Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Yellow Submarine

In Rotten Apple 10, Iamaphoney called to our attention to an often missed clue in the movie Yellow Submarine. For a brief period when the Beatles are aboard the Sub, there are two Pauls.



The movie does feature a full set of Beatles lookalikes in the characters of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but those characters were motionless in Pepperland during this scene. There is also a surreal scene with eight Beatles when they cross their own path in the Sea of Time. But both of those examples make sense in the context of the film unlike the scene with the two Pauls aboard the Submarine. In fact the two Pauls are only visible on the screen for a brief moment. I had seen the film at least a dozen times and had never noticed the second Paul on the Sub.

The double-Paul from Yellow Submarine is repeated in Rotten Apple 49, which features a much more detailed look at clues in the movie and some clever audio of the Beatles version of the title song mashing up into an Iamaphoney version. It’s interesting that a film in which the Beatles claimed to have very little input would have clues in it, but there does seem to be several including a tombstone for a “William McMillen” shown near the end of Rotten Apple 49.

In 1999 Apple released the Yellow Submarine Songtrack CD to coincide with the remastered DVD. In fact this is the best evidence of how great the Beatles catalog will sound when it is finally remastered. The CD insert contains many colorful pictures from the movie. Isn’t it surprising that the two Pauls, which are only on screen for a second would be one of the pictures featured in the CD booklet?



Also in 1999, MacFarlane Toys released a set of Yellow Submarine action figures Series 1. Each package came with one Beatle and one other character from the film. But guess what? It is a set of 5: John, Paul, George, Ringo and….Paul.



The Two Pauls




Now why would they need two Pauls?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two Pauls.What a golden slumber!!!
I was thinking, Iamaphoney got a lot of clues and clasif.info....Maybe, just maybe Iamaphoney could be Neil Aspinall and Mona Best grandchildren (son of Roag Best)Maybe Neil give him his bless and his secrets to be know for all of us.Just MAYBE.Not a fact.

Pablo esta muerto?

Anonymous said...

Heather Mills 'may return to court for new Paul McCartney fight'

Anonymous said...

Ah, at last.

Some plain unvarnished PID without all the other stuff attached to it.

Yes, I was impressed with Iamaphoney's display of the two Pauls, which I don't think ever came up before -- and with the "23" that also comes up in that movie (presumably meaning two Pauls and three original Beatles).

"23" also figures prominently in other conspiracy theories, as anyone knows who has looked through the Illuminatus Trilogy.

Through some other source, I also found out about the Yellow Submarine deck of cards that was issued in the aftermath of the movie's release, in which various Beatles impressions from the cartoon movie are used to depict characters in the deck of cards.

I don't have to say, do I, whose image was used for the Ace of Spades? The "death card"?

If the Beatles really did have very little input in the movie, then that would add credence to the notion that the whole PID thing was just a marketing ploy -- something thought up of in EMI's publicity department.

That argument is a plausible one, but I've always thought it unlikely. If P really isn't D and if he really was never R, I've always thought that there was STILL more to the whole thing than just a marketing ploy -- but again, I can't deny that the "marketing ploy" theory is plausible, on its face.

And if the Beatles had more input in the movie than they've taken credit for, that's another unexplained lie that they would be caught in.

The one argument that is not the least bit reasonable is the argument that there never was a PID theme running through the Beatles creations and that the whole thing was just people seeing what they wanted to see.

That is undoubtedly true for some clues, but it is undoubtedly false for a number of others. Reasonable people can disagree over whether Sir Paul McCartney is the same individual as the original version, but only people in need of a cranial-rectal implant argue that the Beatles never suggested that Paul was dead.

Yes, they did.

Tafultong said...

65if2007,
Thanks for the insights. Your views are very similar to mine.

P.S. I did not realize that there was a record inside the Magic Christian cover. Please keep me posted as you continue to investigate. I have the original myself if you need to make any comparisons.

Anonymous said...

Excellent, Tafultong.

Perhaps we will end up posting photos of our respective copies.

For that matter, if you have the same cover that I now have, I am curious to see if the "McCartney" doodling in the back right-hand corner of the "my" copy of the cover is present in your copy of the cover.

Unknown said...

wow, you know I bought the set of those years back and never even thought about the fact that I had two Paul's in the set of 5. Of course they re-released the set later on again several times.

Anonymous said...

NOW & THEN

Unknown said...

Anonymous said...

NOW & THEN


You know, why don't they just go with the IAAP version, I liked it. They are only gonna come back to the first conclusion, if this story has any weight at all, that John's vocals are locked in with the piano track and its to hard to re-make the song around them.

Tafultong said...

The "Now and Then" story still has very little credibility at this point, but there are still two very positive things about it.

1) Maybe if the press continues to talk about it, Apple will continue to consider the possibility of releasing it.

2) Whenever the story comes up, the Beatles News sites are likely to provide a link to Iamaphoney's version as http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/
did today.

Anonymous said...

The Manson 'star' letter as seen on this blog looks like Zodiac's printing!
See my site"www.thezodiacmansonconnection.com

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