs, took a break and read five other books, and then came back and read the second 300 pgs. I enjoyed reading Memoirs but it was very different than what I expected. While there are many, many revelations about The Beatles, Paul MacCartney and his supposed death, I found half of the book was philosophical in the realm of, to use a John Lennon line from I Am the Walrus, “I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together”. I know, Heavy Man, but read the book and you'll see what I mean. Another large portion of the book looked at the Globalists (NWO), the Illuminati, the Freemasons, etc, and how they played a role in the The Beatles and how they played into the social effects the band had on the entire world in the sixties. The rest of the book includes anecdotes of William Shepard living the life of Paul MacCartney...lot's of cool stories. My most favorite bit from the book was the relating how the song "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" tied into Ringo's song “Back Off Boogaloo” five years later by way of Desi Arnaz (yes, believe it or not!). Very funny...Does the book prove its case that Paul Is Dead? One can only say that there are enough anomalies (circumstantial evidence) to say that something BIG took place in The Beatles world between the Revolver album and Sgt. Pepper...more than they stopped touring and concentrated on studio recording only. Maybe there is something to the Paul Is Dead theory...3 outta 5...
March 17, 2022
"Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head / Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up, I noticed I was late // Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat / Found my way upstairs and had a smoke and somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."
I was twelve years old, a huge Beatles fan like so many kids my age, when the rumors started circulating that Paul McCartney was dead, replaced by a lookalike and soundalike named Billy Shears -- all the clues were there, in the lyrics, the album art, the films, the press.
There was John signing "I buried Paul" in Strawberry Fields, where Paul was supposedly buried. There were messages you could only discern if you played the records backwards, held the album covers upside down or up to a mirror, recognized lyrics vocalized beneath the official lyrics, and found veiled references anywhere you looked or listened.
A Day in the Life is a case in point, where John sings about reading the news and learning about a famous man who died in a bloody car crash -- Paul (supposedly you can hear him sing "Paul" or "Paul's" underneath "Lords" in the line "Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords").
Then something quite new took place: in a John Lennon composition, the song modulated, the style completely morphed, into a verse written by and sung by Paul (quoted above) where a regular guy starts an ordinary day but is suddenly thrust, with one word, into a new dreamlike state of being -- Billy Shears finding out he was going to secretly become the new Paul McCartney.
I used to lie in bed imagining the ghost of Paul visiting my room, haunted by the suddenness of it all, how one "lucky man who made the grade ... blew his mind out in a car" and another suddenly "went into a dream" of becoming the best thing ever, a Beatle!
Interestingly, in The Memoirs of Billy Shields, a tell-all supposedly written by the guy who replaced Paul when he supposedly died in 1966, the lyrics of A Day in the Life are not examined, other than references to the Paul's / Lords trickery. This despite the fact that at least half the book, maybe even 2/3rds of it, is devoted to a nearly exhaustive examination of Beatles lyrics for clues.
There are even extensive passages parsing songs by the Stones, Who, Donovan, and Elton John for clues -- an entire Stones album, in fact. Because they were all in the know, along with family, friends, everyone associated with the band, even groupies from LA, for crying out loud -- and yet no one has spilled the beans over the pas 55+ years!
Even Paul himself knew (!!!) -- he foresaw his death in dreams, identified Billy as his replacement, and instructed everyone that to make that happen and keep it a secret forevermore.
Thousands upon thousands of pages of Beatles biography have been published over the years that include the testimony of anyone who even so much as sneezed on a Beatle, yet none of the many many many people who were in on the Paul - Billy switcheroo has breathed a word (except to hide clues in their lyrics). Yeah, that's how the world works -- no one has ever wanted to make a buck off that kind of secret knowledge.
But Billy's family and friends were not supposed to know -- he had to give up his life lest the ruse be unmasked, and he lives forever in fear of losing the riches he gained as Paul McCartney if he violates his contract (as if any court of law could strip him of what he earned since 1966 that is his own creation, even in the guise of Paul). Not to mention that all the legal considerations were certainly violated by Paul (or Billy as Paul) breaking up the Beatles in 1970 and suing them -- once that happened, all other bets are off.
