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Cynthia Hodges spent twelve years chasing down the rumors, the inferences, and the facts, and has come to the conclusion that the Paul McCartney the world came to know on The Ed Sullivan Show, A Hard Day's Night, Help! and concert tours between 1964 and 1966, died in a car crash and was replaced by The Beatles organization with a double. She's published her findings in the 2019 book, Plastic Macca: The Secret Death And Replacement Of Beatle Paul McCartney (Auriga Books, P.O. Box 519, Edmonds, Washington, 98020).
We spoke with Cynthia Hodges about her book. Fasten your seat belts. You're in for a rocky ride.
Q - Cynthia, you have a pen name, Tina Foster.
A - Right.
Q - But then you let the world know your real name is Cynthia Hodges.
A - I did.
Q - Why did you do that?
A - Well, I used Tina Foster for about twelve years. People find out who you are anyway.
Q - People are so nosey.
A - Yeah. (laughs) So they think if they expose you that they are harming you, or they're going to scare you into silence, and so I just decided that since they knew anyway I would just go ahead and reveal myself. But I had originally used Tina Foster because I was threatened in the beginning when I was first getting involved in the Paul Is Dead Conspiracy. Somebody posted a picture of my house and threatened my career and it kind of freaked me out. So, when I started doing interviews I used a pen name. I chose Tina Foster in part because Foster rhymes with imposter. I was trying to separate my real life from my research because it is so controversial. But, people found out who I was anyway and I thought it would be safer to actually be known so if something happened people could look up my research and maybe put it together.
Q - I can't imagine who or why anyone would threaten you. I've followed this story since it first broke in 1969. I thought it was put to rest when Life magazine ran a cover story on Paul in their November 7th, 1969 issue. He told Life magazine: "Perhaps the rumor started because I haven't been much in the press lately. I have done enough press for a lifetime and I don't have anything to say these days." That sounds perfectly reasonable and rational to me. I've done enough interviews to say that when a singer, songwriter or musician has something to promote like a CD, a book, or a tour, they will talk.
A - No. (laughs) We have proof that it's not the same Paul McCartney. We have physical, forensic proof. So then it just comes down to what are the motivations, what was the agenda behind replacing him? I call him "Faul McCartney" or "Faux Paul" because John Lennon once referred to him as "Faux Paul." The quote "rumor" first appeared in 1967 in London. So, "Faul" has tried to tribute this rumor to several different things. So, like you said he's not in the press, or on the "Abbey Road" album cover he's not wearing shoes. He tries to blame it on different things. The crux of the matter is people noticed it's not the same person. So, in 1967 at first it started in London and then it came to America in 1969. So, Tim Harper reporting on it in a college newspaper. Then the rest of the radio show, Tom Sartsky wanted to rap about the Paul McCartney Is Dead rumor. And so from there it became national and international news. That's what led to the Life magazine article. But when they went there and asked "Faul", who actually attacked the journalist when they first came; he got very angry with him and chased him off. I have details about that in my book, Plastic Macca. But then he thought better of it and decided to play nice. They asked him, "Are you alive?" And of course it's not the right question to ask. The right question to ask is, "Are you the original Paul McCartney?" Which they did not ask. And then if you notice is the Lifemagazine article he said something to the effect that the people who want to think of it as a rumor (Paul's death), "I'm not going to interfere with that." So, basically he's not going to interfere with people who want to think of it as a rumor. He's going to let them go ahead and live with the fantasy. But, also in the photos for the article they do not include a single picture of the real Paul McCartney before 1967. So, there's no way to compare pictures of the real Paul to the fake Paul in that magazine. They show a picture of the Magical Mystery Tour mask, so that's not real helpful either.
Q - I interviewed Paul's hair stylist, Leslie Cavendish. He was cutting Paul's hair after the "Paul Is Dead" story was going around and he came away positively identifying that the man whose hair he was cutting was the real Paul McCartney. And he had cut Paul's hair before 1969. If anyone would have known it was an imposter it would have been Leslie Cavendish. Isn't he credible?
A - Actually, Paul's hair parted from left to right and it was black hair. Faul Paul's hair parts from right to left and he's probably actually a ginger. He doesn't have black hair at all. We have seen him in pictures wearing wigs, and well, who knows? A toupee? But, when he has black hair it looks odd on him. His son, James, is a ginger. So, the hair part is different. The hair color is different. It's probably why "Faul" has to wear a fake moustache, because he can't actually grow a black beard or moustache. So, Paul is actually a black hair, brown eyes person, and Faul is probably a natural ginger and he does have green eyes that are concealed. So, if you look at the "Strawberry Fields Forever" promotional film, he did say "Nothing is real" three times and each time they zoom in on Faul's green eyes. So, that's a pretty big hint. So, there are lots of clues. It's strange because they conceal it, but yet they give you clues as to what is actually happening at the same time. It's kind of like they're throwing it in people's faces and mocking them for not noticing this switcheroo they pulled on people.
