John Black

As the Year of Our Lord 2017 draws to a close, I thought I'd emphasize the research I've found on the real name of our Paul by reiterating two examples of where our Paul was called JOHN [that  I first posted on November 6, 2014] and listing another example I found.

1.)  When I was among the young Beatles fans in Detroit, we heard from our Detroit deejays that Paul's first name was JOHN and that he was called by his middle name because of the confusion it would cause to have two band members named John.

2.)  The first name of real Paul--the true Paul McCartney--was JAMES.  If you look at Hunter Davies' authorized biography of The Beatles--both the first edition published in 1968 and the second edition published in 1978--you will read at the beginning of the chapter on Paul that Davies identifies Paul's first name as JOHN.

3.)  Alistair Taylor was Brian Epstein's personal assistance.  Taylor wrote several books about The Beatles.  His last book was called With The Beatles  and was published September 1, 2003.  In the book, Taylor relates a story of how FAUL (our Paul's replacement) went with Taylor and Faul's dog, Martha at dawn to a hill that overlooked London.  They were alone on this hill when they turned around to suddenly find a stranger behind them:

"He said, 'Good morning,' politely.  'My name is JOHN.'"
Paul said 'Good morning.  Mine's Paul.  This is Alistair and that's Martha the dog,' as our four-legged friend returned swiftly.
JOHN said, 'It's lovely to meet you.  Isn't this wonderful?' and he walked away."

Taylor said Faul and he looked at each other and when they turned to see where the man went, he had vanished--completely disappeared.  Taylor said he and Faul were totally baffled by this experience.
Alistair Taylor believed this incidence was Faul's inspiration for the song, "Fool On The Hill."  As I've said in my post of April 29, 2016, I think "Fool On The Hill" was written about our Paul.


The main contribution I believe I've made to date in this mystery of our Paul is that our Paul's real name was JOHN BLACK.

So as we enter the New Year, let's resolve to push for the truth to be told of the young man who won our hearts.

 

JOHN BLACK (Paul McCartney)

Forever Young

 

 

                                                           

                                                          - - - paulumbo

Faul As A Young Man --Another Photo

As I said in my January 22, 2016 post I think Faul (the last--and current--Paul) wants to bring HIS life out of the shadows, so to speak, and establish his own identity before the public.  So slowly early photos of Faul are being published.  I found this one on Pinterest, taken sometime no doubt in the mid-1950's.  Definitely Faul (with the longer face and distinctive lips.)  If the photo was taken in, say, 1955, Faul would have been ~20 years old.

 

Much More To Come

I have been busy exploring a very interesting aspect of The Beatles' collective life that has been casually discussed but not at all well explored.  As with all of the obscure comings and goings of The Beatles, this is taking odd twists and turns, and I've been tracking down the best information I can get.  So there is much more to come.


                                                               ---paulumbo




                                               

"John" Mentioned Bill's Name in 1966.

As anyone who's interested in the Paul mystery knows there has been speculation as to the name of our Paul's replacement.  If you check YouTube you will find George mentioning the name Bill or Faul (fake Paul) and one other reference of the name Bill in Faul's film, Give My Regards To Broad Street.  I have found a 1966 interview where the  new, new John says the name BILL.  The title of the YouTube video is John Lennon Interview In Almeria, Spain (1966).

I call the last John (the John of ~ September, 1966-on) pinched-nosed John because of the curious "revised" nose that this John had. (See photo, below.)

Well, this John acted in a movie called How I Won The War, filmed in Spain and Germany in 1966.

In an interview with Fred Robbins, an entertainment reporter for a syndicated radio show, this John says the following:
     Fred Robbins:  "Does this mean that all of the boys are going to be trying different things as you go along, John?"  5:27-5:31
     "John":  " Well, I can't speak for BILL, as you know [OR:  BILL S. , you know], but George has just got back from India."  5:31-5:37

So "John" in 1966 was confirming that the new Paul's first name was BILL.
 
