Just thinking out loud.

A new interview with Yoko Ono by Bill DeYoung can be found here.

A day or two before it was published, an excerpt appeared on the Abbeyrd Beatles News Page.

The excerpt contained an interesting exchange that was removed from the published version.

Q: How are things at Apple now that Neil’s gone?

A: I think that Jeff Jones, obviously, brought in some fresh air, and it’s all very exciting. But it doesn’t mean that Neil did a bad job — Neil was a part of the whole history, and he was doing a brilliant job. It’s just that sometimes it’s good to go through some changes, and we decided to do that.

Do you notice anything between the lines there? Like maybe Neil didn't just retire? Like maybe those in power felt it was time for a change?

If I were Neil Aspinall I don't know how I would take that after all those years of loyal service.

I'm not saying that Iamaphoney is Neil Aspinall. I'm just thinking.

If you play all of the Rotten Apple Series videos in sequence you will notice some abrupt stylistic changes along the way. If you look at any of the first few videos and then jump to #13 you wonder how they could have been made by the same person. I mentioned previously that original music didn't start appearing until somewhere in the 30s (Number 30 has original music, but that's only because it was pulled down for a couple months and then the soundtrack was replaced when it reappeared). Around the mid 30s came the announcement that Iamaphoney solved the Love Code. I think the first new song, based on "1-2-3-4-5-6-7 All good children go to heaven" backwards was on Video #36. Then in Video #39 this guy shows up for the first time.



Since that first appearance, the man pictured above has traveled the globe collecting clues...or in some cases leaving them. Video #41 marked another big advance in production techniques. One version of Video #65 showed a bit of a slickly produced documentary, which was immediately taken down. Now Video #101 seemed to open a new chapter with some type of game challenging Iamaphoney's fans to go find a hidden suitcase.

With so many changes, you have to wonder if the identity of Iamaphoney could have changed somewhere along the way. Or maybe the Iamaphoney "Organization" has expanded and evolved along with the content of the videos. So, imagine that you are some guy who has given your heart and soul to an organization for about 45 years or so, and you happen to see this video maker on YouTube gathering all kinds of popularity making guesses about things that you were an intimate part of until they dumped you. Maybe you are angry. Maybe you want to mess with your old bosses. So you provide some information. And you provide some resources. What if an insider like Neil, or someone else joined the Iamaphoney organization somewhere in the middle?

Ah, I guess this is crazy talk.

On the Trail of Iamaphoney

You never need a reason to listen to a great McCartney track, but RockXLight gives you one anyway. How he spent his winter holiday on the trail of Iamaphoney in Mexico.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH85CTV8FHY

Son of the Magickian

The fireman is no mason

This cryptic phrase has flashed during several Rotten Apple videos.

It originally came from the website http://fire-man.com which no longer exists--But you can still see it at http://web.archive.org/web/19990117014116/http://www.fire-man.com/. However when it did exist from January 1999 until July 4, 2007, it was the official site for the CD Fireman Rushes. Most of you know that this was the second collaboration by Paul McCartney and the Producer Youth (aka Martin Glover, bass player and founding member of the band Killing Joke).

The site itself was rather amateurish looking with a front page consisting of a cut-out of the word fire on a black background. One click got you to another page with 9 (yes 9) boxes at the bottom which were links. One link allowed you to purchase the CD but most of them led to weird phrases. The box that featured barely visible stars led to the phrase "The fireman is no mason."

A short time after the release of the CD, the site boasted one of the strangest web casts in the history of the Internet. A transcript at the preceding link shows someone asking if the statement "The fireman is no mason" is an anagram. The fireman answered, "No, no sam, it ain't no anagram."

Well, a recent video by YouTube user YouKnowMyName231 pointed out that it is in fact an anagram for "I am the risen son of man."

Did Iamaphoney ever explicitly state that? I don't know.
Did Iamaphoney know about the anagram? I think so.

The Rotten Apple video that shook me out of my skin and caused me to become a major fan of Iamaphoney was Number 41.

It is staggering how many references this video makes to Jesus and there are nearly as many to the anti-Christ. It is the video of Armageddon in my view.

Despite all of those references, I was not able to find a flash of the line "The fireman is no mason," in it. However, if you look at the description and the tags...

