The piddly PIDs
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Although I'm inclined to think the whole Paul is dead thing is just a bunch of bollocks, it's still fascinates me on certain levels. It depends on the conspiracy theorist. Most of them are just silly, and they show supposed proof like a picture of the supposedly real Paul with his earlobes looking one way and then 40 years later the supposedly false Paul with the earlobes supposedly looking different, stuff like that.
However there are a couple who do seem less easily dismissable. Especially one guy on YouTube who calls himself Sage of Quay (whatever that means). He also goes by Mike Williams. The thing about him is he's very articulate, very intelligent, sounds reasonable, and seems like he's not stark raving insane, seems rather normal, although he does seem to have a little bit of OCD completism the way he talks, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything about his theory. I haven't spent that much time analyzing is voluminous output, but now and again when I closely think about some of his claims, they don't seem to make sense.
For example, basing his information on the memory of Pete Best of their Hamburg time, he concludes that John and Paul had no time to write any songs, because Pete Best says they started at the club at 6:00 p.m. then played for 8 hours, then they slept until 3:00 p.m. But if you do the math, that would either mean that they slept 12 hours every day which is unlikely, or that there are 4-5 hours unaccounted for. So when I brought this up to him in the comments, he kind of back pedaled and moved the goalpost: he conceded that there were 4-5 hours unaccounted for, but then he speculated that all they did during those 4-5 hours was drink and have sex. He has no proof of this. Certainly they probably did that now and then, however his initial point was they literally had no time to write songs. Now he concedes they did have time to write songs, but then he just says well they didn't during that time. So that's a flaw in his thinking process. He seems to want to force a conclusion and then he monkeys with the evidence to make it happen.
Another thing he does is he talks about how in the early years, The Beatles didn't write any songs, they were written for them. Part of his information on this stems from the Beatles Anthology series which came out in 1995, which claimed according to him that the Beatles had written 100 songs prior to and during that early initial time of the early 60s. But then he says where were these 100 songs in terms of their output because, they were mostly doing covers at that point. However, every time he brings this up he always stresses that he's getting that number from the Anthology series, but there was a later series in the 2000s that may have superseded the Anthology series, but why doesn't he cite that one as corroborating evidence? One must conclude that it's because that later series in fact doesn't corroborate it. His failure to include this dispositive data shows a kind of dishonest streak in his presentation.
I'll end on a third thing he does. With the help of a colleague, he has concluded recently that the false Paul has a glass eye. One of his pieces of evidence are numerous videos and stills showing the two eyes not tracking together when he's looking in one direction or another. But then, when he was most recently talking about this in his latest video interview on his 64th birthday he suddenly mentions that Paul himself employs doubles, who do not have a glass eye. So that presents a suspiciously convenient way for him to account for why we have videos and stills of Paul nowadays and in the past few decades where he evidently does not have a false eye. Now of course this doesn't clear up, if we are attempting to refute Mike Williams, the problem of those videos and stills for his eye does seem to be drifting. However one would need to definitively establish with solid medical evidence that there is not a condition where a person's eye doesn't float and fail to track with the other eye sometimes. My father had a condition or increasingly his eyes started spacing apart, so that in later years when he looked straight at you it looked like he was looking off to the side, but he didn't have a glass eye. So we'd have to establish whether there is not some condition that resembles this without having to posit a glass eye as the explanation, before we leap to the conclusion that Paul has one.
But anyway, to reiterate what I said near the beginning, the only reason I give this any time of consideration is that it fascinates me how someone like Mike Williams who seems like I said intelligent and reasonable relatively speaking, to be saying stuff and ostensibly with complete sincerity, stuff that is patently psychotic and schizophrenic. It's just fascinating to me.
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Ah, yes. The theories. There are so many things they claim as "evidence" yet they can't seem to agree with each other. I keep seeing a channel on youtube called "Justice for James Paul Mccartney". It frustrates me that people are believing this stuff.
