Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World

by Rob Sheffield

Nicholas Schaffner’s The Beatles Forever gave a handy rundown: Paul died on the number-ninth of November 1966, when he blew his mind out in a late-night car crash, after getting behind the wheel in the final hours of “stupid bloody Tuesday.” (As Ringo the undertaker sang, “You were in a car crash and you lost your hair.”) He died there in the road, waiting for the van to come. George’s finger points to the words “Wednesday morning at five o’clock” on the Pepper cover, because that’s when Paul was Officially Pronounced Dead. (On the front cover, Paul wears an “OPD” patch, right in front of the freshly dug grave.) Instead of announcing this tragedy, the Beatles decided (as ever) to do things their own way, and replaced Paul with an imposter, while dropping labyrinthine hints to their devoted fans in the “Beatle code” John used to talk about. As Schaffner said, the rumor was “a genuine folk tale of the mass communications era.”