There is an enormous amount of this kind of nonsense -- known in the writing business as lampshading. That's when writers purposely acknowledge "audience concerns, criticisms and arguments in the text itself to assuage disbelief, underscoring points of possible contention, to promote the suspension of disbelief" (to quote one internet definition).
My favorite example of lampshading is in Thank You For Smoking when Aaron Eckhart says to Rob Lowe, "Cigarettes in space? Wouldn't they blow up in an all-oxygen environment?" and Lowe says, "It's an easy fix. One line of dialogue: 'Thank God we created the, you know, whatever device'."
This book is basically 666 pages (exactly 666 pages across 66 chapters) of lampshading. A conspiracy kept secret by literally hundreds, maybe thousands of people is explained away by Billy's ridiculously outsize ego (he says over and over that he is far better than McCartney ever was), a vast corporate conspiracy that is global in scope (I shit you not), and every occult or mystical excuse in the book:
Paul gets everyone to agree in advance to the ruse because of his dreams, Billy stops imitating Paul and starts truly channeling Paul after Paul's spirit possesses him during a seance. Free masons, the Illuminati, the mark of the beast, the Book of Revelations, Faustian pacts with Satan -- the only thing missing are ancient aliens! (And that's a short list -- I've forgotten all the others already.)
Then there's the global conspiracy of social engineers, who have been shaping all culture and consumerism to direct all human society toward their own ends -- the Beatles had to live on with a fake Paul in order to complete their part in this scheme, fostered in England by MI6. This is presented without irony, without humor -- indeed, it seems to be a major point the "author" wants to emphasize, the existence of these social engineers.
Also presented without irony or humor: Billy examining the myriad ways Mark Chapman and Charlie Manson misinterpreted Beatles lyrics to support beliefs that led the former to kill Lennon and the latter to commit his infamous crimes -- sandwiched in between Billy misinterpreting Beatles lyrics (some supposedly even his own!) that are occult-based clues about Paul's death!
Finally, there is the physical evidence: the ears, the parting of the hair, the holding of the cigarette. Paul's earlobes were attached, Billy's hang loose; Paul parted his hair on the left, Billy's hair would not even allow any parting except on the right; Paul being a lefty always held his cigarettes in his left hand, Billy is a righty holding them in his right hand.
Check the internet! Billy says, a disingenuous lampshade designed to keep you from checking, on the theory that he wouldn't tell you to check if it was going to contradict him. But check away -- there are numerous examples pre- and post-1966 of both Paul and Billy holding cigarettes in both hands; the hair even in recent years has been parted on the left as it was pre-1966 (the part did move to the right for a few years before reverting).
And the ears: I found photos from recent years and 1964 that show the entire left ear from the exact same angle, and it's without question the exact same ear. Similarly the eyelids, the nose, the way the bottom teeth are seen in his smile, the way the corners of his mouth curl. If you find exceptions, the explanation (Rob Lowe might say) can be summed up in one line: body double.
Which leads to the ultimate in lampshading: maybe this criticism or that is intentionally fictionalized -- to stay within the bounds of the contract, this must be presented as fiction, so anything can be dismissed as part of the fiction, even while continuing to maintain that the whole is true (again, why worry about an unenforceable contract this many years later?).
None of which really matters, since this is by any measure a work of fiction. The salient point at the end of the day is that it is not nearly as much fun or as interesting as it should have been. To go back to my opening lines from A Day in the Life, the life of Billy Shears was instantly turned upside down -- what was that like?
Don't tell us that your musical genius resulted in Sergeant Pepper, dramatize the process, the arguments, the back and forth that gave birth to these great songs (it's better than just clues to a hoax). Don't give us one line about how Jane Asher and Paul's family and whoever else (your own family for crying out loud!) took it, dramatize the scenes of your first encounters and subsequent acceptance. Consider the movie Yesterday: there's gold in the process of someone suddenly becoming a Beatle genius in an instant -- comic, emotional, and otherwise.
To wit: There is some semblance of what I'm asking for in the discussions between Billy, John, and George Martin in Billy taking over creative control (and all other control) of the band, resulting in their ultimate creation, Sergeant Pepper -- you should have written twelve hours of scenes like that and three hours of lyrics analysis rather than three hours of occult BS and twelve hours of interminable, repetitive, and often nonsensical lyrics analysis.