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Other Voices, Part 22: George, Again

Because I think our Paul might have been replaced in early, July, 1966 while The Beatles had a 70-minute stop-over in Hong Kong en route to Manila, I started looking for solo Beatle songs about Hong Kong.  I found one.

George worked on a solo album from March, 1980-February, 1981 called Somewhere In England.  On it, he did a cover of songwriter Hoagy Carmichael's 1944 song, "Hong Kong Blues."

The lyrics of the song talk about a man who was arrested in Hong Kong and spent 20 years in jail for drug use.

There are several things going on in George's singing that song.

One thing is the line in the song that says, "I need someone to love me, need somebody to carry me home to San Francisco and bury my body there."

I read the lyrics to the song and listened carefully to George's subtle changes of them.

I suspected there was a reason for George changing the lyrics, so I listened to the song backwards.  At 1:42-1:44 in the reversed song, George says:  "PAUL, TAKE ME BACK."

If you have knowledge of some of the Paul-Is-Dead clues that The Beatles worked into four years' worth of songs from 1966-1970, you know of the so-called White Album that had a curious snippit of a song called "Can You Take Me Back" that cross-faded into the major Paul-Is-Dead song, "Revolution 9."  Major because--played backwards--it hinted STRONGLY that our Paul died.  George--according to a Wikipedia  article--contributed spoken vocals, tape loops, sound effects and electric guitar work on "Revolution 9."

The lyrics of "Can You Take Me Back"--Faul's intro to "Revolution 9"-- are:
     Can you take me back where I came from?
     Can you take me back?
     Can you take me back where I came from?
     Brother, can you take me back?
     Can you take me back?
     Can you take me back where I came from?
     Can you take me back?

George could have been mocking Faul and Faul's drug arrest in Japan in January, 1980.  In other words, Faul mocked Paul's removal from the group and this was George's come-uppance to Faul.

But it could also have been George's sorrowful remembrance of the "brother" he lost in 1966.






Note:  I originally found the Youtube video for "Hong Kong Blues" at https://youtube.com/watch?v=dEmlQRh8VGs.  This video is no longer available, but I found another Youtube video of the song at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9Rfvc9yqBo .

Junior's Farm

Faul and his group Wings released a song called "Junior's Farm" in October, 1974.  He recorded the song in July, 1974 in Nashville, TN.

The story was that Faul stayed at Curly Putman Jr's farm, (Putman was a Nashville songwriter), during Wings recording of the song and that that was the reason the song got its name.

OR,  it could be Faul was referencing the farm he acquired from our Paul after Paul was replaced in 1966. 

As I said in the "Albert Goldman's Clues of 1968, Part 1" post [July 24, 2017], Faul was, of course, aware that Paul was much younger than him:  from my research and calculations by about nine years.  Our Paul was very much Faul's junior (and also the youngest member ever in The Beatles.)

Faul and his family liked to go and "lay low' at the Scottish farm that our Paul had just before he "left" the group, so I think Faul may have been thinking about Paul when he wrote "Junior's Farm".

Albert Goldman's Clues of 1968, Part 2

Continuing with my last post, Albert Goldman, author and professor wrote a critique of Hunter Davies' Beatles biography in the October, 1968 Vogue magazine.  Goldman's biography of John Lennon was published in November,1988.  Goldman said he spent six years researching Lennon's life for the book and conducted 1,200 interviews during that time, so my guess is that Goldman had a keen interest in The Beatles and by 1968 must have had a fair grasp of the dramas and machinations happening within the lives of The Beatles--by my count--eight young men total.

So in the article Goldman says:

"Blown off all the charts of traditional and contemporary life by their stupendous success, the SURVIVING [my emphasis] Beatles lead a Robinson Crusoe existence, struggling to live alone on their little islands of idleness."

He's talking about the four Beatles written about by Davies in 1968:  the last group with a new Paul and a new John introduced in late 1966.

