Indiana Gazette from Indiana, Pennsylvania • Page 48

"Paul McCartney Is Dead" Phoenixville Native Shook Musical Nation Phoenixville Evening Phoenix PHOENIXVILLE, Pa. (AP) The recesses of the memory back, back, back, to that golden year of 1969. We find two shaggy-haired college students crouched over a stereo turntable in an incense-scented dormitory room, its "walls coated with posters of Neil Young, Mister Natural and Dennis Hopper on a motorcycle in a scene from the movie, "Easy Rider." And the two students are deep in thought. The thoughts aren't about the problems of racism, poverty, the Vietnam War, or any of the other great topics of those halcyon days of yore. No.

Instead, the two youths are busy wrecking a perfectly good turntable, scraping a needle backwards over the grooves of side four of the Beatles' famous "White Album," searching desperately for clues that Paul McCartney was dead. McCartney, outstanding songwriter, singer and bassist extraordinaire for the Beatles, the now-defunct rock group who helped redefine not only the music community but the Western World at large in the Sixties, is not dead. He is, in fact, still a popular performer, thought not as popular as the Beatles. Arid if it hadn't been for Phoenixville native Lou Yager, then a freshman at Hofstra University, those two students and literally thousands of others, would not have bothered ruining good record players. And then again, if it hadn't been for the odd theory that clues to McCartney's death appeared in hard-to-detect parts of Beatles' records.

Yager's entire life would have been different. Because until the talkative veteran of radio hit on the now- famous "Paul is Dead" theory, a phenomenon that celebrated its dubious 10th anniversary the weekend of Oct. 13. Yager intended to become a lawyer. But.

nope, the idea spread so quickly that Yager wound up as a guest co-host on various radio talk shows, finally turning to a career in the media. "It changed my life." Yager said. And on Nov. 29. Philadelphia television station KYW-TV will devote a segment of its program.

"Evening Magazine," to Yager, the man and his bizarre caper. It sounds silly now and it did them. But Yager, following up on a friend's nightmare that McCartney had died, phoned New York rock station YMCA, announcing over the air that "Ladies and gentlemen of New York. Paul McCartney is dead." and the idea caught on nationwide. To this day.

no one is certain how they got there, but a number of "clues" seem to exist which support the notion that Food Prices listeners to a number of the later Beatles' albums were being told, however quietly, that Paul was dead. And all Yager did was to sit down with some friends, using record knowledge he'd learned as a disc jockey in school and listen between the grooves. What he heard and saw, and what you can still find if you check out parts of "Abbey Road," "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Clubs' Band," "Magical Mystery Tour and the "White Album," are hidden clues, apparently alluding to a fatal automobile accident. It is Yager's contention that somebody, maybe Beatle John Lennun or possibly a producer, inserted those clues to fuel a rumor that Paul died in a car crash. And whether or not he did, and whether or not the "clues" were in fact a coincidence, is pointless at this time.

The point is that Yager, with the help of other members of the media, convinced a good many people that the clues were there, so much so that "Life" magazine ran a story about Yager and his theory in the Nov. 7, 1969 edition. And Yager took it seriously enough, he said, to telephone the Beatles, collect, to ask about the whole mess. They denied it, of course. But if you listen to some of those records and take a close gander at some of the album covers, the evidence is, well, there, especially if you want it to be.

Visually speaking, there is the cover of "Sergeant Pepper," which Yager, referring to paintings of two sets of Beatles, calls "a funeral The cover of "Abbey Road" shows the four Beatles in what Yager also calls a funeral scene, with John leading the procession and with Paul, allegedly the "dead man," the only man not wearing shoes. "Magical Mystery Tour" includes a photograph of Paul seated behind a sticker which reads. "I was," and that record's cover shows a walrus, which Yager claims is a symbol of death. And since the song, "Glass Onion." which appears on the "White Album." contains the lines, "the walrus was Paul," well, that must mean something, says Yager. Most glaring are the car- crash references in the song, "A Day in a Life" on the "Sergeant Pepper" album and in the "White Album" opus, "Revolution Number nine." "A Day in the Life" contains the lines, "he blew his mind out in a car.

he didn't notice that the lights had changed," adding that onlookers to the crash weren't sure if the victim was from the House of Lords. McCartney. Yeager reminds us. was knighted by the British House of Lords that year, and, so, that too must mean something. Yager pushed his theory to the limit.