A final footnote: Gigwise.com reported yesterday that Paul McCartney has started yet another musical project--another collaboration with Youth. God knows what they are cooking up this time.

Brit Awards - New Links

Live and Let Die and Hey Jude

Backstage

Backstage Interview

What are those images in the Rotten Apple videos - Part 3

Click on each picture for more information.

Brit Awards

It's hard to tell if Paul was just suffering from winter time voice or if he was a bit emotional during part of his performance. He must be under an enormous strain with Iamaphoney having Mal's briefcase and all. Seriously, the lyrics to "Hey Jude" were especially poignant under his current circumstances. I dare say it could bring a tear to the eye. Speaking of eyes, I think there was a nice replica of the McCartney Eye on the stage. Enjoy the 3-Part video if you didn't get a chance to see it. Thanks to YouTube user maccalennon.

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ggXeXjxygk
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRD-1Rdb7_0
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6UpNxGqVNA

Lily

We're all wondering about the significance of the name Lily that appeared on the Official EPK for "The McCartney Years" DVD set. We have seen Lily before on the cover of Ram.



Most people assumed when RAM was released that L.I.L.Y. with its punctuation was referring to Linda in some way. The most common interpretation was of course "Linda, I Love You" which would make sense in the context of the songs Paul McCartney was writing at the time.



It is not surprising that Paul would do subtle tributes to Linda like this. In fact there have been several since she died; and they might have increased in frequency since his marriage fell apart. Maybe it was an accident, but people discovered quickly that "Memory Almost Full" could be an anagram for "For My Soulmate LLM."

Another Linda tribute connection is the well reported fact that Linda's favorite flower was the Lily of the Valley. In fact a web site that is a tribute to Linda goes by the name "Lily of the Valley."

However, another Lily is Lily Evans, the widow of the late Beatles road manager Mal Evans. Mal was killed by police in 1975 after he had pointed an unloaded gun at them. As the story goes, Mal's ashes were lost in the post along with the manuscript of his book and presumably other materials which are now in a briefcase under a tree at Spahn ranch. Paul McCartney got in a legal battle with Lily in the late 1990's over her desire to sell his handwritten lyrics to "With A Little Help From My Friends." He got a little bit of bad press at the time about it. Here is a typical example.



Another Lily who has turned up in the Rotten Apple series recently is Lily Gray who has the distinction of having one of the most creepy tombstones in the United States (pictured above). No one knows why the tombstone says that she was "a victim of the beast." A researcher named Richelle Hawks has uncovered some facts about her (including the fact that the correct spelling of her name is Lily). I don't know of anyone who can connect Lily Gray to Aleister Crowley (or Paul McCartney) but it does make one wonder.

Earlier today an anonymous comment on this site produced yet another Lily. "Lily the Pink" was a song by the Scaffold, a British band that featured Michael McCartney also known as Michael McGear also known as Paul McCartney's younger brother. Wikipedia tells us that the song was based on the folk song "The Ballad Of Lydia Pinkham." Anonymous noted a particularly interesting verse:
And Uncle Paul, he was terribly small. He
Was the shortest man in town.
So on his body he rubbed medicinal compound,
And now he's six foot, underground.

I think those comments from anonymous deserve our attention. A little while later a new video appeared on YouTube under a couple of Iamaphoney's aliases. Guess what flashed by around the 0:10 mark? Yes, "Lily the Pink" by the Scaffold.



Watch Paul McCartney's appearance on the Brit Awards show. Lily might just show herself there.

Brit Awards Rehearsal

Here is the Official Version
Here is the Other Version

The subliminal around 10 seconds of the "Other Version" is the subject of the next post.

Interesting Headline

We would all like to know the answer to that one. The abbeyrd Beatles News page reported that this latest strategy of Paul McCartney to let the judge decide infuriated Heather Mills and could eventually put the confidentiality agreement in danger.

O.T.O. Crowley, Gardner, Wicca, Beatles?

There was quite a bit of Crowley in Rotten Apple 101, but this unusual document shown at about 3:49 in the video seems to connect Crowley with Wicca. I'm not sure about the authenticity of the document, but here is the full text:
Do what thou wilt shall be the law. We Baphomet X Degree Ordo Templi Orientis Sovereign Grand Master General of All English speaking countries of the Earth do hereby authorize our Beloved Son Scire (Dr.G,B,Gardner,) Prince of Jerusalem to constitute a camp of the Ordo Templi Orientis, in the degree Minerval.
Love is the Law,
Love under will.
o
Witness my hand and seal Baphomet X

New Video - Suit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHW67xlNIP0

This comes from the MaIEvans page.