My frustration is more about what might have been (which is perhaps what I expected) instead of what we end up with -- not to mention that the writing is dreadful and ineptly edited.
(And how on earth did they get George Martin's son to narrate this drivel?)
I was twelve years old, a huge Beatles fan like so many kids my age, when the rumors started circulating that Paul McCartney was dead, replaced by a lookalike and soundalike named Billy Shears -- all the clues were there, in the lyrics, the album art, the films, the press.
There was John signing "I buried Paul" in Strawberry Fields, where Paul was supposedly buried. There were messages you could only discern if you played the records backwards, held the album covers upside down or up to a mirror, recognized lyrics vocalized beneath the official lyrics, and found veiled references anywhere you looked or listened.
A Day in the Life is a case in point, where John sings about reading the news and learning about a famous man who died in a bloody car crash -- Paul (supposedly you can hear him sing "Paul" or "Paul's" underneath "Lords" in the line "Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords").
Then something quite new took place: in a John Lennon composition, the song modulated, the style completely morphed, into a verse written by and sung by Paul (quoted above) where a regular guy starts an ordinary day but is suddenly thrust, with one word, into a new dreamlike state of being -- Billy Shears finding out he was going to secretly become the new Paul McCartney.
I used to lie in bed imagining the ghost of Paul visiting my room, haunted by the suddenness of it all, how one "lucky man who made the grade ... blew his mind out in a car" and another suddenly "went into a dream" of becoming the best thing ever, a Beatle!
Interestingly, in The Memoirs of Billy Shields, a tell-all supposedly written by the guy who replaced Paul when he supposedly died in 1966, the lyrics of A Day in the Life are not examined, other than references to the Paul's / Lords trickery. This despite the fact that at least half the book, maybe even 2/3rds of it, is devoted to a nearly exhaustive examination of Beatles lyrics for clues.
There are even extensive passages parsing songs by the Stones, Who, Donovan, and Elton John for clues -- an entire Stones album, in fact. Because they were all in the know, along with family, friends, everyone associated with the band, even groupies from LA, for crying out loud -- and yet no one has spilled the beans over the pas 55+ years!
Even Paul himself knew (!!!) -- he foresaw his death in dreams, identified Billy as his replacement, and instructed everyone that to make that happen and keep it a secret forevermore.
Thousands upon thousands of pages of Beatles biography have been published over the years that include the testimony of anyone who even so much as sneezed on a Beatle, yet none of the many many many people who were in on the Paul - Billy switcheroo has breathed a word (except to hide clues in their lyrics). Yeah, that's how the world works -- no one has ever wanted to make a buck off that kind of secret knowledge.
But Billy's family and friends were not supposed to know -- he had to give up his life lest the ruse be unmasked, and he lives forever in fear of losing the riches he gained as Paul McCartney if he violates his contract (as if any court of law could strip him of what he earned since 1966 that is his own creation, even in the guise of Paul). Not to mention that all the legal considerations were certainly violated by Paul (or Billy as Paul) breaking up the Beatles in 1970 and suing them -- once that happened, all other bets are off.
There is an enormous amount of this kind of nonsense -- known in the writing business as lampshading. That's when writers purposely acknowledge "audience concerns, criticisms and arguments in the text itself to assuage disbelief, underscoring points of possible contention, to promote the suspension of disbelief" (to quote one internet definition).
My favorite example of lampshading is in Thank You For Smoking when Aaron Eckhart says to Rob Lowe, "Cigarettes in space? Wouldn't they blow up in an all-oxygen environment?" and Lowe says, "It's an easy fix. One line of dialogue: 'Thank God we created the, you know, whatever device'."
This book is basically 666 pages (exactly 666 pages across 66 chapters) of lampshading. A conspiracy kept secret by literally hundreds, maybe thousands of people is explained away by Billy's ridiculously outsize ego (he says over and over that he is far better than McCartney ever was), a vast corporate conspiracy that is global in scope (I shit you not), and every occult or mystical excuse in the book:
Paul gets everyone to agree in advance to the ruse because of his dreams, Billy stops imitating Paul and starts truly channeling Paul after Paul's spirit possesses him during a seance. Free masons, the Illuminati, the mark of the beast, the Book of Revelations, Faustian pacts with Satan -- the only thing missing are ancient aliens! (And that's a short list -- I've forgotten all the others already.)
