Rock Radio Scrapbook

AIRCHECK OF THE WEEK
For week of October 18, 2009
Weekly issue #551

Subject: PAUL IS ALIVE AND WELL, MAYBE
Station: WKBW Buffalo, N.Y.
Date: October 31, 1969
Time: 1:08:40

In the fall of 1969, an astounding rumour began making the rounds.

Paul McCartney was dead.

The first published claim that the Beatles icon had passed away came in an article written by Tim Harper and published September 17, 1969 in the Drake University (Iowa) newspaper, the Times-Delphic. The article - titled "Is Paul McCartney Dead" - did not support the rumour but merely reported the latest West Coast college gossip that McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966. He claimed he got his information from Dartanyan Brown, a fellow Drake student and Times-Delphic writer. Just six days later - on September 23 - Barb Ulviden penned an article on the same topic for the Northern Illinois publication, the Northern Star.

But the rumour didn't really begin to take off until October 12, 1969, when a student phoned Russ Gibb while he was on the air at WKNR-FM in Dearborn, Mich. The student - identified as Tom Zarski of Eastern Michigan University - claimed McCartney was dead and suggested Gibb play the Beatles' "Revolution #9" backwards. The clue "turn me on, dead man" was heard - Gibb aired some other clues - and from that point on there was no stopping one of the greatest urban legends of all time.

Other stations soon joined the bandwagon, including Buffalo's WKBW. Their special "Paul is Alive and Well, Maybe" aired October 31, 1969 (it was repeated in 1972) and reviews many of the clues that had surfaced by then. WKBW jocks Sandy Beach, Danny Neaverth, Stan Roberts and program director Jeff Kaye all appear in this documentary.

Hear it here.

(The Dave LaRussa Collection via Paul Palo)

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