I have just had to ignore it. -
@fast-city-line I can answer one of your questions, These “100 songs in a notebook” were accidentally thrown away by Jane Asher when she was cleaning up the house. (Paul tells this in one or more or the hundreds of books I’ve read about the Beatles)
The rest is bollocks. When I was 14 in 1969 when all this crap started, I began a notebook refuting all the PID claims. Some of them are stupid and/or mistakes, for example the VW Beetle on the cover of Abbey Road. The license plate does not even read 28 IF. It says 281F (the number 1, not the capital letter I) And we all know Paul was 27 in 1969 anyway, not 28!
I have a bunch of them if you have any questions!
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@njr Wow, you started debunking right at the beginning at age 14! That's impressive! Well the career of that activity has had many decades to grow and fester and become complicated with more elaborations. I won't go into all of those now, but there is one thing that nags at me. Perhaps it can be dispelled and explained, but so far I haven't seen any explanation that satisfies.
Now this thing that nags at me isn't definitive by any means, but it's just enough to plant a seed of doubt. I speak of a video montage on YouTube which would take me some time to find because I didn't bookmark it, where someone put together apparently all the instances of Paul either referring to himself, or other people referring to him, as "Billy" or "William". Now most of these do seem to have some leeway of doubt, because they are films of just split second encounters, and usually there's other people talking in the background etc. For example, there's Paul and his second wife Heather Mills, arriving at some George Harrison tribute after George's death, and he approaches George's widow and her son, they're all standing outside and there's lots of other people milling around, but it does seem to be from what I saw that George's widow when her eyes lit up in recognition at Paul, seemed to say "hello William" to him. Another less definitive one occurs in that Give My Regards to Broad Street film, where Paul enters an engineering room of a recording studio and one of the men in the studio seems to be introducing Paul to someone seems to be indicating that Paul is "William". However, there is a possibility the man looked at Paul and said "William" to him (before turing to indicate the man sitting he was introducing Paul to) meant to tell Paul directly, "Here is that William guy, Paul, I'll introduce you to him now" -- but he doesn't say that of course, he just says "William" when he's looking squarely at Paul. To me the video is ambiguously one way or the other on the merits of the sheer data of it. Here's a clip:
There's like three other ones like this all similarly murky in various degrees, but to me the most definitive (still not perfectly so of course) is a brief excerpt of Dana Carvey just reminiscing about how he met Paul on Saturday Night Live. At one point it clearly seems like Dana refers to Paul, whom he has been calling "Paul" throughout his stream of memories, as "Billy". There was no other Billy in his narrative while he's talking, it just comes out of the blue and the only "he" in his narrative is Paul because all he's talking about is Paul. Now one way to completely squash the Paul is dead implications of this, would be to find out, or for Paul to reveal for the first time, that Paul for many years or even decades has had a nickname "Billy/William" just for a lark, just for the lulls, or just some kind of affectionate pet name that only is close friends and family know. That would clear it all up. Otherwise if we are to refute this we have to say that all these instances in that video montage or bad sound quality, ambient sound, misinterpretation etc. -- but on their merits, not because we are otherwise convinced the whole thing is bollocks.
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@fast-city-line said in The piddly PIDs:
Although I'm inclined to think the whole Paul is dead thing is just a bunch of bollocks, it's still fascinates me on certain levels. It depends on the conspiracy theorist. Most of them are just silly, and they show supposed proof like a picture of the supposedly real Paul with his earlobes looking one way and then 40 years later the supposedly false Paul with the earlobes supposedly looking different, stuff like that.
However there are a couple who do seem less easily dismissable. Especially one guy on YouTube who calls himself Sage of Quay (whatever that means). He also goes by Mike Williams. The thing about him is he's very articulate, very intelligent, sounds reasonable, and seems like he's not stark raving insane, seems rather normal, although he does seem to have a little bit of OCD completism the way he talks, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything about his theory. I haven't spent that much time analyzing is voluminous output, but now and again when I closely think about some of his claims, they don't seem to make sense.