So I take it Goldman means there were other Beatles no longer in the group.  And he also could have meant literally that certain of the other Beatles were by the publishing of the book and the article, DEAD.

Albert Goldman's Clues of 1968, Part 1

Hunter Davies wrote the authorized biography of The Beatles.  The first edition was published in 1968.

Albert Goldman was an American professor who wrote biographies of popular culture personalities:  American controversial comedian Lenny Bruce, rock and roller Elvis Presley--and--in 1988, John Lennon. 

Well . . . Goldman wrote a review of Davies' book for the October, 1968 edition of  Vogue magazine that had two notable pieces of information in it.

First, Goldman said that the 1968 version of The Beatles lived in "lavish homes which they occupy but do not possess--like servants when the family is away." [my emphasis]
1.)  George lived in an Esher, Surrey house called Kinfauns from July, 1964 until January 1970.
2.)  Ringo lived in a house called Sunny Heights in Weybridge, Surrey from July, 1965 until November, 1968.
3.)  Our John lived in a Weybridge, Surrey house called Kenwood beginning in July, 1964.  When the new John appeared in late 1966, that John lived there until the late spring of 1968.
4.)  Our Paul moved into a London house on Cavendish Avenue in March, 1966 that he had supposedly bought in April, 1965.  When he was replaced in the group, the next Paul moved into the house late in 1966.  Our Paul also reportedly bought a 183 acre farm--called High Park--in Cambeltown, Scotland that was also reoccupied by the new, late-1966 Paul.
Here's a photo of Jane Asher and Faul at High Park in 1967.

 [Note the "22" on Faul's  t-shirt.  As I've speculated in other posts, I think our Paul was born in 1944 (or 1945), which, of course, means that Paul was replaced when he was 22.]

So it's possible that Goldman was saying that the residences of The Beatles were, in effect, fringe benefits that went with the job.  That certainly turned out to be true for our Paul and our John.

Sloop John B(lack)

In my January 10, 2015 post I talked about The Beach Boys' 1966 album, Pet Sounds.  One track from the album that made it onto a 45 single was the song "Sloop John B."

I've been researching and posting information about our Paul's real name and I am convinced that his real name was JOHN BLACK.  It makes sense that the competitive Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys would want to make some comment on John Black's life and I think "Sloop John B" was it.

For right now, I can't say how biographical the song is.  I am researching the probability that at some time in the 1965-1966 time frame The Beatles owned--or had access to--a yacht.

And I did find a very interesting quote from Geoffrey Ellis, who was the Chief Executive of NEM Enterprises, Beatles' manager's Brian Epstein's company.  In Ellis' 2006 book, I Should Have Known Better:  A Life In Pop Management--The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Elton John, he says:

"As well as dealing with contracts, tax matters and various company administrative affairs, there were concerns over aspects of the Beatles' lives which required attention.  The secrecy over Paul's whereabouts when he went on holiday, awkwardly for the preparations for the Northern Songs stock market flotation, was typical of the discretion which always had to be exercised over the movements of each of the four Beatles, and over all aspects of their private lives." (my emphasis)

And an interesting note is that--as I said in the 2015 post--The Beach Boys hired Derek Taylor who had been The Beatles' publicist, as their publicist.  Derek Taylor directed an innocuous little video featuring The Beach Boys goofing around in a swimming pool with "Sloop John B" as the video's theme music.  But the song's title--and possibly some of the song's lyrics-- was a sly reference to our Paul.

The Beatles In Hong Kong, 1966

I found an interesting website that could be a starting point on the quest to find more information on our Paul.  The website is the Hong Kong Public Library's Multimedia Information System.

When I entered:  "1966-07-04" in the search box at:  https://mmis.hkpl.gov.hk/web/guest/old-hk-collection , it returned four newspaper articles about The Beatles' 70-minute stopover at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport on July 3, 1966 when they were on route to the Philippines.