Q - To me, The Beatles always has this quirky sense of humor. And you couldn't take everything they said or did very seriously. And that goes especially for John.
A - Okay. Well, Ringo Starr in 2011 gave an interview where he said he was the last remaining Beatle. It's a joke, but there is always truth in every joke. So again he's hinting that something had happened.
Q - Did anyone ever come out and ask Ringo directly, "Did Paul McCartney die in a car crash in 1966?"
A - Well, people ask, but they will always give some sort of joke about it, or they will dodge the question. So, officially no, nothing happened to the real Paul McCartney. You're going to get the same old narrative, it's the same old Paul. But, we have forensic proof. It's not the same Paul. Two forensic scientists from Italy came out in 2009 and compared facial features. So, for example the tragus, which is part of the ear, and the nasal spine, the oral commissure, the jaw line and the skull shape. So, that's six different features that are characteristics that do not change with age and cannot be changed with surgery and they said they were different. What can be explained is it's a different person. But they too were stopping short of saying it's not the same Paul McCartney because they were afraid of being sued. They were afraid of being drawn into some sort of legal battle over their forensic conclusions. They said if this was a normal person (and not Paul McCartney) they would say this is not the same person. They deal with identifying people for the police.
Q - Has anyone from Paul McCartney's organization contacted you?
A - Not that I know of.
Q - Have you sent them a copy of the book?
A - No.
Q - Could someone sue you or is the thought any publicity is good publicity?
A - Oh, I've considered the possibility that I can be sued, but then I just see it as an opportunity to get discovery, because it's not defamation if it's the truth. It's not the same person. Now, my theory about what, why, who and how is speculation and educated guesses based on my research, but it's definitely a different person. So, you have forensic prints done in 1969 by a professor who took voice prints of different songs and they too show different singers. There's so many differences from the real Paul and the fake Paul. If they were just normal people you would never think they were the same person. Also, I've done a number of photographic recognition and the best match I had with the two was a 72% match, which is not very good, especially for the same person. Also, if you have photos on your Smart Phone, it will place them in two different categories for two different people because the phone recognizes that they're two different people.
Q - When did this book of yours come out?
A - 2019.
Q - And how long was your research for? Twelve years?
A - Yeah. I started researching The Beatles back in high school, but then I really fell into the Paul Is Dead research back in 2008. So, I was preparing for the book about eleven, twelve years, gathering pretty much everything I could find on it that I thought was worthwhile 'cause there's a lot of stuff out there that is purposeful deception and meant to lead you down false rabbit holes, and that's just something you have to deal with when you're trying to expose the truth about something that's been covered up for fifty years.
Q - It almost seems like an impossible task to keep something like this secret. Why isn't this Page One news?
A - Well, it has leaked and it did come out in 1969. You probably know that the media is controlled. The CIA's William Colby says that they pretty much control everybody, the media. So, if certain facts want to be covered up, they're going to put out disinformation and hit pieces like the Life magazine article and they're going to present "Faul" as the original Paul. I can see the differences. I don't even understand how people can think it's the same person except that there's some weird kind of mind control going on. So, people see the name Paul McCartney next to the different face and suddenly that's the real Paul, even though he doesn't have the same musical talent as the original Paul had.
Q - He doesn't have the same musical talent?
A - No.
Q - Why would you say that?
A - Because the original Paul McCartney was a hit writing machine and "Faul" puts out stuff that is pretty much trashed by critics. Now, I personally don't like it. I like the original Paul's music, but I'm talking about actual critics. They don't give him good reviews and any songs he does do pretty well with, something like "Mull Of Kintyre", he wrote with Denny Laine. He doesn't give Denny Laine credit. The original Paul McCartney wrote a bunch of songs by himself such as "Yesterday", "Elenor Rigby". "Faul" comes on the scene and he needs Mal Evans, the roadie, to help him write songs. "Fixing A Hole", in the reprise, Mal Evans helped him write on the "Sgt. Pepper's" album. He didn't get credit either. He didn't get the royalties that were promised to him.
Q - I never heard that Mal Evans helped write songs with Paul McCartney.
A - He said that on a radio show back in October or November of 1975. He talked about that. He was going to publish his tell-all book about The Beatles called Living The Beatles Legend, and he ended up getting shot to death by the L.A. Police in January of 1976, right before he was going to take that book to the publisher. So, that book is picked up and edited and we've never seen the full version of it, only the redacted version. His suitcase of memorabilia disappeared. Unfinished songs by The Beatles disappeared. Even his ashes, on the way back to England, disappeared. So, that's a pretty suspicious story.