Then there's the global conspiracy of social engineers, who have been shaping all culture and consumerism to direct all human society toward their own ends -- the Beatles had to live on with a fake Paul in order to complete their part in this scheme, fostered in England by MI6. This is presented without irony, without humor -- indeed, it seems to be a major point the "author" wants to emphasize, the existence of these social engineers.
Also presented without irony or humor: Billy examining the myriad ways Mark Chapman and Charlie Manson misinterpreted Beatles lyrics to support beliefs that led the former to kill Lennon and the latter to commit his infamous crimes -- sandwiched in between Billy misinterpreting Beatles lyrics (some supposedly even his own!) that are occult-based clues about Paul's death!
Finally, there is the physical evidence: the ears, the parting of the hair, the holding of the cigarette. Paul's earlobes were attached, Billy's hang loose; Paul parted his hair on the left, Billy's hair would not even allow any parting except on the right; Paul being a lefty always held his cigarettes in his left hand, Billy is a righty holding them in his right hand.
Check the internet! Billy says, a disingenuous lampshade designed to keep you from checking, on the theory that he wouldn't tell you to check if it was going to contradict him. But check away -- there are numerous examples pre- and post-1966 of both Paul and Billy holding cigarettes in both hands; the hair even in recent years has been parted on the left as it was pre-1966 (the part did move to the right for a few years before reverting).
And the ears: I found photos from recent years and 1964 that show the entire left ear from the exact same angle, and it's without question the exact same ear. Similarly the eyelids, the nose, the way the bottom teeth are seen in his smile, the way the corners of his mouth curl. If you find exceptions, the explanation (Rob Lowe might say) can be summed up in one line: body double.
Which leads to the ultimate in lampshading: maybe this criticism or that is intentionally fictionalized -- to stay within the bounds of the contract, this must be presented as fiction, so anything can be dismissed as part of the fiction, even while continuing to maintain that the whole is true (again, why worry about an unenforceable contract this many years later?).
None of which really matters, since this is by any measure a work of fiction. The salient point at the end of the day is that it is not nearly as much fun or as interesting as it should have been. To go back to my opening lines from A Day in the Life, the life of Billy Shears was instantly turned upside down -- what was that like?
Don't tell us that your musical genius resulted in Sergeant Pepper, dramatize the process, the arguments, the back and forth that gave birth to these great songs (it's better than just clues to a hoax). Don't give us one line about how Jane Asher and Paul's family and whoever else (your own family for crying out loud!) took it, dramatize the scenes of your first encounters and subsequent acceptance. Consider the movie Yesterday: there's gold in the process of someone suddenly becoming a Beatle genius in an instant -- comic, emotional, and otherwise.
To wit: There is some semblance of what I'm asking for in the discussions between Billy, John, and George Martin in Billy taking over creative control (and all other control) of the band, resulting in their ultimate creation, Sergeant Pepper -- you should have written twelve hours of scenes like that and three hours of lyrics analysis rather than three hours of occult BS and twelve hours of interminable, repetitive, and often nonsensical lyrics analysis.
My frustration is more about what might have been (which is perhaps what I expected) instead of what we end up with -- not to mention that the writing is dreadful and ineptly edited.
(And how on earth did they get George Martin's son to narrate this drivel?)
February 14, 2023
Who does it serve?
January 5, 2024
Intriguing... I know what I think...
August 7, 2023
Something is happening here but you don't know what it is. I think I've read all the new parts now except for the footnotes. https://campelasticity.com/2023/07/20...
June 6, 2020
A well written book, I think some people are taking it a bit too seriously and it is in fact just historical fiction though. Nearly all of the images showing differences between Paul McCartney and Billy Shears could be explained by McCartney regularly using body doubles. He also could have simply retired due to not being able to cope with the pressures of stardom, and have been replaced with a body double who was also a musician. Interesting to see how they could have done it had Paul in fact died though, just don't take it too seriously.
November 20, 2019
being a huge beatles fan i don't know what to make of these books. it's obvious something strange went on in 1966 whether macca died and was replaced is a bit far fetched but something happened. fascinating read but true i don't know
April 12, 2020
Pretty stupid but mildly entertaining.
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