I knew there was too much material around for Iamaphoney to resist giving us something else to chew on. I checked the source video for the timing of the wink at the end during the Larry Kane interview. In the original, the wink occurs during the word "Liverpool" but in this video, in addition to it being a slower speed, the wink clearly occurs after the word Liverpool. But as he has done several times in the past, Iamaphoney exaggerated what happened, but it did happen.

The source video can be found here.

How much would you pay her to keep her mouth shut?

Paul McCartney to pay over $108M to Heather Mills in divorce settlement - New York Daily News

McCartney AGREES to pay Heather £55m... as she means business in bizarre velvet power suit - Daily Mail

The Album Cover?

Imagine - The Death of Paul and John

A two-part drama recently appeared on YouTube which draws some strange parallels between the Paul Is Dead phenomenon and the murder of John Lennon. I don't know quite what to make of it, but I think you might see some Iamaphoney influence if you really lOOK.

Imagine - The Death of Paul McCartney and John Lennon Part 1
Imagine - The Death of Paul McCartney and John Lennon Part 2

Indica Picture

This picture, according to the book "Many Years From Now" by Paul McCartney & Barry Miles was taken in January 1966. From left to right we have Barry Miles, John Dunbar, Marianne Faithful (holding an electric plug), Peter Asher and Paul McCartney. All were supporters of the development of the Indica Gallery in Mason's Yard. I have no reason to believe that the picture was actually the Board of Trustees of the Process Church, but it was the beginning of a strange time. The shot first appears about 1:40 into Rotten Apple 101.

MaIEvans

A copy of Rotten Apple 101 has appeared on the YouTube account of MaIEvans with the new title LILY. Lily was the name of Mal Evans' widow who got into a legal battle with Paul McCartney a few years ago over the rights to some of his handwritten lyrics. I don't think there is anything new in the video, but I thought it was worth doing a capture of the box to the right of the screen.

The first one to solve the code gets an imaginary cookie.

Angry McCartney

This is proported to be video of the recent McCartney slapping the photographer event. There is no visible slap, but he does push the camera. It is very similar to a video that appeared a few months ago and wound up in one of the Rotten Apple videos. If anyone can confirm that this is the real deal, please comment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-zvQQgRjMA

If you compare it to the one from a few months ago, he is still keeping it together better than a lot of people would under the circumstances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC9MRRGwT7c

Background on the Background

In case you missed it in the comments, it now appears that both Iamaphoney and YouKnowMyName231 are using the same background for their respective YouTube pages.

I thought that the two of them were working independently. They have two very different styles. YouKnow just emerged recently, so I thought at best he/she was someone either inspired by Iamaphoney or someone who thought they could do it better. I started to wonder though when YouKnow demonstrated that "The Fireman is no Mason" was an anagram for "I am the risen son of man." Iamphoney never stated that, but he has used that text from the official Fireman web site many times in his videos and the concept certainly goes with the many Christ-like images from several of his videos.

So what are they trying to say by using this background? Are they working together? Are they one in the same? Is one of them trying to mess with the mind of the other? Are they trying to throw us off or put us on the track? Is there something special about Jupiter?

I have one more observation about that background. The file name of the background of both sites is "20010115CrescentJupiter." I said to myself, "Hmm, I wonder if 20010115 could be referring to the date January 15, 2001." We have to use the U.S. date format. So I checked Wikipedia to see if anything significant happened on January 15, 2001. Guess what? Wikipedia went online on January 15, 2001!

Court case begins today

Not the best 24-hour period for Sir Paul, but it could be worse. Yes, he is in Divorce Court, but Heather Mills is representing herself. The press keeps reporting that Mills is making a tremendous mistake. Also, the outstanding "Memory Almost Full" failed to win a Grammy last night, but Paul should feel satisfied about how his work was alluded to throughout the program. And let's be honest. I don't know how much of an impact they are making in the world at large, but I don't think Iamaphoney's videos and their offspring are doing anything to hurt McCartney's musical career. Although I guess it could hurt him in court a little if he does turn out to be the beast...