Here are the images from the four newspapers:

1.)  Wah Kiu Yat Po, page 5



2.)  Ta Kung Pao, page 5

 
                                                                                                      

3.)  The Kung Sheung Evening News, page 1

                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                           

4.)  The Kung Sheung Daily News, page 4


As you can see, it is impossible to tell if this is our Paul in those photos, but since Hong Kong was in British hands at the time, it is possible that the official "lifting" of Paul from the group could have happened there, because . . .  this isn't Paul in:

                                    

The Philippines;

New Delhi;

OR London, when The Beatles finally returned on July 8, 1966.

An Addition To My Previous Post

[Note:  The information about a detail of The Beatles' history that was going to be this post will be the next post.]

In my preceding post about our Paul's song, "Eleanor Rigby", I was saying that a September 18, 1966 Sunday London Times interview was, apparently, with the third Paul--the Paul that surfaced publicly in late 1966 and has been Paul ever since.

As I've said several times, I have found NO credible photos of our Paul past late June or early July, 1966.  I have been looking for more supporting information that the man in the September, 1966 interview was not our Paul.  I believe this is called internal evidence and I have found some.

In the September, 1966 interview, "Paul" supposedly describes how he got the idea for "Eleanor Rigby":  "I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it.  Just like Jimmy Durante. . . . I was in Bristol when I decided Daisy Hawkins [which might have been our Paul's first idea for the title woman's name] wasn't a good name.  I walked round looking at the shops and I saw the name Rigby.  You got that?  Quick pan to Bristol.  I can just see this all as a Hollywood musical."

Jimmy Durante, mentioned by "Paul" in the interview, was an all-around entertainer: a pianist, comedian, actor, composer, singer, and songwriter who appeared on stage, radio, television and in clubs and films and whose career spanned seven decades from the 1910's through the 1970's.

Contrast the bombastic statements by "Paul" with a YouTube audio I found of our Paul being interviewed for the BBC program, "Pop Profile."  He was interviewed May 2, 1966.  You can hear Paul's interview at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQBRQN1-tKY   .

At 4:52-5:43 in the interview Paul says:  "The whole idea of making films is good. . . . But, no, I don't mean very big, expensive films, but films that you sort of just make because you fancy making a film.  But I mean, the only thing is that already having got, umm, the kind of, sort of, image that we've got, if any of us wanted to do anything like that, we would tend to get sort of beaten down because people would say, 'Ah, look, he's not tryin' that old trick of making a film or, you know, he's not going classical.'  You know, and it sounds like that.  But the only thing is--and I thought exactly like that about people who did that, too--I always used to think, you know, 'There he goes, going the same old path they always go--all-'round entertainers, you know.'  But, ah, it's just that you find that there are some things just as interesting as what you've been doing, you know, for a certain amount of time."

Does THIS sound like the man in the September, 1966 interview?

Eleanor Rigby, Anywhere and Everywhere, England

Stories get told; tales are concocted; yarns are spun.  So I thought this post should be about the endlessly told and embellished tale of how our Paul wrote the 1966 song, "Eleanor Rigby" and how:  1.) he could have had different references in putting together the song; or 2.) how any other Beatle--including the REAL Paul McCartney--or any other person, for that matter, who kicked around Liverpool in the 1950's and '60's could have written the song.

First we have many so-called first-hand accounts from supposedly the man himself--our Paul--on how he composed the lyrics.

The first account comes from a Sunday London Times interview of September 18, 1966 by Hunter Davies, who two years' later wrote the authorized biography of The Beatles.

In that interview, Paul or "Paul" said he thought of using the name Daisy Hawkins for the main character and decided, instead, on the last name Rigby when he saw a sign for a business in Bristol, England.  The business's name was Rigby & Evens, Ltd., a wine and spirits shipping company.

The published date of the London Times interview was September 18, 1966.  In trying to figure out if this is our Paul that Davies is talking to, let's go forward to the 1996 edition of The Beatles' biography and the updated introduction to the book.

