So did Paul die in 1966?

Some questions come to mind, all of which lead inevitably to a big resounding "no:"

1. As you alluded, how could it have been kept a secret by all concerned for so long? I could go into great detail about this objection, but if you're reasonably sane and intelligent, you can probably do about as good a job of exploring the question as me. Besides, I'm way too lazy to tackle that one. You want five pages? Ten? Will I be paid by the word? Anybody?

Bueller?

2. Even more importantly, why? The old actor's question "what's my motivation?" plays a big part here.

Why would John Lennon agree to go on sharing songwriting credit with a stand-in? Why would he and the increasingly alienated George have agreed to go on letting a phony Paul act like he's taking over leadership of the band from John?

Why would George Martin want to work with the guy? We must presume the changeover from real Paul to phony Paul could not possibly have fooled George Martin, and if the already overworked Brian Epstein was still alive when the rumor started, he would have had to have known too, and would've been required to work till he dropped to polish the phony's skills until he could function as a plausible "Paul."

If Paul had really died in 1966, after all, it wouldn't have meant the end of the Beatles, it would just have been a major bump in the road, but a smaller bump than they'd already hurtled over many times before (Pete Best's rabid fans; snubs from record companies and jacking-arounds from concert promoters; utter chaos while touring; about half of everything gloriously wonderful and mind-bogglingly terrible that happened in Hamburg, including the shock and heartbreak of Stu Sutcliffe's death; the list goes on and on for quite a while further.)

In the real world, as opposed to the fantasy world of conspiracy theory, they could have just gotten a new bass player, and used more of George's and Ringo's songs, and if the new bass player had songwriting talent of his own, that would have been even better. And for big bonus points, the replacement wouldn't have been as much of a bossy moo as the later Paul (phony, according to the conspiracy theory) we see in "Let It Be." So why would they have put up with a bossy Billy Shears for even a minute?

And it's not as if Paul's guitar playing and singing skills were so much better than any other possible replacement-- except, significantly, a replacement like the alleged "William Shears Campbell," whose only qualifications were his appearance.

Sure, Paul was damn good, but George was always the best guitarist in the group, and everybody knew it. The bass was never essential to the group's sound anyway.

3. Hey, I remember seeing the article about the rumors sometime in 1969 or early 1970. I remember playing "Strawberry Fields" at 45 RPM so that if you're expecting to hear "I buried Paul," that's exactly what you hear, but if you're expecting to hear "I'm very bored," which is what John Lennon claimed he said, that too is exactly what you hear. And I'd sure have to say, it was a lot of fun tracking down all those alleged clues and seeing if anything could be verified. (Answer: not really)

But all the alleged "artistic clues" add up to an even bigger question of "what's my motivation?" After all, if the conspirators, including the other three Beatles, had actually managed to pull off such a colossal fraud, the last thing in the world they would have wanted to do was drop hint after hint after alleged hint that they had done so...

...All the way up to John Lennon's line in "How Do You Sleep?" when he sings "them freaks was right when they said you was dead." I can't think of a single reason in heaven or hell, Earth or purgatory, why Lennon would put that line in a song, if it were true.

"I don't deduce, I observe."