Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Turn Me On, Dead Man

3 comments:

Barbara Suzuki said...

Weird!

I've just finished reading Robert Twigger's 'Angry White Pyjamas' on training with the Tokyo riot police for a year, and was wondering what it is with 'angry' and 'things Japanese'?

angrysoba said...

Hi Barbara,

I've read that book too and quite liked it. Actually, I was lent the book not long after adopting my handle and thought it was a bit of a coincidence. I never actually put much thought into my own name so it doesn't have any significance.

This post is not actually complete yet. I had vaguely heard about the theory that was popular in the late Sixties that Paul MacCartney had died and that the rest of the Beatles and their record company covered it up. Apparently, this is one of the "clues" as playing "Revolution no.9" backwards is supposed to reveal the "message", "Turn me on, Dead Man" instead of "Number Nine".

Much of the theory was started as a joke by two student journalists who had listed a number of "clues" that they had found from lyrics and album covers but a lot of people then took it seriously and started searching for more of them.

"Revolution No.9" is a weird enough song as it is but it has also been interpreted in conjunction with a few other "clues" by some people as a premonition of John Lennon's murder.

I'm also reading Vincent Bugliosi's book, "Helter Skelter" about the Manson murders right now. Apparently, Manson thought that John Lennon's shouts of "Right! Right! Right!" was actually, "Rise! Rise! Rise!" and that the Beatles were calling for the start of a race war.

The song attracts a lot of nuts, it seems.

Barbara said...

I actually do remember the 'out-of-America' conspiracy theories about Paul being dead and concealed messages in the records played slowly/backwards/upside down.

I thought such theories were mainly drug-and-paranoia-induced, and probably still are.