For example, basing his information on the memory of Pete Best of their Hamburg time, he concludes that John and Paul had no time to write any songs, because Pete Best says they started at the club at 6:00 p.m. then played for 8 hours, then they slept until 3:00 p.m. But if you do the math, that would either mean that they slept 12 hours every day which is unlikely, or that there are 4-5 hours unaccounted for. So when I brought this up to him in the comments, he kind of back pedaled and moved the goalpost: he conceded that there were 4-5 hours unaccounted for, but then he speculated that all they did during those 4-5 hours was drink and have sex. He has no proof of this. Certainly they probably did that now and then, however his initial point was they literally had no time to write songs. Now he concedes they did have time to write songs, but then he just says well they didn't during that time. So that's a flaw in his thinking process. He seems to want to force a conclusion and then he monkeys with the evidence to make it happen.
Another thing he does is he talks about how in the early years, The Beatles didn't write any songs, they were written for them. Part of his information on this stems from the Beatles Anthology series which came out in 1995, which claimed according to him that the Beatles had written 100 songs prior to and during that early initial time of the early 60s. But then he says where were these 100 songs in terms of their output because, they were mostly doing covers at that point. However, every time he brings this up he always stresses that he's getting that number from the Anthology series, but there was a later series in the 2000s that may have superseded the Anthology series, but why doesn't he cite that one as corroborating evidence? One must conclude that it's because that later series in fact doesn't corroborate it. His failure to include this dispositive data shows a kind of dishonest streak in his presentation.
I'll end on a third thing he does. With the help of a colleague, he has concluded recently that the false Paul has a glass eye. One of his pieces of evidence are numerous videos and stills showing the two eyes not tracking together when he's looking in one direction or another. But then, when he was most recently talking about this in his latest video interview on his 64th birthday he suddenly mentions that Paul himself employs doubles, who do not have a glass eye. So that presents a suspiciously convenient way for him to account for why we have videos and stills of Paul nowadays and in the past few decades where he evidently does not have a false eye. Now of course this doesn't clear up, if we are attempting to refute Mike Williams, the problem of those videos and stills for his eye does seem to be drifting. However one would need to definitively establish with solid medical evidence that there is not a condition where a person's eye doesn't float and fail to track with the other eye sometimes. My father had a condition or increasingly his eyes started spacing apart, so that in later years when he looked straight at you it looked like he was looking off to the side, but he didn't have a glass eye. So we'd have to establish whether there is not some condition that resembles this without having to posit a glass eye as the explanation, before we leap to the conclusion that Paul has one.
But anyway, to reiterate what I said near the beginning, the only reason I give this any time of consideration is that it fascinates me how someone like Mike Williams who seems like I said intelligent and reasonable relatively speaking, to be saying stuff and ostensibly with complete sincerity, stuff that is patently psychotic and schizophrenic. It's just fascinating to me.
ANYBODY that contemplates that, even for a second, the "Paul is dead rumour", is a reality, is even more insane than the idiot's who have been perpetuating this asinine story. I always call out these people as "fake fan's", with too much time (and stupidity) on their hands. Besides, when Paul McCartney HIMSELF, believes he is dead, then I will believe it too. But until then. No!
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@fast-city-line In that video, he is briefly looking at Paul and says to Paul “You know William.” then then and points at William, the guy who is sitting down!!
I never heard or saw the Dana Carvey story. He is famous for his meeting Paul stories and impersonating Paul - he’s a riot! -
@fast-city-line If Paul McCartney is dead then how come he's still walking around. Mind you, in saying that, Keith Richards is also dead, but he's still walking a round too🥺
. But, in all seriousness, only fake fan's have the time to waste on this nonsense rumour. The real fan's give it the derision it deserves. -
@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@fast-city-line If Paul McCartney is dead then how come he's still walking around. Mind you, in saying that, Keith Richards is also dead, but he's still walking a round too. But, in all seriousness, only fake fan's have the time to waste on this nonsense rumour. The real fan's give it the derision it deserves.