The Briefcase

Is this the real briefcase or a dramatization?

I thought this was the briefcase.

Victor Spinetti

This mysterious figure from Rotten Apple 101 is Victor Spinetti. The British actor has numerous Beatles connections. He played the TV Director in “A Hard Day’s Night.” He was Professor Foot in “Help.” As the Army Sergeant he did nasty things to a cow in “Magical Mystery Tour.” He starred in the stage adaptation of Lennon’s “In His Own Write.” And he even appeared in Paul McCartney’s Londontown video.

In Rotten Apple 101 with his image distorted, Spinetti talks about magic and then describes the violent death of former Beatles road manager Mal Evans. Where did Iamaphoney get this footage? My theory is that Iamaphoney or one of his people personally interviewed Spinetti. If you look at the video “a Lie Adds Up - son king 0911 281 F” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acb2mHmMW1I the character who may represent Iamaphoney attends a Beatles convention. Spinetti is a frequent guest at these gatherings. We also see several other pieces of similar footage with other convention stars such as author Bruce Spizer and drummer Pete Best.

Can you imagine what this means if my theory is true? It means that several of the peripheral characters in Beatles history have encountered the Rotten Apple Army face to face. How clever would it be for Iamaphoney to ask the right questions to produce PID-sounding answers in interview subjects who have no clue what the interviewer’s motives are? It’s a risky thing for Iamphoney to do because if their comments are taken out of context (which would not be a shock!) they could out Iamphoney as a fraud…unless of course, the entire Iamaphoney scenario is true.

Incidentally if Iamaphoney did use interview comments out of context, which he has done on previous Rotten Apple videos, he is not alone. It happens a lot. Even the Beatles Anthology has John Lennon saying, “Brian [Epstein] was a beautiful guy and he presented us well.” The quote might be accurate, but it was cut off in mid sentence. Lennon actually said those words while making the point that Brian got bad business advice and allowed the Beatles to lose millions because of the bad deals he made.

Footage from the same Victor Spinetti interview has appeared on previous Rotten Apple videos.

Love Wins A Grammy!

Ringo, George Martin, Giles Martin, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono are all at the show.

In his acceptance speech for getting an award for love. George Martin said, "We miss those guys [George, Paul and John] a hell of a lot. Check it out here.

New Video - Rotten Apple 101

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emZpFS4XJ1c

BRAVO!!!!
Well, that certainly met my needs. Outstanding piece of work.
Thank you, Iamaphoney.

Relevant Discussion Groups

Nothing Is Real
Paul Is Dead/Paul Is Alive (in Spanish)
Paul Is Dead Miss Him Miss Him Miss Him
Paul Is Dead
The King Is Naked
Macca Fun House

Comment with additions or reviews. If any of the maintainers of these sites do not want them advertised here, let me know and I will remove you from the list.

I still don't know who he is

Sun King? Gnik Nus? Some Other Guy, Now?

Another Opening Act Chimes In

YouKnowMyName231 gives us and encore of Innocence with a stunning version of "The Fool On The Hill"

In other news, I just read that I am fawning and salivating. I'm actually laughing...uncontrollably.

He is coming

RockXLight says:

Feb 9

On Feb.9 it is to be revealed at:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JOHNIENNON

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=PAUIMCCARTNEY

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=GEORGEHARRlSON

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=RlNGOSTARR

_______________________________

"Sgt. Phoney Will Lead The Way

Sgt. Phoney Will Teach The Band To Play

They Have Played Their Game For Many Years

But Now 'Tis Time To Face Their Fears"

- SON OF THE HERO

Interesting Picture

Reportedly, Iamaphoney has taken in interest in this Fred Seaman polaroid from a day in May of 1979 when Ringo visited the Dakota.

Now and Then (Again!)

MikeyNL1038 comes through with the clearest Iamaphoney outfake of "Now and Then" so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlLfxeCLWcs

Follow the link in the "About This Video" section for the mp3.

Fun With Anagrams

Remember?

Memory Almost Full = For My Soulmate LLM
The King of Cosmania = Son of the Magickian

How about this one?



The Fireman is no Mason = I am the Risen Son of Man

Although it was YouKnowMyName231 who pointed this out, the graphic above has been in a few Rotten Apple videos.