Q - You say that Howard Stern did not believe it was the same Paul McCartney. I've seen Howard Stern interview Paul McCartney and I don't recall him saying that to his face. Did I miss something?
A - Howard Stern said that he'd been replaced by a wimp. He was talking to Cynthia Lennon about that. Cynthia Lennon also hinted that it's not the real Beatles. She said there was a time in 1967 when it was a time of great mental and physical change for The Beatles. So, Paul McCartney was known for being very charming. So, if you look at how he was referred to in the press before the switch John Lennon called him "Paul McCharmly", and he just doesn't have that same charming character after. No, he's abrasive. He has one 1972 interview where he admitted his name was some Swedish name. I can't recall exactly. He said, "Because the real Paul McCartney is dead of course." So, there's always a hinting about the Paul Is Dead conspiracy, even thought nobody is talking about it at the time. So, this is just a scene. It's like a light motif that runs throughout this Beatles history.
Q - When the Paul Is Dead story first hit the U.S. in 1969, people were saying, "Play this song backwards and you can hear John saying 'I buried Paul'." Who buys a record and plays it backwards? It's kind of ridiculous.
A - Well, not necessarily. There are two different things going on. One is back masking and Lennon's reverse speech. Both of those phenomena are occurring in Beatles songs. So, back masking is something that is purposely inserted backwards. So, if you listen to "Revolution Number Nine" backwards, it does have the sound of a car crash. It does have church music. It is honestly what some people think happened to Paul being played out. And then of course "Number Nine, Number Nine, Turn Me On Dead Man." But, there's also this phenomenon called Reverse Speech, which is something David John Oates from Australia wrote a lot about. What you're really thinking comes out in Reverse Speech. So, the truth comes out in Reverse Speech. And it's actually been used in Oregon by police to help identify a criminal. This is a real phenomenon. If you listen to some songs you're dealing with Reverse Speech. For example, "Helter Skelter", he's dead. "Blue Jay Way", Paul is bloody.
Q - But Cynthia, who buys a record and plays it in reverse?
A - Well, people were desperate to find out what happened to Paul, and so they were just scouring the songs, the album covers, pretty much everything, to find out clues what happened to Paul. Eventually they did find about four hundred clues. Maybe more by now. I think I have printed them all in the book. The clues are helpful in some ways, but people do read things into symbology. When you look at the "Sgt. Pepper" album cover, that is a grave scene. Derek Taylor, the press secretary, admitted that was a funeral scene, a grave there with the left-handed bass and all the people they would have wanted to have at their funeral. The mirror on the bass drums says "119 he died" if you hold up the mirror on the original cover. I think they probably changed it since then. But people just want to know what happened to Paul, and they weren't getting the information from official sources, so they just started looking for themselves.
Q - What would have happened if the world was told that Paul died in 1966? I read that John wanted to leave The Beatles at the end of 1965. That would have been a perfect out for him.
A - Yeah. He wasn't very happy about "Yesterday" apparently. What would have happened if people had found out? Well, they wouldn't have been able to give The Beatles to promote their agenda. They wouldn't have been able to keep making money off of Paul McCartney's name. They wouldn't have been able to leverage The Beatles popularity and influence to drive that New World agenda because that's fundamentally what's behind it. Some people have said all these people would have committed suicide had Paul died. I don't know if they would have or not. I don't think that was the motivation for the cover-up personally.
Q - In one pod cast you suggest that Paul many not have been the only Beatles to have been replaced. If you think about it, the only other Beatle to have been replaced would be Ringo. He nearly died in Monaco in 1976. So, do you believe Ringo was replaced?
A - Well, I think all of them were replaced by "Sgt. Pepper" and I think that album is telling you it's not the original Beatles anymore. They have the old mop tops shoved to the side and this new and improved Sgt. Pepper band front and center, military band. It's not The Beatles anymore. We know that something is going on with John Lennon because the comparisons, the real John and the imposter in a bathing suit and the nipples don't match up. The nipples are much different on the body, and of course the body type is very different. Then Cynthia Lennon said it wasn't John anymore. The people that drop these clues don't just say what's happening. You have to interpret through a filter. Jane Asher, who was Paul's longtime girlfriend, finance, she refuses to talk about Paul after they broke up. But Jay Marks was at this engagement party and "Faul" was with Linda the whole time. It was like, "Who was that photographer girl Paul McCartney was with?" "Oh, that's Linda." "Why isn't he with Jane Asher? That's his finance." "Oh, no. That's a different Paul McCartney."
Q - Do we take a statement like that literally? Maybe someone was just trying to be funny.
