CHAPTER 125 DEATH OF PAUL AND BIRTH OF “AFTER DARK” 1969
Dottie Waters was sitting on our bed, not for any nefarious reason, trying to figure out the various clues that proved Paul was dead. It was late fall 1969, and Paul was Paul McCartney of the Beatles.
My group had dwindled down by now. Dottie, Jim Tweedy, Lois and I were scattered about the room surrounded by Beatles’ albums. Joe Rubio would have been in on this, but he was sitting in a tent outside Saigon with bigger things to worry about.
“And here’s another clue for you all/The Walrus was Paul.” (“Glass Onion” by Lennon-McCartney, 1968.)
This was supposedly a statement on Paul’s death, although it is contradicted in other Beatles’ tunes; for instance, in “God” by the John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band, you have Lennon singing, “I was the Walrus, but now I’m John,” and it is John who sings the song “I am the Walrus” in “The Magical Mystery Tour”.
It didn’t matter, the Paul is Dead Rumor had legs, as they say and whether Paul was dead was a mote point, the rumor was alive and wouldn’t die.
And there were tons of clues to Paul’s demise, too. People. Like us, sitting about in many bedrooms, dens and living rooms hashing this one out, even though logic seemed against the whole theory. One of the biggest indicators of Paul having left us was the cover of “Abbey Road”.
Here walk The Beatles in a row (a funeral procession?). They are led by the clergy, represented by John Lennon because John is dressed all in white,. (John Lennon as clergy? That defies intelligence right there.) Next came the Undertaker, Ringo all in black. Then marching by is the corpse, Paul, his step out of sync with the others, a “coffin nail”, held in his right hand, when he was left-handed and he’s barefoot. Finally, in somewhat worker’s clothes, follows George, the gravedigger. What more proof do you need. The license plate on the VW Beetle, perhaps, saying “28 if”. If what? Why Paul would have been 28 if he were still with us. And above this, LMW, for “Linda McCartney weeps”. (Paul was 27 at the time of “Abbey Road” and Paul didn’t know Linda Eastman, let alone being her husband, at the time of this alleged death.
“Oh, wait,” you may ask, “how could Paul be walking in his own funeral procession? And didn’t the Beatles make at least one more album called ‘Let It Be’” Those seems like a reasonable question, you cynic, you; why couldn’t you take their advice and let it be?
To get the answers to your questions you must understand the rumor. The album “Abbey Road” was released in 1969. The photograph was taken on Abbey Road, a street running by the recording studio. Here is the gist of the Paul is Dead rumor.
Supposedly, Paul McCartney was killed in an auto accident (Yellow matter custard/Dripping from a dead dog’s eye”) when he smashed into a van while high (Sitting on a cornflake/Waiting for the van to come”) after being distracted by a female hitchhiker he picked up. (“Boy you’ve been a naughty girl/You let your knickers down”). John wrote the whole incident in code in the song “I am the Walrus”, from which the above lyrics are quoted. In reality, John Lennon wrote the “Walrus” lyrics as pure nonsense on the theory they were so bizarre no one would even attempt to give them meaning. Ha, was he wrong on that one.
the Beatles replaced Paul with a lookalike, who even got plastic surgery to look more like Paul. This is why “Paul” then grew facial hair, to cover his surgery scars until they healed. I think what truly amazes is that people would think they could find someone who not only resembled Paul closely in looks, but sounded like him and could play a left-handed bass.
This rumor caught on and persisted and many people seriously studied for clues to prove. it. The incredibleness of this is it all occurred before the internet and social media.
In August we went with my parents to see the movie, “Love Bug”. I wasn’t loving my car so much now, it kept breaking down. Disney films, such as the “Love Bug” were not Lois and mine usual fare, either. We had discovered the Art Theaters, such as the Art Holiday in Kensington, Walton Art in Germantown and the Abbe Art Cinema in West Philly.
There was no art to the films played in these theaters. Art was a code word for a lot of sex and nudity.
use of “adult” as in “Adult bookstore”, “adult language”, “adult situations” and so forth. What is so adult about them? Don’t they mean “sexual”, or more to the point, we are so ashamed of these things we don’t want our children exposed to them. There was nothing particularly adult about that bookstore on Market Street. It was just full of dirty books. The words sometimes contained therein were very rudimentary, with an emphasis on rude. I mean, what is adult language anyway, just a lot of mostly single syllable words repeated at infinite, speech boring as a Kardashian and at a 15-year-olds level.