He was interviewed on a number radio stations and even went so far as to form an "Is Paul McCartney Dead?" club. Even the most cynical fans were stirred by the numerous car crash references in "Revolution Number Nine," a long, untypically unmelodic cut on the Beetle's "White Album." Yager maintains that the numerous references to Paul McCartney's death in the song were put there to boost sales As it stands, the Beatles still sell oodles of records, 10 years after their decision to go separate ways. And Yager has compiled a cassette tape of clues to McCartney's death. London Church Plays Host To Belly Dance Club LONDON (AP) They've swapped bingo for belly dancing up at Holy Trinity Church in the north London district of Finchley. Professional belly dancer Jill Chartell answered the ad the Rev.

Lawrence Hill placed theatrical magazine, and classes will be held Tuesday nights in the church hall. "I thought an amateur group might be grateful for'the hall to rehearse plays in," Hill said. "I never thought we would get a belly dancing club. "However, now that it's been fixed up, I must admit I'm quite looking forward to it." I This Decade Takes Biggest Budget Bite National Geographic News Service WASHINGTON On the first Tuesday of every other month, U.S. agricultural attaches in 17 world capitals go grocery shopping.

Whether they are in Paris, Rome, Tokyo, or Buenos Aires, they put the same 21 items on their official shopping lists and head for supermarkets and small food stores. They are looking for everything from sirloin and sugar to pork chops and potatoes but unlike the average housewife, they don't actually buy anything They walk up and down the aisles with their lists, jotting down and checking out prices. Then they cable their grocery bills to the Department of Agriculture, one of the agencies that keeps us up to date on how much it is costing to fill our stomachs. Pretoria P'or Eggs A pound of steak, for example, was selling for a high of $13.83 in-Tokyo (most recent figures) on the same day it was going for a low $1.55 a pound in Brasilia. A dozen eggs cost $1.99 in Stockholm and only 68 cents in Pretoria, South Africa.

And a pound of ground roast coffee was. quoted at $9.77 in Canberra. Australia, and $1.66 in Mexico City. In this decade the attaches have reported that worldwide food prices have risen steadily. Here at home, the '70s was the worst decade for increases in the retail food price index since the World War II years, according to the Bureau of La- bor'Statistics.

The Agriculture Department, which has been collecting world food prices bimonthly since 1973, says that the cost for each item is based on the average price from three representative food stores in each capital city, including Washington. D.C. 'This is an informational survey designed to satisfy people's appetites for continuing food price information," a department spokesman explained. "It is not a scientific study." Among the world capitals recently surveyed, Tokyo and Stockholm ranked as the most expensive per and Brasilia and Mexico City among the least costly. The food figures for the Consumer Price Index in the United States are tabulated monthly, comparing prices in 85 areas of the country, including 28 large metropolitan centers.

Data collectors check the prices in chain stores and small markets three times a month. Topped By War Years The food price index increased an average of 7.7 percent in the 1970s, topped only by the war years in the 1940s and the years 1913 to 1920, when it climbed an average of more than 8 percent, a spokesman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The biggest bite in food budgets in the '70s occurred when the index jumped more than 10 percent in a single year in 1973 and 1974, and again from mid-June 1978 through this year, all periods of inflation. The 13 percent rise in the index earlier this year was the largest 12-month percentage change since 1974. From April 1973 until January 1975 the food price index increased by more than 10 percent over the previous year in every month but one, reaching highs of more than 20 percent.

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