The Unexplained - Howard Hughes - Edition 16 - R Gary Patterson

July 14, 2008 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:03:04

Edition 16 - R Gary Patterson

Old friend of the show R. Gary Patterson joins Howard for a Rock'n'Roll Special, talkingabout strange coincidences, conspiracy theories, occult stories and more...

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	Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, my webcast and podcast.
	My name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
	Thank you very much for returning to the show, and also thank you for the great response we had to the two shows we did in South Africa on location last month with Michelle Eloff, the channeler, and with Michael Tellinger, the author, whose book, by the way, is out this month, July 2008, as we record this.
	If you want to hear either of those shows, they're still available on archive at www.theunexplained.tv.
	But we had tremendous response.
	If I tell you, the traffic on the website and also the email response went up six or seven times for those two shows, which got me to thinking that maybe it's a good idea to take the show on the road.
	So at some point in the next few months, I'm trying to get together a project where I might take the show to America and talk to some people there.
	If you have any guest ideas in America, people I can meet face to face, then email me please at unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
	That's the email address for anything you want to raise about the show, unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
	Now, before we get to the guest, Gary Patterson, who will talk about rock and roll, conspiracies, and the occult and all those other things connected with the crazy world of rock and roll, I want to ask you a favor.
	Two people I'm trying to contact because I'd like to do a show about time travel.
	I know time travel is a subject that really interests you and it really interests me too.
	So I want to try and get this together.
	The two people I'm trying to contact are Al Bierlick from the Philadelphia Experiment.
	Now, I have a number for Al because I called him and put him on the air on Talk Sport when I had the radio show.
	That number's out of date.
	I tried his publicity person.
	He doesn't know a contact for Al at the moment.
	I wonder if you do.
	If you know how I can get hold of Al Bierlik from the Philadelphia Experiment, drop me an email at unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
	That's unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
	Al was a very popular guest.
	If I tell you when we had him on air, we didn't take any phone calls from you because he was so interesting.
	We just let him talk about that whole period for an hour.
	And the interesting thing was, he told the story of the Philadelphia experiment and how apparently the U.S. government, the U.S. military, were experimenting with time.
	He told that story, but if somebody was not telling the truth, the story wouldn't be consistent.
	Al's story was absolutely consistent from the beginning to the end.
	That was the one impressive thing about him.
	He sounded like a man who'd reached a stage in his life where he was very much inclined to tell the truth and wanted to get the story out there.
	So I want to talk to Al again.
	If you know him, let me know.
	The other person about time travel I'm trying to contact is Dr. David Anderson.
	Now, the last I knew of him, he was in Hawaii, and I know this show has listeners in Hawaii.
	So if you know the whereabouts of Dr. David Anderson, the researcher in time travel, I'd be very grateful to hear from you about that.
	Unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
	And was interested to see on the subject of time travel a piece in the Daily Mail in February this year.
	And it said, and it's interesting now because if what it says is in any way true, it's all going to be happening about now.
	This article says the world's first time machine tunnel to the past could open door to the future within months, according to the Russians.
	The story says time travel could be a reality within three months, according to Russian mathematicians.
	They believe an experiment nuclear scientists plan to carry out in underground tunnels in Geneva in May, two months ago from when we're recording this, could create a rift in the fabric of the universe.
	Well, I've heard nothing about that since, but would be very keen to get into that subject.
	So as I say, I'm planning a time travel special.
	If you know how to contact those people, any of those people, including the Russian mathematicians, or if you have any ideas of time travel guests yourself, email me at unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
	But let's come right back up to date.
	The guest for today is our Gary Patterson.
	He is an expert on rock and roll.
	Rock and roll, well, how would you put it?
	Rock and roll, conspiracy theories, legends, myths, curses, dabbling in the occult, which a lot of rockers did.
	Gary's in the United States.
	He was a very popular guest when I did the radio show, had him on twice then, and he's back online now from the U.S. Gary, thank you for coming on.
	It's always great to be with you, Howard.
	How are you?
	I'm very good, Gary.
	It's been about, I think it's been probably two years since you were last on.
	But let me tell you, you were always, when we did the radio show, one of those guests who brought in a flood of email traffic afterwards.
	You always left as many questions as you answered, which is great for a guest.
	That's exactly what you're looking for if you're doing radio.
	Well, let me tell you that you had a lot of great listeners, and I had lots of great emails from the UK.
	So I'd love to do your show anytime, and I enjoy our friendship.
	So I think we ought to get started.
	Let's do a great show today.
	I think so, too.
	You have, as they say, an open ticket.
	I don't know if that's a fair ground phrase, but whatever it is, you have an open ticket to come back on this show whenever.
	Now, for people who haven't heard you before, because I now have listeners around the world on this show, tell me about you.
	Well, I guess you could say that I live in the southern part of the United States, as you can tell by my dialect.
	And I'm fascinated with rock and roll.
	I grew up with it.
	And it seems that I have a sort of a cottage industry in creating rock and roll myths and legends.
	And starting with Robert Johnson, who supposedly had sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads, and all the references from that, all the way up to Kirk Hobain, and all the way up to a number of more recent rock and roll historians and stories of tragedy.
	And just that, it's sort of like the Twilight Zone meets rock and roll.
	I mean, it's that that interests me.
	It's not the idea of writing obituaries for rock stars.
	It's just that strange underlying current that ties everything together.
	And I guess I like that because I grew up watching The Twilight Zone on American television.
	And I like that little twist that got me into what I do.
	Me too.
	I mean, they showed that over here.
	And that was one of the things I have to say that as a little kid, maybe three, four, would always make this huge impact.
	They used to show up very late at night in the UK.
	I think they probably thought it would scare people.
	But my mom and dad used to let me stay up late and watch it.
	And there was nothing like it on TV.
	And I think my interest in these subjects that I'm talking about now probably stems from that, just like yours.
	Well, see, we have that in common because it used to come on in the United States on Friday night at 10 Eastern Time.
