The 'Paul is dead' myth | Page 53 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

My belated report -- about the guy who supposedly was at the epicenter of the beginning of the Paul is dead rumor, Dartanyan Brown. I finally located him on substack and asked him about it, which you can see from my screenshot here.  Unfortunately, I sent him this message over a year ago, in December of 2024, and he never responded to me.

Yes, it could be that Dartanyan Brown doesn't want to talk about this issue for various reasons that could even lead to some kind of nefarious conspiracy where he is complicit in hiding something about those old days.

Or, maybe he just doesn't remember the details, or maybe he doesn't want some stranger like me pestering him with some question about when he was a teenager because he's got better things to do now with his own life. Nevertheless, I'm not entirely satisfied and I won't entirely rule out my first suspicion above.

I didn't think of that -- he might have some unpleasant experiences with that

Ahhh Girl said
https://www.the-paulmccartney-.....circulate/

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.

https://www.beatlesbible.com/1.....his-death/

In 1969, the rumor went explosive internationally with that phone call to the Detroit radio station.

  

I found that Tony Barrow book and read that passage at greater length.  From his account, it seems the 1966 "rumors" were just a spate of calls from "Fleet Street" inquiring as to Paul's "health", with one call directly asking if he was dead.  Barrow says he then phoned Paul at his London home but didn't tell him why he was calling, and ended up "babbling" for ten minutes to cover up the fact that he just wanted to check to see everything was okay.  Barrow also doesn't mention whether he ever told any of the Beatles, and doesn't say it ever expanded beyond a momentary flurry (a few days, or a week or two at the most).  Barrow also says that rumors about all the Beatles having ill health or even dying was quite common, though this particular "spate" seemed unusual because of so many calls (a dozen in one afternoon).

This seems to be a different phenomenon than what came later in 1969, where it became international and became a "thing".  So my previous question still stands; either Paul is doing his annoyingly characteristic fudging due to poor memory or whatever, conflating the first brief spate of rumors (which he didn't know about till Barrow wrote his book perhaps) -- or something else is going on.