look as live performers, their "image as pin-up pop stars was also undergoing a metamorphosis" by late 1966. The Beatles are shown inspecting objets d'art that the Japanese promoter had arranged to have brought to the group's hotel suite, on 1 and 2 July, to help fill the time before their shows at the Budokan Hall. The LP cover was one of several references to the Beatles that the English band Oasis incorporated into the artwork for their albums and singles from 1994 onwards, at a time when the Britpop movement drew heavily on the visual style of the Beatles' Revolver period. The image of the Beatles in the Tokyo hotel room served as inspiration for the photograph used on Oasis' debut album, Definitely Maybe, taken by Michael Spencer Jones. "Paul is dead" interpretation From Revolver onwards, the Beatles' more dedicated fans began analysing the band's song lyrics for hidden meaning, and, in the description of American academic Camille Paglia, their album covers were also "feverishly scrutinized for clues and coded messages". The cover of A Collection of Beatles Oldies was viewed as the first example of the Beatles leaving clues relating to the "Paul is dead" hoax. This theory, which escalated in late 1969, contended that Paul McCartney had been decapitated in a car crash in November 1966 and replaced in the band by a lookalike – a subterfuge that was facilitated by their retirement from live performance and change of image for Sgt. Pepper. Proponents of the theory noted that four figures were pictured around a car in the top left corner of the painting, and that another car appeared to be heading straight towards the head of the man reclining in the chair, who supposedly looked most like McCartney out of all the Beatles. In addition, if the first two letters of the word printed on the bass drum, "OLDIES", are each advanced alphabetically, the word becomes a message stating "PM [for Paul McCartney] dies". The back-cover photo is also cited as evidence in the "Paul is dead" hoax, because of McCartney's atypical black attire, his distance from Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, and the appearance of smoke around him. This clue represents ectoplasm, suggesting, in the description of author Nicholas Kollerstrom, that McCartney's presence is merely an "apparition". Release EMI's Parlophone label released A Collection of Beatles Oldies on 10 December 1966. With speculation continuing