“The Chris Farley Show” was a sketch on Saturday Night Live that had much more cultural impact than its three appearances from late 1991 to early 1993.
It is a constant reminder for us that “conspiracy theories” have trouble dying. No matter what.
The final “interview” Farley did on the show was with Paul McCartney.
Chris Farley: O-kay.. remember.. you remember when you were with The Beatles, and you were supposed to be dead, and, uh, there was all these clues, that, like, uh, you played some song backwards, and it’d say, like, “Paul Is Dead”, and, uh, everyone thought that you were dead? That was, um, a hoax, right?
Paul McCartney: Yeah. I wasn’t really dead.
Chris Farley: Right.
Well, in 2009 Time magazine reported that the “Paul is dead” legend was still among the ten “most enduring conspiracy theories.”
The rumors started in 1966. The Beatles included “backmasking” in their music, so analyzing the tracks for hidden meanings and secret messages were definitely a “thing” during Beatlemania.
One of the stories has “original” Paul dead with a doppelgänger in his place since the late 1960s.
Beatles records reportedly had a significant increase in sales at one point in the late 1960s, attributed particularly to the “Paul is dead” rumor.
Peter Doggett, author of You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of The Beatles, wrote that the theory behind “Paul is dead” defies logic, but it was “understandable” in a climate chock-full of conspiracy theories, not the least of which was the allegation that the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was indeed a coup d’état.
The rumors fueled all sorts of crazy projects by all kinds of budding musicians and soundsmiths.
For, in the late-1970s a piece of experimental music called “Under the Eye” caught the attention of UPI.
Songwriter Sings Like Backward Tape
— Dennis Linde may be the only person in Nashville who knows how to talk like a tape recorder run backwards.
It is a dubious skill he learned as a Beatle-crazed adolescent in St. Louis.
One of the rumors that circulated at the time was that Paul McCartney had died but the death was kept a secret. If you played a certain song backwards, you would hear John Lennon informing the underground of that fact.
After many hours of fooling with a tape recorder, Linde—now a 32-year-old Nashville-based songwriter-singer-producer—mastered the art of speaking in twerps, whirs and bleeps.
The slender, dark-haired musician, who looks a bit like "Star Trek's" Mr. Spock without pointed ears, has a small farmhouse full of electronic equipment to produce his "crazy, zany music." He shares the house with his artist-wife, Pam, and their 3-1/2-year-old daughter, Lisa.
Friends such as Billy Swan, Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newberry—whom he has also produced—give him high marks for creativity and innovation and indicate he is one of the more underrated artists in the city.
His latest release, "Under The Eye," has 44 hours worth of Moog synthesizer condensed into one song for an extra-terrestrial effect.
Linde had gained fame some years earlier by penning “Burning Love,” Elvis Presley’s final Top 10 single.
He would also go on to own the airwaves in the early to mid-1990s, but most people never heard of the guy. He wrote a number of songs that went on to be massive hits on the country music scene.
But more on that later in the week…
I will eventually add this completed tale as a part of my Beatles resource page.
I found that I tend to write or podcast about The Fab Four quite a bit, so might as well provide some resources and links.
As always,
Brian
P.S. — If you are in the US of A, enjoy your independence. If not, enjoy your early July.