	So we'd go off at 11, and sometimes there were sort of chilling stories when you were nine years old watching that.
	But I know it developed my style.
	Did you get nightmares?
	I did.
	Oh, I had a few nightmares.
	And then there was a show called Thriller with Boris Karloff that just literally scared the daylights out of me when it was on.
	And it only lasted two seasons.
	But I remember my cousin was 17 years old living in Florida, and she had to sleep with her parents after watching the episode called Pigeons from Hell.
	The birds.
	Oh, my God.
	But it is one of those things, isn't it, with children that we had a show here.
	I think you might have come across it called Doctor Who?
	Oh, yes, yes.
	Love it.
	I was around.
	I was a small boy when that show started.
	And I can remember one edition had a subject on it.
	I think it was about reptilian creatures.
	And it scared me so much that I ended up behind the sofa.
	And I had a nightmare.
	I can still recall the nightmare I had about these reptile creatures that came into my home, came into my mom and dad's home.
	And I woke up screaming from that.
	How bizarre is that?
	So these things have such an impact, I think, at an early age.
	Well, it did.
	And, you know, maybe, and the thing was, you were allowed to use your imagination.
	It wasn't as graphic as today's television and films were.
	And I think the imagination makes it a lot more terrifying than watching something created by special effects.
	That's a whole other subject, but you're absolutely right.
	The stuff we see now is all CGI created, and it leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.
	And I think kids are losing out.
	Maybe I'm an old fogey, probably, but I think kids are losing out.
	Well, I'm also an educator, and I teach in a high school system in Tennessee.
	And, you know, we talk about that in class, and when we read a great story, you know, and I ask them, I said, if you're going to direct us, how would you do it?
	So I try to bring out their imaginations and creativity and explain to them that some things are left better unseen and let the imagination deal with it.
	So this is a good topic with that.
	Now, your interest is in rock and roll, myths, legends, curses, conspiracy theories, and all that other great stuff.
	Oh, yeah.
	Were you somebody who wanted to be a rock star himself?
	Well, actually, yes.
	When I went to the university, I was pretty well convinced that I didn't want to be a lawyer, that I'd rather be a rock star, because I do play the guitar, and I've done sessions and all that.
	So I think by my experiences with music, it tied me into the stories because I read everything I could find on the great rock and roll stars of my period.
	And you grew up with the myths.
	I mean, when I grew up, I was very well familiar with the Buddy Holly plane crash, even though I was only like nine years old when it happened.
	But I really had to rediscover Buddy Hawley later.
	But when the Beatles hit, I was a perfect age.
	I was in high school.
	So the British invasion was one of the greatest moments in American pop culture.
	And the stars after that, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, all of that.
	And then when they died or you heard the legends, it's like the first book I wrote on The Walrus was Paul about the Paul is dead rumors that we'll have to do a show on sometime.
	Well, we can talk about that briefly because that impacted upon me.
	I can remember when I was a little boy, my sister was a big Beatles fan.
	My sister is a few years older than me, and she was much into the Beatles.
	And I can remember, it was in the papers, it was on the radio, and they were all saying, Paul McCartney is dead, and the Beatles know this.
	Obviously, they know this.
	And the person who is playing the part of Paul McCartney is a very good imposter.
	Yes, yes.
	And I mean, your listeners are going to listen to this, and they're going to say, well, how far-fetched is that?
	That's totally ridiculous.
	But you've got to remember that the Beatles did their last American tour in 1966.
	And when they came back from the Philippines after the disaster in the Philippines with the Marcus family, where they refused to play this charity show and they were chased out of the Philippines, it wasn't fun playing live anymore, so they dedicated themselves to the studio.
	And when they came back, the music changed.
	I mean, when Revolver came out, nothing had ever been heard that sounded anything like that.
	And then you had Sergeant Peppers, and then the Beatles changed.
	They had facial hair.
	The music changed radically.
	A lot of people were disappointed in the change of the music.
	I mean, even though it was brilliant, a lot of people said, something's wrong here.
	Why aren't the Beatles playing live?
	Why aren't they out?
	They were selling videos, and they put them on the Ed Sullivan show.
	So a rumor came out that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash in 1966.
	And actually, it was on November 9th, 1966.
	And an imposter was brought into the band so that the band would appear to be the same.
	The other members carried on.
	They released the albums, and then the Beatles disappeared in 1970.
	So in 1969, a DJ received a phone call of Russ Gibbon in the United States saying that, what's this about McCartney being dead?
	And then clues were everywhere because the rumor was that the Beatles had given clues to their fans that this really wasn't Paul McCartney.
	And some of them were totally ridiculous.
	That was like taking a sledgehammer and smashing a round peg into a square hole.
	But some of them are kind of frightening.
	Well, I'm from Liverpool originally, and I've been lucky enough once in my life to meet and talk to Paul McCartney.
	Knowing them as I do through reputation and having met Paul, I would have thought that anything like that they would have loved, and they'd have played up to it.
	Oh, I think they did.
	And I think they got impatient.
	I think the clue started to come out in 1967, maybe a little earlier than that, and no one caught them.
	So in the White Album, when John Lennon sang in Glass Onion, when he sang, here's another clue for you all, the Walrus was Paul.
	What does he mean by another clue?
	Well, we know, don't we, really?
	It was another link in the chain.
	Yeah, it is.
	So, you know, to make you look.
	And then finally, when Abby Road came out, you know, that's when the clues hit and everybody started going back.
	But you know my favorite clue?
	This is the one that I think the Beatles had to plant themselves.
	And I can't find any logical explanation to tell me that this was not put in by the Beatles.
	And it has to do with the Sgt. Pepper cover and the bass drum.
	And if you remember the bass drum, Peter Blake designed the entire cover, but the bass drum was supposedly given credit to a fairground painter from Australia whose name was Joe Epgrave.
	Now you take EP engrave.
	It sounds almost like epitaph engraved, doesn't it?
	And when you look at the freshly dug dirt with the beetles and red hyacinth flowers, which is another symbol, but the beetles are staying above it.
