The first rumour about Paul McCartney’s death circulates

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In September 1966, Tony Barrow, the press officer of the Beatles, started receiving calls from various journalists of the British press, who were concerned about the well-being of Paul McCartney. Rumours had started spreading that Paul was dead. Barrow became suspicious and called Paul to check if he was okay; he never discovered how the rumour started.

The “Paul Is Dead” rumour became an international phenomenon in September/October 1969. It was believed that Paul had died either on September 11, 1966, or November 9, 1966, after an argument with the other Beatles during a recording session. According to the rumour, Paul had driven off in anger and crashed his car, leading to his death. The rumour also claimed that Paul was replaced by a lookalike.

In the first week of September, while John went to work on his solo movie project, the other three Beatles took a short break. George took Pattie to India where he received sitar lessons from his idol Ravi Shankar in Bombay. Ringo and Maureen went to Spain. Apart from a weekend in Paris, Paul spent much of September settling into his new home in Cavendish Avenue, St John’s Wood. Around this time I suddenly found myself taking an alarming number of phone calls from Fleet Street news desks enquiring about Paul’s whereabouts and state of health. Some reporters veiled their questions: “Have you talked to Paul today? How is he doing? Is he OK?” Others were more direct: “The rumour we’re hearing is that Paul is dead. Can you confirm or deny this?” It was not unusual for me to deal with bogus reports that a Beatle was seriously ill, had been badly hurt in a road traffic accident or even killed in some macabre way. At least one such call came in to my office each week. Sometimes the source of the rumour would be an ingenious fan, keen to find out where her favourite Beatle was today and sure that the news desks of FleetStreet could track him down for her. I didn’t always check out these stories with the boys because, to be frank, they — and I — had better things to do. The sudden spate of calls about Paul, a dozen or so in a single afternoon, had me worried. To be on the safe side I thought I’d better ring Paul in St John’s Wood. He had just given me his new number at the Cavendish Avenue house and I had it handy. I’m not sure who picked up his phone, not a voice I recognised, probably somebody who was working there. But, for all I knew, it might have been a doctor or a paramedic. As you do, I feared the worst. Then Paul came on the line sounding as fit as a fiddle and I felt very foolish. I stopped myself saying something like: “So you’re alive then!” Instead, I babbled on like an idiot about something and nothing for a good ten minutes, just chattering away in the hope that I’d think of something sensible to ask the guy or some suitable way of rounding off the call without embarrassing myself. At length I paused for breath and there was a moment’s silence. Then Paul said blankly: “Tony, what the fuck have you called me for?” I had blabbered on and said absolutely nothing! So now I thought up a trivial and pretended that a teenybopper magazine reporter had asked it. Paul sounded less than convinced that this was the real reason for my call but I left it like that. I never discovered why there had been this unusually large flurry of calls from Fleet Street or why it was Paul rather than one of the others who was thought to be dead. I returned all the calls, telling everyone that I’d just spoken to the Macca man himself who was very much alive and rocking. Naturally enough, nobody bothered to print the story because of its weak ending.

Tony Barrow – From “John, Paul, George, Ringo & me: the real Beatles story“, 2006

Last updated on December 24, 2023