55 Years Ago: Beatles' 'Paul Is Dead' Rumors Begin to Spread

Paul McCartney is alive and well, but a well-placed rumor had some people thinking otherwise at the end of the '60s.

The Northern Star newspaper of Northern Illinois University published a story on Sept. 23, 1969, claiming that McCartney had been killed in a car crash a few years earlier and had been replaced by a look-alike. A radio station in Detroit picked up on the story and ran with it. Within a month, the story had gone global and Beatles fans worldwide were collectively scratching their heads.

The intrigue led fans everywhere to search for clues on album covers and in songs. A few of these included McCartney's appearance with his back to the camera on the back of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sleeve, the fact that he wore a black rose in the clip of "Your Mother Should Know" in Magical Mystery Tour and the image of Paul walking barefoot and out of step on the cover of Abbey Road.

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There were countless other clues according to conspiracy theorists. Most famously, one theory suggested that the song "Revolution 9" sounded vaguely like "turn me on dead man" when played backward. A Volkswagen parked nearby on the Abbey Road shoot had a license plate that read, "28IF" – McCartney's time of supposed "death."

"I couldn't understand it. First, someone said, ‘There's a rumor going around that you're dead,'" McCartney said in The Beatles: Off the Record by Keith Badman. "My first reaction really was just to think, 'Great,' really – just like James Dean. I just immediately pulled myself back into 15-year-old suburbia, where I saw the James Dean thing enact itself. I was just pleased, you know, because I knew I wasn't dead. So, I just watched the play happen."

Life magazine covered the story with a Nov. 7, 1969, cover headline that read: "The Case of the 'Missing' Beatle: Paul is Still With Us." McCartney and his family were pictured with a caption which pointedly noted that the photograph was taken "last week in Scotland."

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Though initially amused by the story, McCartney finally decided to clear up things. "It is all bloody stupid," he told the Life magazine reporter. "I was wearing a black flower because they ran out of red ones. It is [bandmate] John [Lennon], not me, dressed in black on the cover and inside of Magical Mystery Tour. On Abbey Road, we were wearing our ordinary clothes. I was walking barefoot because it was a hot day. The Volkswagen just happened to be parked there."

The Detroit Free Press shared an additional statement: "Do I look dead? I am fit as a fiddle. People are foolish who believe these things. Tell them how you found me – very much alive." Lennon, speaking to Rolling Stone in 1970, was typically even more blunt: "No, that was bullshit. The whole thing was made up."

McCartney later parodied the rumor by calling a 1993 concert album Paul Is Live, with artwork that recreated the Abbey Road album cover. Instead of reading 28IF, the license plate on a nearby car now showed "51 IS." Then the Northern Star issued an official apology.

"With our 1969 publication, we helped support the untrue, international conspiracy theory that McCartney had been replaced by a lookalike," the newspaper's editorial board wrote in September 2023. "We understand the annoyance that McCartney reported in multiple interviews regarding the rumor. We truly apologize for our contribution to supporting an unfounded conspiracy theory."

Watch News Coverage of the Newspaper's Retraction