	McCartney behind the bass drum with an open hand over his head, picking him out from the crowd.
	Life Magazine even did an article saying that the open hand was a far eastern symbol of death or the idea of benediction when a body is placed into the grave.
	And I thought, well, boy, that's a stretch.
	But here's the thing.
	He's picked out of the crowd, and on the bass drum, it says Sgt Peppers, and then in the center it says Lonely Hearts, completely different font, and then it says Club Band.
	So I was interested in why that font was so different.
	And then I did my research on Sgt Peppers and found that there were two bass drums designed, and the drums were different except for the phrase Lonely Hearts.
	So I remember looking into the crowd and seeing Lewis Carroll, who had written Alice Adventures through the Looking Glass.
	And I had heard that if you use mirrors, you could find clues on Beatle albums.
	So, you know, from Magical Mystery Tour, the phone number that supposedly appeared.
	So I took a straight-edge mirror, put it in the center of Lonely Hearts, and reading from the glass reflection to the album cover, it spells out a cryptic message.
	It starts with numeral 1, and then it spells O-N-E, which is 1 again.
	Then it has numeral IX, which is 9.
	And then, this is what sent to chill up my spine.
	The next phrase is, he die.
	And between he and die is a diamond-shaped arrow pointing straight up to Paul McCartney and down to the grave.
	And you take a look at 119.
	At first, you know, in Great Britain, that would be September 11th, right?
	Which is sort of significant number anyway, yeah.
	Yes, for today.
	But when I did my research, I found in a couple of Beatle books, they'd mentioned a car accident Paul McCartney had on November 9th, which was November 9th, 1966, which fit the exact date.
	And the accident supposedly occurred at 5 o'clock in the morning.
	Well, when you turn the album cover over, it was the first cover that lyrics were ever printed on an album jacket.
	And George Harrison is standing there, and he's pointing, and the line that's superimposed to his finger is the first line from She's Leaving Home, which says, Wednesday.
	Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock.
	The exact day and hour on November 9th, 1966.
	But you know, like 9-11, like the death of Diana, like the killing of JFK, decades and decades on, people will still be talking about and debating these things.
	And there will be no definitive answer as to whether all this was planned or whether it's just furtive, you know, whether it's just overactive, hyperactive imaginations at work.
	It could be that, but I always tell people that if Paul McCartney had died in 1966, imagine the songs we wouldn't have.
	Oh, that's true.
	Live and Let Die, the whole second side of Abbey Road.
	So if this guy's an imposter that some people actually believe, he had to be pretty talented, didn't he?
	I think he probably did.
	You know what?
	The only thing I regret now is that when I met him a few years ago and we had a chance to talk and we talked, he's a very, very ordinary guy, you know.
	He is just like an ordinary Joe on the street.
	I was so impressed with him and he gives his attention completely to you.
	But I wish I'd asked him about all of this.
	Oh, you know, I have to tell you, I had a friend who works with ABC Radio, and when the Beatles' anthology came out, he interviewed McCartney.
	And my friend is the guy who wrote the foreword to my book, Devolvers was Paul.
	And he sent me a tape.
	He said, Gary, you've got to hear this.
	So he sent me a tape of the interview, and he was asking about the song Free as a Bird.
	And I'm sure you remember that when the Beatles put it out, there are like 90 Beatle clues in that video.
	And my friend asked Paul about the clues, and Paul said, well, this is his words.
	He said, well, it became a bit of a game in the old Beatle days to put little hidden things in.
	And it sort of implies that they put hidden things in their songs, and he was talking about it.
	So, you know, other little hidden ideas.
	I mean, obviously they sold a lot of records when the Paul is dead rumors went out because all the Beatle vinyl jumped back on billboard charts for people buying them, looking for clues and wearing them out, playing them backwards.
	So if it was a great game, that was wonderful.
	And it was Charles Manson murder.
	It was great for business.
	Yeah, it was great for business.
	But if Charlie Manson was hearing things in Helder Skeller that started a series of murders, it would be better to keep your mouth shut and not say anything about being planted that would have to do with affecting people's mental states if they listen to things backwards.
	So I think they got scared if they had actually planted some things.
	Why would they want to be involved in this Manson mess?
	So, you know, it was a great story.
	Kids still love it.
	And by the way, the 40th anniversary of all this, I can't believe it, is coming up, you know, on this, let's see, October is when the clues came out, October 12th.
	So 40 years ago to the day we start in October.
	Wow, where did that time go?
	Of course, you've got Paul's last album, he called Memory Almost Full, and he has a song in there looking back at all his, what's the song called My Ever Present Past, where he's kind of harking back to all of that stuff.
	It is fascinating.
	Do you think that the Beatles' involvement with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the discovery of LSD and other substances that bend the mind, do you think that that opened any doors or portals to them?
	Well, you know, I think that they were very much more creative.
	And, you know, when I talk about this, we talk about LSD.
	You've got to remember that when LSD first came out, it wasn't illegal for a year.
	So a lot of people were doing it.
	It started in San Francisco, but it wasn't necessarily illegal.
	And when the Beatles mentioned they had taken LSD, then, you know, they lost a lot of audience because a lot of people were saying, oh, these Beatles aren't the guys next door like Brian Epstein made them out to be.
	So I think a lot of musicians have always used some form of drug to help make them more relaxed or more creative.
	And normally you think of heroin with the old blues artist and Wilt with The Rolling Stones, for instance.
	You know, you have a story the same way.
	But I think that anything that opened their consciousness, I think that the idea of accepting Far Eastern religions was a way in which to find new truths because everybody sort of went against their parents' generations.
	Well, true enough.
	Gary, the one person, of course, took drugs and sex and rock and roll to its ultimate limits was Jim Morrison of the Dawes.
	And there are a zillion, million theories about him, about how he died, about his interest in the occult before he died.
	And in fact, now they're even saying that he may not have died at all.