A - There's only Jay Marks being the audience for that. I mean, you can interpret that how you like, but there are so many of these types of comments like that, which gets to be a little bit strange.
Q - The Beatles were the only band in music history to change their looks and music and still be of interest to the public. No other band has ever done that. So when you say it's not the original Beatles anymore, they have the old mop tops shoved to the side on "Sgt. Pepper", it is the original Beatles with a new look and a new sound.
A - Paul was not onboard with the New World agenda. He was speaking out against the Vietnam War. He was interested in writing the score for Rush To Judgment, which was a movie questioning the official narrative of the J.F.K. assassination. Mark Lane wrote the book. McCartney called him and said he did not believe Lee Harvey Oswald had killed John F. Kennedy. He didn't believe the official story. So, that's a problem. That's two marks against Paul right there. All four of The Beatles were against segregation. They put out that "Butcher" album cover which Paul was behind. I personally think they were trying to expose Satanic Ritual Sacrifice. It's such a shocking cover for a lot of people to see that. I can think of a number of things why they'd want the real Paul out of there and then get somebody they could control.
Q - In 1966, Brian Epstein was still alive. Are you saying he was in on the cover-up?
A - Yes. They're all in on it. They all know the truth. It's an open secret. You see the comments that they make and the wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Jimmy Kimmel told the "Faul" Paul, "You do the best Paul McCartney impersonation." Of course it's played off as a joke. David Letterman said, "There's a story where you're walking across Abbey Road barefoot and there's an imposter." "Faul" says, "That's Me. That's me." He's basically admitting his an imposter. It's a nudge, nudge, wink, wink. They all know behind the scenes what's going on. It's only the gullible public that's not picking up on it. (laughs)
Q - The Paul McCartney that the public sees is just so natural and quick with his responses to questions. There's no hesitation. It would almost have to be the real Paul McCartney.
A - Philip Norman, one of the biographers of The Beatles, said that "Faul" rewrites history all the time. One of the Oasis guys says he knows more about Beatles history than Paul McCartney. So, basically he's forgetting the legend, right? The Paul McCartney legend, the official story. The story of the real Paul. So, he was supposed to know these details. He's forgetting them. He's saying things like he joined The Beatles as an already set up affair. (laughs) That's not what happened. These are kind of minor things, but he says George Harrison was a year and a half younger than he was, when really it was only eight months, or that he joined The Quarrymen a long time before George Harrison, when really it was just a couple of months. "Faul" also says, "I don't want to seem schizophrenic, but really I'm two people." He can't believe he's Paul McCartney, right? Like it's a total freak-out. He says these things over the years, but when you start looking at them in total, then there's something going on here. In 1963, in maybe one of their first interviews, they said they had over one hundred songs written and recorded. Of course they didn't use all of them. Some of them got used on later albums like "One After 909". That was an early John song. "She's Leaving Home" is definitely the real Paul singing his own song that he wrote that came onto "Sgt. Pepper", recorded before he died obviously, that showed up posthumously. Some of these songs were incorporated on later albums. It's unfortunate that people have that opinion about Paul. It's one thing that bothers me, how his legacy, well, I think sullied. It's definitely has been changed by someone else pretending to be him because when he talks in interviews he says, "I'm not going to be performing onstage when I'm forty. That's way too old. I'm going to hopefully be writing musical scores." He kind of wanted to transition into a different venue that "Faul" keeps playing like he's twenty years old. (laughs)
Q - John once remarked he didn't want to be onstage singing "She Loves You" when he's thirty years old.
A - Well, Paul had the talent because he wrote the film score for Love In The Open Air: The Family Way. He won an Ivor Novello Award for that. "Faul" forgot that Paul had won that award because he did say that he had never won that award before. (laughs) That's in the book. All this stuff is documented. I've got the footnotes and everything.
Q - Paul definitely had the talent to write film scores. Of course with his fame and popularity he probably could have done whatever he wanted to do. He was writing Classical music. He wrote an opera.
A - Well, that was "Faul", and it wasn't very good. (laughs)
Q - Cynthia, it will be interesting to see what people think when this interview is posted.
A - I enjoyed the interview very much. I think you're a fair interviewer. You asked some good questions.
Q - Thank you.
A - It's good to be open-minded.
Official Website: CynthiaHodges.com
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“Truth will prevail if its proponents are as ruthless as the enemy.” ~ Adolf Hitler
Pen name: Tina Foster (Author of “Plastic Macca: The Secret Death of Beatle Paul McCartney” and “The Splitting Image: Exposing the Secret World of Doubles, Decoys, and Impostor Replacement”)
Web: cynthiahodges.com
Blogs: plasticmacca.blogspot.com, leadershipbygeorge.blogspot.com
