Paul McCartney is Not Dead

The Rumors are not True - Enjoy the Music Again

The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory

The "Paul McCartney is dead" rumor is unique because of the transformations it has gone through and the timing at which it occurred. Originally spreading through the media as a rumor of Paul's death, it turned into a conspiracy to fool the public into buying Beatle records from an imposter Paul. Many of the conspiratorial reasons for the alleged death cover up are completely business reasons to prevent legal issues with the Beatle properties, but others go into subliminal messages and public mind control to the take over by a one world government.

Let's not go there.

The timing is interesting. The rumors started before the advent of digital media. All the photos and recordings from 1967 are not digital, though there are many because of the subject matter. The Beatles were very popular, so there are many images available. The problem is the images are mostly reprints and have been disregarded by PID believers who say that the reprints have been recently altered to look more like the Imposter. The only images accepted, therefore, are original prints from before 1967.

Here is the catch.

Many images right after 1967, though vintage, are also thought to be altered to make the imposter look more like Paul. Some of the main images used to show this are album covers and publicity shots. The only problem I see with this is that the images are probably altered because they are publicity shots or staged for an album. Of course they are altered. The airbrush had been used to alter photographs for about 100 years! But here is the difference. Although single sheet color film was invented in the 1930's, major breakthroughs in color film processing came just after the mid 60's making it cheaper and allowing more detail to be captured. Prior to this, black and white film was mostly used due to it's higher availability, cheaper processing, most magazines and newspapers only printed in black and white anyway, the images in color films were not as sharp, and the negatives were more perishable. But unfortunately, color films revealed more blemishes and flaws in the images of the icons of popular culture. It is not unreasonable to imagine publicity and album photos being retouched in the 60's. Why does Paul look like he has been retouched on the "Let It Be" cover? Perhaps a graphic artist tried to make him look more like his younger, cuter days? After all, this could help sell records to women. A popular technique was to overexpose an area around the pupil of a subject in a print. This would make their eyes appear more dilated. A dilated pupil makes the subject appear more friendly.