So my other gripe is the use of “Art” associated with these theaters. What art? You hear the term “art film” and it conjures up images of some European, shadowy story that is interesting to watch, but hard to understand. There is not usually much difficulty in understanding these so-called “art-films”. We didn’t go there to ponder Bergmanian Symbolism; (Virgin Spring for instance, photo left.) we went hoping to see some writhing naked flesh. We weren’t looking for brain stimulation, but stimulation a bit further down our bodies.
This experience was nowhere near the Globe, which we still went to about two times a summer. The Globe had an atmosphere of fun or a night of misbehavior. These theaters were grim. The films ran continuous on a loop, if you came in during the middle, you missed nothing. You found a seat in just the light from the screen. The audience was generally sparse and almost all male. There were seldom any couples. There were seldom even two men sitting together. Those who were there sat spread out through the theater and new arrivals sought out a space away from others.
interspersed with some Naturalist features. Nudist films lost the novelty very quickly. After five minutes of watching ordinary people walking around in the nude doing everyday things it gets very boring. As one famous exploitation film producer once said, “How many ways can you shoot a naked person serve a volleyball?” The films tended to be grainy, with a lot of magnified dust particles and loose hairs flitting into the frame.
When you left these particular movie houses you always kept your fingers crossed that you’d find your car and it wouldn’t be up on cinder blocks. None of these venues were exactly in the best of neighborhoods, and it was only the pull of engaging in somewhat forbidden sex that drew us there. There was some type of sexual behavior occurring surreptitously while we were hidden by the dark. We really didn’t go all that often.
My non-sexual world was going well during the last half of 1969. I had gone back to Temple that fall, taking Composition II, in which I would get an A, and a Psych course called “Personality & Adjustment”. I got a B. My overall grade point average was beginning to rise, making up for some lower marks I had gotten earlier. I sort of bragged to Joe:
He (the professor) read excerpts from it (my composition) to the class as being the way an opening paragraph, a closing paragraph and dialogue should be written.
At this point (Early October) my job looked solid as well. “My boss (Mary Claffey) came along the other day and in a low voice told me the company was acquiring several new magazines and it would be a great opportunity for me, whatever that means. And then the employees have been spreading a rumor that I’m going to be picked as Assistant Circulation Director. It’d be nice, but I’d be surprised. I only hope with these kind of things I don’t get a big disappointment. Can you imagine that, though? I’d be working with my present boss as a partner and reporting directly to the vice-president and President of the company?” (It wasn’t long after this letter I resigned from the company.)
Joe wrote back that he had been taken off the machine gun and
handed the company radio. I thought he was already the communications man, but he wasn’t. He was glad to do it because he felt the duty was safer than the gunner position, but first day on the new job he got struck by lightning. He was okay, but both the transmitter and receiver were fried leaving his unit without any communications for the night. He told me he was put in for Spec 4.
Joe mentioned the start of the Christmas season with lights going up everywhere.
They had begun to string the holiday decorations here at home before Halloween was over.
Joe talked about one of President Nixon’s recent speeches. I responded, “It was a brilliant speech. He really got a lot of the country behind him. Of course, he said absolutely nothing, except if it doesn’t rain the sun will shine. He’ll bring the troops home, if he brings the troops home, is what it boiled down to, if you really think about it. Tonight Agnew was on TV trying to destroy any faith in the news media he possibly could.”
“I am almost brakeless in the car. And I can’t get them fixed for a week. Drat!“
As December passed, I happened into a doorway on one of my walks. The people there published a tabloid called, “Philadelphia After Dark” They agreed to give me an audition and sent me out to review this new Raquel Welsh flick in town, called “Flareup.”
It seems we often sat and watched this movie before, with scenes like these before, with characters like these before. Do you recall the pumpkin-faced maniac pursuing his victim because of some imagined wrong? And don’t you remember the good-hearted saloon owner, who looked after his dancers as if he was their father? “I knew that Allen was a bad one, but this time he was the husband, so I couldn’t say nothing. (Sic)” All these old characters you remember from the past are there; too many movie memories to mention. There is even a scene left over from an old Dragnet.
A police officer ponders at the scene of a murder to the dashing young lieutenant. “Hmm, funny.”
“What?”
You miss the dum-de-de-dum music at the end of that exchange.
Excerpt from Clichés Flare Up in Flare Up”
Philadelphia After Dark
December 1969
Philadelphia, Pa.
Included in my collection: Making an Essay of Myself, 1976
Meanwhile I had two troubles on my mind, and neither was a woman. My car was not running and I had just walked away from my job at North American Publishing. I had told Joe about the car, but not about my sudden unemployment nor the possibility of writing for Philadelphia After Dark.
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