	Well, or the latest rumor, I was in Paris last summer, probably about a year ago, and I know that I left the day before Morrison's death celebration when he was buried there.
	I think it was the second.
	The doors were there on the third.
	But the whole thing is that there's a new book that's only available in France saying that Morrison had died in a nightclub and that I think it was Electric Circus.
	And he had died in a bathroom stall, been given an overdose, and two men had said, no, he's not dead.
	They took him back to his apartment and put him in the bathtub to try to revive him.
	One of the strange things about the bathtub, and I know Alan Graham, who's Jim Morrison's brother-in-law, and of course Alan Graham is also from Liverpool.
	Did you know that?
	I didn't.
	I do know.
	And he was married to Jim Morrison's sister, Anna.
	But what's odd about Morrison's find in the bathtub is that his back was up against the faucets, which normally you would not get in a bathtub and put your back against the faucets, which might mean that he was placed there.
	But, you know, the story is that either Morrison had faked his death, because when he left L.A., he told the doors that he could see himself just totally dropping out, putting on a three-piece suit, shaving his beard, and getting out of this rock and roll industry.
	So when the word came to the doors that Morrison had died, Ray Manzarek, the keyboard has sent the doors manager, Bill Siddens, to Paris, and he said, Bill, I don't want to be morbid, but make sure.
	So when Siddens came to Paris, all he saw was a simple wooden coffin, veneer coffin, with the lid screwed into place.
	He never saw the body.
	He went to the funeral, which I think was on July 8th, and I think there were only six people there.
	And when he came back, he said, well, I didn't see the body.
	I just saw the coffin.
	So nobody knows if Morrison was really in the coffin.
	I mean, I believe that Morrison died in Paris.
	I believe he's buried at Père-Lachaise.
	But when he was buried, Pamela Corson only leased the grave.
	She didn't purchase it.
	So the grave was only leased for 30 years.
	That's a strange thing, isn't it?
	Why would she do that?
	Well, I don't know if it was a lack of funding, because after he died, the grave was unmarked for a number of months.
	No headstone.
	And he was just buried there, very, you know, in a very strange place.
	It's where a lot of the Holocaust victims were buried.
	It's not, you know, next to Oscar Wilde or some of the others.
	Matter of fact, there's a strange parallel to Morrison and Oscar Wilde.
	Oscar Wilde had left England for being accused of sex crimes.
	He was a homosexual at the time that he arrested people who were homosexuals.
	So he went to Paris, and Morrison had been convicted of his crime in Miami, a public exhibition or whatever.
	And if he'd come back to the United States, he would be put in jail.
	But see, France will not extradite for sex crimes.
	So that's the safe place for Morrison.
	And when he went to Paris, he stayed in the same hotel that Oscar Wilde had stayed in.
	And matter of fact, the room that Morrison had was the room that Oscar Wilde died in.
	And Oscar Wilde's last words were, either that wallpaper goes or I do.
	So the wallpaper stayed.
	Wow.
	So it is possible, isn't it, to see parallels in a lot of these things.
	But one thing that comes to my mind, because you hear it so often with people who are in rock and roll particularly, they, and we're going back to the Beatles here, they almost predict their own fate.
	Remember that John Lennon did an interview and he said, well, you know, he was talking about great peace campaigners and he said so-and-so, so-and-so and Gandhi.
	They all ended up getting shot.
	Yeah.
	Well, what happened to him?
	Exactly.
	And I'll give you another one.
	When John Lennon did the Playboy interviews, he was talking and all at once there was a gunshot.
	And Lennon turns to the interviewer and says, oh, another murder at the Rue Dakota.
	This was like two days before he died.
	And what's odd is John Lennon was the only person to that time, I'm not sure afterwards, who had ever been murdered at the Dakota.
	So that's chilling.
	And this was just a few days.
	When Nick Drake wrote the album Five Leafs Left, when he did that album, there were only five albums left.
	He did five albums, Five Leafs Left.
	And there's sort of like an idea of premonition.
	Buddy Hawley's last song is, it doesn't matter anymore.
	Well, if you're killed in a plane crash, I guess it doesn't matter anymore.
	So a lot of the last bits of the songs and that run through it, it seems like it's a premonition of bad things to come.
	But it is quite often the case that sometimes people know without actually consciously knowing what's coming to them.
	And in a way, there are people who will also claim that they've created that future for themselves without even knowing it.
	You know, there are people who say all of this works on a level that's way above and beyond any of us.
	Well, maybe there's some mathematical progression of the universe that puts it all in.
	I mean, like John Lennon was fascinated with the number nine, okay?
	Even when he was in Liverpool, I believe Liverpool has nine letters too.
	But his bus, everything has to do with the number nine.
	The date he was born, you add it together, it comes to the number nine.
	But the thing that always got me was that when he was killed on December 8th, and he was officially pronounced dead at, what was it?
	Anyway, it was 11.
	You add it together.
	It came out to 9.
	He died on 9th Avenue, and Roosevelt Hospital was nine letters.
	And if you think about the moment he died after 11 p.m. Eastern Time, it would have been December 9th in Liverpool, wouldn't it?
	Because he was a British citizen.
	And he had, you know, the fascination with a nine and numerology that governed his life, you know, he believed in that.
	I mean, he was into it.
	So what better way to predict it?
	I mean, whether it was brought on by energy or brought on by metaphysical pursuits or whatever, it is still shocking.
	Well, if you believe some people, large events, big, impactual events like 9-11 or the killing of John Lennon, which was, of course, reported around the world and created shockwaves with all of us in Liverpool.
	I was actually a trainee journalist, and I actually told Liverpool that news that day, so it made an impact on me.
	But there are people who say that huge events like that almost send out ripples through time that come back to you.
	In other words, the people who are involved in those things are hit by the ripples through time.
	The event happens, it's happened in the future, but The ripples from it, the backwash from it comes back to you and hits you.
	Well, I can see that.
	I mean, these are powerful, moving things that have touched generations, you know, and in a way that a lot of people probably don't understand.
