title: Turn Me On, Dead Man: The Complete Story of the Paul McCartney Death Hoax (Rock & Roll Remembrances)
author:  Andru J. Reeve 
description: In the fall of 1969, a rumor that Paul McCartney had died three years earlier in a car crash swept America. Started by deejays, the hoax gained momentum when a college newspaper article postulated that the other Beatles had replaced him with the winner of a hastily arranged Paul look-alike contest. They also allegedly planted clues to the tragedy in their records; e.g., a passage in their titleless white album supposedly says--when played backwards--"turn me on, dead man." National news reports spread the story further, and McCartney finally consented to give formal press interviews to lay it to rest. It lives on as an entire generation's cultural memory and was spoofed by Paul himself in the title and on the cover of his recent concert album, <i>Paul Is Live</i>. Reeve traces the hoax's origins and spread in maniacal detail, to the point of providing transcripts of radio shows and listing 70 of the Beatles' "clues" that Paul was dead. The fact that the outlandish story was believed by so many in the 1960s is the strongest argument to date against recreational drug use. <i>Gordon Flagg</i>
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  _**Her Fearful Symmetry**_
  
  
  A Novel
  
  # AUDREY NIFFENEGGER
  
  
  For Jean Pateman,
  
  
  with love.
  
  
  _She said, ―I know what it‘s like to be dead._
  
  
  _I know what it is to be sad.‖_
  
  
  _And she‘s making me feel like I‘ve never been born._
  
  
  —THE BEATLES
  
  
  _**Part One**_
  
  
  _**The End**_
  
  
  _E_ LSPETH DIED while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine
  watching tea shoot into a small plastic cup. Later he would remember walking
  down the hospital corridor with the cup of horrible tea in his hand, alone
  under the fluorescent lights, retracing his steps to the room where Elspeth
  lay surrounded by machines. She had turned her head towards the door and her
  eyes were open; at first Robert thought she was conscious.
  
  
  In the seconds before she died, Elspeth remembered a day last spring when she
  and Robert had walked along a muddy path by the Thames in Kew Gardens. There
  was a smell of rotted leaves; it had been raining. Robert said, “We s