Exactly! And that’s what these fans (us) are doing!
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@njr said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@fast-city-line If Paul McCartney is dead then how come he's still walking around. Mind you, in saying that, Keith Richards is also dead, but he's still walking a round too. But, in all seriousness, only fake fan's have the time to waste on this nonsense rumour. The real fan's give it the derision it deserves.
Exactly! And that’s what these fans (us) are doing!
Wow! What time is it where you are. Here in London, its 6.25am.
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@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@njr said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@fast-city-line If Paul McCartney is dead then how come he's still walking around. Mind you, in saying that, Keith Richards is also dead, but he's still walking a round too. But, in all seriousness, only fake fan's have the time to waste on this nonsense rumour. The real fan's give it the derision it deserves.
Exactly! And that’s what these fans (us) are doing!
Wow! What time is it where you are. Here in London, its 6.25am.
It’s only 1:38am. I’m a retired night owl and stay up until 3:30 or 4 and sleep until noon.
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@njr said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@njr said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@fast-city-line If Paul McCartney is dead then how come he's still walking around. Mind you, in saying that, Keith Richards is also dead, but he's still walking a round too. But, in all seriousness, only fake fan's have the time to waste on this nonsense rumour. The real fan's give it the derision it deserves.
Exactly! And that’s what these fans (us) are doing!
Wow! What time is it where you are. Here in London, its 6.25am.
It’s only 1:38am. I’m a retired night owl and stay up until 3:30 or 4 and sleep until noon.
Ah! I'm the opposite. I go to bed ( usually ) around 9.30pm but am up around 5.30am. After 50 yrs of getting up early for work, it's a habit I'm stuck with. Retirement was the BEST days work I ever did. I love looking out of my bedroom window ( especially when it's raining) of a morning, and seeing everybody walking down to the subway, to catch the underground train to Central London, umbrellas up, going off to work, like I used to do. Me? I go put the kettle, and the TV.
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@wandy I hear there's a "Keith Richards is alive" conspiracy theory.
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@njr I don't hear the "You know" but it sounds plausible.
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@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@njr said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@njr said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy said in The piddly PIDs:
@fast-city-line If Paul McCartney is dead then how come he's still walking around. Mind you, in saying that, Keith Richards is also dead, but he's still walking a round too. But, in all seriousness, only fake fan's have the time to waste on this nonsense rumour. The real fan's give it the derision it deserves.
Exactly! And that’s what these fans (us) are doing!
Wow! What time is it where you are. Here in London, its 6.25am.
It’s only 1:38am. I’m a retired night owl and stay up until 3:30 or 4 and sleep until noon.
Ah! I'm the opposite. I go to bed ( usually ) around 9.30pm but am up around 5.30am. After 50 yrs of getting up early for work, it's a habit I'm stuck with. Retirement was the BEST days work I ever did. I love looking out of my bedroom window ( especially when it's raining) of a morning, and seeing everybody walking down to the subway, to catch the underground train to Central London, umbrellas up, going off to work, like I used to do. Me? I go put the kettle, and the TV.
I’ve always been a night owl and for years had to put up with getting up at 5:30am to work 6:45am to 3:15pm as an O.R. nurse. I’ve been waiting my whole life to be able to sleep and eat when I want - this is heaven on earth for me. (Just like your schedule is for you)
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@fast-city-line said in The piddly PIDs:
@njr I don't hear the "You know" but it sounds plausible.
They even have the words “You know William” written within the video! Watch it again! It’s clear as a bell to me.
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@fast-city-line said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy I hear there's a "Keith Richards is alive" conspiracy theory.
ROTFLMAO! -
@fast-city-line said in The piddly PIDs:
@wandy I hear there's a "Keith Richards is alive" conspiracy theory.
I'm now checking Stones LP covers for clues
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@wandy Ha!