	Like, for instance, when John Kennedy was assassinated, I was in junior high school, and I felt a sense of loss.
	But when John Lennon was murdered, it was 100 times worse for me.
	And a lot of people would say, well, he was a musician.
	I mean, he wasn't an American president.
	I mean, what's the big deal?
	But the thing is, I felt like I grew up with John Lennon.
	I thought, you know, even though I'd never met the man, his music had a lot of impact on me.
	This music still is being created.
	New generations are hearing it.
	Kids grow up, they hear it.
	They become devastated by the loss.
	You're absolutely right.
	It affects all of you, I think.
	well, everybody who's interested in music in a way that almost a family bereavement would.
	For us in Liverpool at that time, it was...
	I remember being in the bathroom getting ready to go out to work, and it was probably half past four in the morning in Liverpool that day.
	And I couldn't believe what I'd heard.
	I'd heard the words, and I knew what the story was, but I still could not compute that that could happen.
	No, and nor could I. And I was stunned for a week afterwards before I could accept anything.
	And I really couldn't even listen to any Beatle music for a week because I became very depressed just listening to it.
	So I think that was the thing that sort of bothered me was just the idea that, you know, it was senseless and there was no explanation for it.
	But, you know, sometimes the bullet of a madman has done more to change anything in history than anything else.
	True enough.
	And what about Mark Chapman?
	What's the latest on him?
	Well, I understand.
	He's been trying to get out, hasn't he?
	He's tried to get out.
	It's kind of interesting.
	It seems like in the United States, when you have a lot of people who commit a murder like this, they usually become very religious, and they tell you that they're no longer a threat to society.
	But I don't think that Chapman will ever be released.
	And that's really sad.
	I know I spoke at a Beatle convention in Atlanta, Georgia, and two fellows came up and they were talking to me.
	And they were really depressed because it was during the Beatles anthology.
	And they said, we were the guys who turned Mark David Chapman onto the Beatles.
	We were the ones who gave him his first albums and really created this love.
	So in a way, they felt responsible, did they?
	They did.
	Wow.
	Why didn't we do something else?
	And it was just everybody took some sort of responsibility.
	If only I hadn't, maybe John Lennon would still be alive.
	It's funny how that happens, isn't it?
	In practice, we know that there's nothing really that they could have done, and they're not at all responsible for it, but I guess in their heads, they're always going to feel slightly so.
	Yeah, I think so.
	I think that that's what a large consciousness is with the music of John Lennon, that, you know, everybody thought, why could this happen?
	If I hadn't been involved, and even though it's not their fault, like you say, it's just a sense of loss that's taken by everyone.
	Let's get to the really spooky stuff now.
	And you mentioned Buddy Holly, and I know that lately you've done a lot of work to do with Buddy Holly and Peggy Sue.
	Well, I tell you, the thing that's real interesting, and what we'll do, Howard, is Peggy Sue's a very good friend of mine.
	So hang on, I got a bronzer show.
	Well, yeah, let's do that.
	On a future show, I want to get Peggy Sue on.
	But the song Peggy Sue was a massive international hit.
	Everybody knows that song.
	Most of us, including me until recently, until I started reading some of the stuff that you were writing about this, didn't believe that Peggy Sue was a real person.
	We just thought it was a figment of his imagination.
	Well, it's much more than a real person.
	If you read Piggy Sue's new book, Piggy, let's see, Whatever Happened to Piggy Sue, she tells you the whole story.
	The song was written in honor of Piggy Sue, and of course Piggy Sue Guerin is her name, but she was married to Jerry Allison of The Crickets, the drummer.
	And the story goes that Jerry is the one who asked Buddy to write the song, but Buddy had an infatuation with Piggy Sue.
	His apartment tapes before his plane crash, he had written a song called Piggy Sue Got Married.
	And Piggy Sue has a very, very personal relationship with Buddy Holly that she'd be glad to talk about.
	I don't think I could do that justice, but let me tell you the spooky stuff.
	When Buddy Holly was killed with Richie Vallins and the Big Bopper, everybody who took his place, strange things happened in the crickets.
	Ronnie Smith took his place, finished the tour.
	As soon as the tour was over, he checks himself into a hospital because he was an alcoholic, and I guess we'd call him rehabs today, but not back then.
	And he hangs himself in the hospital.
	The next person to play in the crickets was David Box, and he was like 17 years old, and he actually recorded the song Piggy Sue Got Married.
	Everybody thinks it's Buddy Holly, but it's actually David Box.
	After a few years playing with the crickets, he leaves the crickets, starts a solo career, charters a small plane in Houston, Texas, and he and two members of his band are killed in a plane crash.
	He was 22 years old when he died, just like Buddy Hawley.
	When the song, you remember the song I Fought the Law and the Law One?
	Yep.
	That was written by Sonny Curtis, who was the guitarist in the crickets.
	Well, in Texas, you had a very famous guitarist, Bobby Fuller, who had sent his tapes, demo tapes, to Buddy Hawley's mother and father.
	Buddy Hawley's mother and father took the tapes and sent them to Norman Petty, who was the producer and engineer for all of Buddy Hawley's recordings at Clovis, New Mexico.
	Bobby Fuller recorded with Petty, left, moved to Hollywood, recorded with Bob Keene in Delphi Records, and the last song he cut, well he cut, the song that made him famous was I Fought the Law and the Law One, but he cut also a song called Loves Made a Fool of You.
	It was the last song he recorded, a song written by Buddy Holly.
	They found his body in his mother's car.
	He'd been beaten.
	He was doused with gasoline.
	He had gasoline in his stomach, and the Hollywood police announced that it was a suicide.
	Now the problem is you cannot drink gasoline and live.
	It had to be put after you were dead.
	And also there's a very obvious problem with that.
	You can't exactly beat yourself up, can you?
	You can't beat yourself badly and then try to swallow gasoline.
	So whatever happened to his death, he was 22 when he died, just like Buddy Hawley.