On Page xix of the introduction, Davies says:  "The Beatle I first met was Paul, in September, 1966."  On Page xxi, Davies says:  "I went to see Paul at his house in Cavendish Avenue, St. John's Wood.  It was pure self-indulgence.  I wanted to meet him, but I also wanted to hear the background to 'Eleanor Rigby'."

It is my firm opinion that our Paul never made it to The Beatles' U.S. tour of August, 1966.  I have not been able to find any credible photos of our Paul past late June or very early July of 1966.  If our Paul was, by September, 1966:  1.) dead; or 2.) missing in action (willingly or otherwise); or 3.) being held against his will by the English government and Hunter Davies' interview of "Paul" was at Paul's house in September, 1966, then Davies' interview was with the NEW Paul, called Faul by Paul researchers.

Faul has talked about the song in numerous interviews throughout his 50-year stint as Paul.  A lot of other people have weighed in with claims of contributing to the lyrics of the song including:  Pete Shotton, real John's friend and bandmate in The Quarrymen;  the English musical playwright, Lionel Bart; either our John or Yoko Ono's pinched-nosed John, in a 1980 interview with David Sheff in the book, All We Are Saying; and--most interestingly-- Paul's subconscious mind.

Let's start with the subconscious mind train of thought.  In the 1980's someone found a gravestone with the name Eleanor Rigby on it in the St. Peter's Church cemetery, located in the Liverpool district of Woolton, where the real John and the real Paul met for the first time at a church fete on July 6, 1957.  (See photo right.)  So, subconsciously, the real Paul could have remembered that name and plugged it into a song he was writing, right?  Except that it was OUR Paul who wrote Eleanor Rigby.  Could our Paul have gotten that name from a gravestone?  According to the British birth-marriage-death record site, FreeBMD, there were 38 death listings for Eleanor Rigby between 1842 and January, 1965.  [From the years 1843 to 1943 there were also 63 birth listings.]  Eleanor Rigby-inscribed gravestones are all over England.

Let's go to the sometimes-quoted assertion that Paul was walking along with Jane Asher down King Street in Bristol, England in January, 1966 and across the street from the theatre Jane was performing in, Paul saw the Rigby & Evens' business sign I mentioned earlier.  I took a look at the 1966 British telephone book for Bristol and found something really interesting.  Say Paul was leafing through that directory and found Page 339.  Immediately above the business's listing is a listing for a Miss E. Rigby. (See image below.)  But the listing is for an E. Rigby and not Eleanor, you say.  Well, in 2008 an English non-profit called the Sunbeams Music Trust auctioned off a page from a pay ledger at a Liverpool hospital that Faul had sent then in 1990 in answer to a request for a donation to the trust.  The name on the ledger is E. Rigby.  (See image below directory page. E. Rigby is on the 8th. line down.)





 

This is the same Eleanor Rigby whose name was inscribed in the Woolton church

cemetery.

Which brings us to yet another possible scenario for references for the title's name.

The earlier mentioned Rigby & Evens had an outlet in Liverpool.  (See label on bottle, below.)
For years the business was located on Silk House Lane.  Silk House Lane (now reduced to Silk House Court) is within a short walking distance of the Cavern Club--where the early, real Beatles often played. (See image below.)  [Courtesy, Bing maps]
Sometime around 1966, Rigby & Evens moved the business to 5 Cook St., which is also within walking distance of the Cavern Club. (See second map image below.)  [Courtesy, Google maps]  So any Beatle or combination, from 1961-April, 1966 could have used that as a reference.

My own personal opinion is that our Paul and our John wrote the song--lyrics and verse--and who knows how they decided on the names.

But it shows you how stories get started, perpetuated, and built on.  In my next post, I'll tell you about another ~1965-1966 detail in The Beatles' life and some of the interesting things I found out about it.


                                                 ---paulumbo