	And the story goes on, even Keith Moon died on Buddy Hawley's birthday, September 7th.
	So what was it, if we follow this line of thinking and we don't just say, well, that's all coincidence, and there will be people who email me and say exactly that.
	If we don't say it's all coincidence, what is the factor?
	What is the, what's going on, I guess is what we want to say.
	Well, I think it's be careful what you wish for.
	I mean, Buddy Hawley inspired a lot of people's dreams to be a rock star.
	And Buddy Hawley decided to leave country music when he saw Elvis perform.
	So, you know, he was the guy who really created American rock and roll.
	I mean, the Beatles, the very first song the Beatles ever recorded on a borrowed tape deck was That'll Be the Day.
	So you're saying, and I think there is some mileage in this idea, that a lot of people thought, I would like to be Buddy Holly.
	And as you say, if you wish for a thing, it comes to you, but perhaps it can come to you literally.
	And that's the thing.
	I mean, for instance, when Keith Moon died, he had gone out with Paul McCartney the night before to watch the Buddy Holly story in the London West End, the play.
	So the last thing he saw was the Buddy Holly story on September 6th.
	He's dead on September 7th, which just happens to be Buddy Hawley's birthday.
	And Tupac Shakur was shot on September 7th.
	And, I mean, you take a look at the date, September 7th.
	You take a look at the people who were close.
	Del Shannon, who did Runaway, had performed on the anniversary of Buddy Hawley's death.
	I think it was something like the 30th or 40th anniversary.
	And a few days later, I think it was on February 9th, he kills himself.
	And the last show he did was with the Crickets.
	And when you take a look at Buddy Hawley's best friend, Eddie Cochran, who is very well known in Great Britain, more so than the United States, he was supposed to be with Buddy Hawley on that winter dance party.
	And it haunted him that he knew that if he had been there, he would have been on that plane.
	So he felt like death was stalking him.
	And when he went on his tour of Great Britain, his girlfriend, Shannon Shealy, was there, he has her go out and buy all these Buddy Hawley singles.
	And he would sit in his hotel room and listen to the records with the lights out.
	And Sharon Shealy came in.
	She said, Eddie, you've got to get over this.
	And he looked at her and he says, no, because I think I'll be seeing Buddy soon.
	He went to see a fortune teller to find out when his death was supposed to happen.
	He wakes up screaming, I'm going to die.
	And there's not anything anyone can do about it.
	So when he's killed in his tragic car crash with Gene Vincent being injured, with his leg being injured again, a lot of people thought that maybe the record company had Gene Vincent, not Gene Vincent, but Eddie Cochrane killed so they could make more money.
	Because Bob Keene, who owned Delphi Records, who Richie Vallins recorded for, and Bobby Fuller, who both were killed, and of course Richie Vallins with Buddy Holly in the plane crash, he also had Sam Cook.
	All three of his major artists died mysterious deaths with insurance policies involved.
	So you take a look at that.
	You talk about conspiracy theories.
	Bob Keene was completely innocent.
	He was even investigated by the FBI.
	But I mean, there's parallels that go in.
	So when we talk about be careful what you wish for, it goes back to that deserted country crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the story goes that Robert Johnson had made a pact with the devil that, you know, he would gain fame and he would make money and make his name live eternally, but that he would die a young death.
	And he died at 27.
	And you take a look at 16 major rock stars who died at 27.
	You're talking about Brian Jones, who died at 27.
	Jim Morrison died at 27.
	Jimi Hendricks died at 27.
	Janice Joplin died at 27.
	Kirk Cobain died at 27.
	Pete Hamm from Badfinger died at 27.
	You go through the list.
	Now, 2 plus 7 makes 9, which John Lennon knew was the end number.
	And so it takes us back to that number 9.
	That's astonishing.
	What about Buddy Holly himself?
	Was he connected?
	Did he do occult things?
	Was he interested in the paranormal?
	Did he have any connection here?
	Well, not actually.
	I mean, I think I can't find anything.
	Peggy Sue may know because I've never sat and talked to her about it.
	But Buddy Holly was just, you know, a guy who just enjoyed writing great rock and roll music.
	And, you know, he'd even learned to fly a small plane.
	And Peggy Sue had a premonition of him dying in a plane crash.
	And she went to him at least three times to warn him not to be in a small plane.
	He said, oh, I can coast this in.
	But the key thing is the 50th anniversary of Buddy Holly's plane crash that comes up on February 3rd this year is what happened in that plane?
	Why would it crash just nine miles after takeoff?
	And the story goes that the pilot wasn't trained on his instruments and he was going down instead of going up in the snowstorm.
	But there's evidence to say that the weather wasn't that bad when they took off.
	And why didn't the plane crash and catch on fire?
	I mean, how many plane crashes occur with no flame?
	And that was it.
	And then why was the Big Bopper's body thrown 40 feet in front of the plane and the others, too?
	I talked to the Big Bopper's son, JP, and Jay told me that he had his father's, well, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but they actually had the Big Bopper body removed, and an autopsy was performed last year.
	Are you familiar with this?
	I've kind of heard that story, but tell it again.
	Okay, so his son, who was born three months after his father's death, had never seen his father, never heard from him, nothing.
	He was always obsessed with his dad.
	So the body farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, Dr. Bass, probably one of the world's leading forensic scientists, was hired to do an autopsy of the Big Bopper.
	Now, what bothered his son was why was the Big Bopper's body 40 feet in front of the plane and everyone else next to the plane?
	He was afraid that his father may have survived initially and was trying to crawl through that field to get help.
	And it haunted him.
	So the autopsy, it just really said that his father died instantly and probably the impact.
	I mean, who knows what happened?
	When that plane took off, was Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper trying to exchange seats in the plane to throw off the weight?
	Is that why the Big Bopper was thrown in front of the plane?
	But all this has happened, and there's all kinds of great investigations.
	The plane, by the way, we know, is in a hangar.
	So there's a hope that the plane might go through another forensics investigation to find out what happened.
	This many years on, the plane is still in existence, and if somebody did want to do a full forensic 2008-style examination, they could to finally get a handle on why this happened.
	That's right.
	And who knows?
	It's 50 years, so maybe the owner might allow that to happen.
	And there were stories that a gun was on the plane, and that the gunshot may have gone through the seat and killed the pilot.
	That's why the plane crashed.
	Because when they moved the plane, they found Buddy Hawley's handgun.
	That was in the spring.
	And the gun had been fired twice.
	Could this be another case of, and this has happened in rock a few times, hasn't it, of somebody playing with a gun like Terry Cath of Chicago was playing with a gun and put a bullet through his temple, didn't he?
	Well, that's exactly it.
	And Johnny Ace, the first great rock and roll fatality, if you remember the story, he had the song called Pledging My Love.
	It was in like 1954, I think.
	And he was backstage at a club in Texas with Big Mama Thornton, and he had a handgun pointing it at everybody, pulling the trigger, and it was just clicking.
	He even pointed at his girlfriend's head.
	Big Mama Thornton grabbed the gun from his hand.
	He grabbed it back and said, look, this gun's not loaded.
	He put it to his head, pulled the trigger, and the gun went off, and he booked his ticket to Rock and Roll Heaven that very moment.
	What is this relationship between rockers and guns?
	Look at Phil Spector, who apparently always had a gun in the house.
	And when Lennon was going there to work with him, he said we couldn't stay around.
	Well, him and McCartney said we couldn't stay around this guy for too long.
	He was just a little too worrying with the guns.
	Well, if you remember, when Lennon was recording with him, Specter fired the gun in the studio up into the ceiling.
	And John Lennon said, Phil, if you want to shoot me, shoot me, but don't blow out my ears.
	He said, that's how I'll make my living.
	And DeeDee Ramon said, when Spectre was working with the Ramones, that he became so infuriated with the band, he told them that he stood in front of him, took out his pistol, and he said, the first one who messes up, I'm going to shoot you.
	And they were playing, and he was pointing the gun at each one of them as they were playing.
	Gee, I've had a few bosses like that.
	Yeah, well, you know, Joe Meek.
	Joe Meek.
	Now, I wanted to get right, you know that I'm not an aficionado, but I am a fan of Joe Meek's music and the work that he did.
	For those who don't know, Joe Meek was the man behind, I suppose the most famous record that he was behind, was Telstar.
	But he used to make records in a house on the Holloway Road in London.
	He would have people recording in the bathroom in different parts of the...
	And the great thing about it is, in fact, at the moment, I am looking at a little green box that says Joe Meek on the front.
	He designed recording circuitry that people like me are still using to this day.
	In fact, I was determined to use my little Joe Meek box today while recording this.
	Now, Joe Meek was a genius, but he was also, mad's a heavy word.
	We don't know whether he was mad, but he had problems and he was dabbling in the occult, wasn't he?
	Oh, my goodness.
	And yes.
	And we're going to bring this all full circle because it's a great story.
	When Joe Meek was born, I think he had an older brother.
	His mother wanted a daughter, so she dressed him like a girl until he went to school.
	So you can imagine how he was tormented by the other boys.
	So he had an identity crisis from the start?
	From the beginning.
	And, you know, what makes him very significant, and we've got to remember that, and Howard, you would know this, because in the late 50s, there was really no substitute for American rock and roll.
	A lot of British groups would take American songs like By the Supremes or by the Girl Bands, and they would record them and put them out in the UK before the American releases came over.
	So what Joe Meek did that was fascinating, he took the song Telstar by the Tornadoes, and it topped the charts in the United States.
	It was the first British single to be number one in the United States.
	And that says a lot because, I mean, the song was so incredible.
	Of course, Joe Meek wrote the song, but he couldn't carry a tune.
	I mean, he did it piece by piece, which was amazing.
	And, of course, he got into the occult, and at first it was pretty innocent.
	He did a lot of tarot card readings.
	And one night, he and two other friends were sitting around, and one was shuffling the cards, one turned the cards, and the other one wrote the prediction or what the card meant.
	And as they were playing, they came up with this message.
	It said, Buddy Hawley dies February 3rd.
	Wow.
	Now, Buddy Hawley and the Crickets came to England in March of 1958.
	So Joe Meek had tried to get in touch with Buddy Hawley because he was a major Buddy Hawley fan.
	He worshipped Buddy Hawley.
	And when Buddy Hawley came to Great Britain, Joe Meek met him.
	He said, look, this may sound crazy, but I was playing tarot cards and I said, you need to be very careful on February 3rd.
	I'm so glad that this is March.
	But he said, you're going to have to promise me that on February 3rd, you'll be very careful because it said you'll die on February 3rd.
	When Buddy Hawley came back to the United States, he did an interview, and he said, you know, I was over in England, and he said, some guy told me I was going to die on February 3rd, so that was kind of spooky.
	That's what Buddy Hawley said.
	Well, February 3rd, 1959, Buddy Hawley was killed in a plane crash.
	And Joe Meek knew it, which indicates that he was connected to the occult, but maybe a little too connected.
	He got to the stage where it was starting to be dangerous.
	Well, it was.
	And then when this happened, then Joe Meek started to do seances.
	And who was his writing partner?
	Jeff Goddard, I believe.
	And they had actually contacted Buddy Hawley in the afterlife, according to Joe Meek.
	And he had written a song called A Tribute to Buddy Hawley that Mike Berry did, Mike Berry and the Outlaws.
	And when the song was played for this spiritual presence, according to Meek, the message came, see you on the charts, because he wanted to make sure it was in good taste that Buddy Hawley would agree.
	So then there were rumors that Joe Meek and his partner, Jeff Goddard, were actually writing songs with dead rock stars.
	And that hit the newspapers.
	So more and more it got into the occult.
	And of course, these days, that's the kind of thing that gets into the British tabloid press very easily.
	You know, the Daily Star, the Sun, over in the U.S., the National Inquirer.
	But we're talking about a previous era, decades and decades ago, where that kind of stuff did not get out so readily.
	Oh, no.
	And it wasn't looked upon as favorably, you know.
	But this happened, and it seems like Joe Meek spent a lot of time at, oh, what's the famous cemetery with the, oh, Highgate Cemetery.
	Yeah, and that he would take recorders, and he would try to take spiritual presences in the cemetery, that he belonged to the London Academy of Psychic Studies.
	And he got so further into this that Richie Blackmore's wife at the time, Marguerite, I guess, said that she was convinced that he was possessed, possessed by the spirit of Alistair Crowley, she believed, because This was the occult guru of the whole period.
	Well, he was the original magic man, wasn't he?
	He was.
	And Meek had shaved his head.
	Meek was convinced that there were listening devices all through his studio.
	And they actually found some bugs.
	I mean, that's what's strange.
	So who would have been bugging if I didn't know that?
	I knew that Meek was obsessed with this idea that he was being bugged.
	I didn't know they found some.
	They actually did.
	But I think it goes to this.
	Do you remember an event in English history that was called the Suitcase Murders?
	Yeah.
	Okay, what had happened is that Joe Meek had been arrested for solicitation.
	And they found this body that had been dismembered and placed in two large suitcases.
	And the body was identified as this young man that Joe Meek had known.
	So the police were very interested to see if Joe Meek had been involved in this murder.
	I mean, I'm pretty sure that that wasn't the case, but that would sort of give you an idea that somebody was investigating you at the end.
	And that and everything else probably pushed Joe Meek over the end.
	And when his landlady came that day, she goes upstairs and one of his assistants is downstairs and he hears a shotgun blast and he sees the landlady falling down the stairs with her back still smoldering from the buckshot.
	He rushes up and then Joe Meek takes his own life.
	Now he kills himself on February 3rd.
	It's the anniversary of Buddy Hawley's death.
	But, you know, his mind, the balance of his mind, as they say the technical term for it, the balance of his mind was disturbed.
	You know, perhaps he was planning to do something on that date.
	Maybe that was it.
	Maybe that was the whole date that he had locked it in together.
	But you know, Phil Spector also carried guns in the studio.
	Joe Meek had actually taken a pistol when Tom Jones and the senators were recording for him.
	He takes a pistol and puts it right in Tom Jones' face and pulls the trigger and the gun goes off and it was loaded with blanks.
	Terrified Tom Jones.
	When Mitch Mitchell was recording in the studio, Mitch was always known to overplay.
	I mean, he's not a simple drummer.
	And Joe Meek would come running out screaming at him, play it simple, play it simple.
	And he'd go back in and Mitch would play what he wanted to play.
	And then finally, Joe Meek comes out with that same shotgun and he points it at Mitch Mitchell and he says, I said, play softly.
	So Mitch Mitchell played the way Joe Meek wanted to play that day.
	So those guns are used in the studio.
	But you know, let's go back full circle.
	Phil Specter was arrested for a murder that occurred in his home in Southern California.
	I was in Los Angeles that day and I was flying back.
	And when I picked up the paper, he was arrested on February 3rd.
	Wow.
	I keep saying, I must stop saying wow, but you know, this stuff is so connected.
	If you wanted to make a great conspiracy theory about all of it, you certainly could.
	Well, you could.
	I mean, I know it's coincidental, but I mean, even if it's a coincidence, you still have those chills that go up your spine when you see that.
	And if you have the information that it was February 3rd.
	And I think one thing that got me into this, Howard, was in the United States, the Lincoln penny came out, and there were rumors, all these events that came out that linked Lincoln to John Kennedy.
	And there were like 25 of them.
	And every time you'd read it, you know, like they're both vice presidents were named Johnson.
	And they both had a secretary with the same name.
	But hasn't a lot of this stuff been dismissed as sort of urban myth?
	Well, some of it has.
	But when it came out originally, you know, people normally accept it.
	What I do is I'm interested in finding out when did this event occur.
	If it occurred on February 3rd and it involved something that had a Buddy Hawley link, then, you know, maybe it's a little bit more than coincidence, you know.
	But all these people, Buddy Hawley, is a common factor, a common theme in all of them.
	And yet Buddy Holly himself, as you said, was not a man who was particularly connected to the occult like Joe Meek was, but there seems to have been something around or about him if we follow this train of thought.
	Or just the idea that suck people in.
	Yeah, maybe the idea is to be careful what you wish for.
	Because you might get it at the end.
	It's like Alexander the Great.
	If you remember, Alexander the Great had said that Zeus Amon had appeared before him and offered him two choices.
	He could have a short life filled with fame, or he could live to be an old man and never know fame.
	And he chose the short life.
	And he died at 33.
	So if it goes all the way back into ancient classical history, who knows?
	What about Mark Bolan?
	What do you know about him?
	Well, you know, just a great performer, very talented with T-Rex.
	When he was killed, you know, of course he died too young.
	We could say that about everyone else.
	But when his car smashed into the tree, when the police got there, they found a badge that had fallen out on the seat.
	And it said, every day is a holiday.
	H-O-L-L-Y.
	And he, again, was somebody who loved Body Holly.
	But from what I hear, he was also very much of the mind that he would be killed in a car crash.
	Didn't he used to tell people that?
	Yes, he did.
	And you know what's really strange?
	A number of rock artists have claimed that they never lived to see 30.
	Janice Joplin said, I'll never live to be 30.
	She was right.
	She died at 27.
	Ronnie Van Zandt in the group Leonard Skynyrd told his mother and father, he said, I'll never live to see 30.
	And he was killed, I think, either 28 or 29.
	Eric Clapton never expected to see 30.
	Jimmy Page never expected to see 30, but they did.
	And I think they were well-grounded in the Robert Johnson myth because both those guitarists were major fans of Robert Johnson.
	And they knew he died at a very early age.
	And I think that's what sort of shook them.
	So I think that a lot of rock and roll stars, they know it.
	I read an article in the United States with John Mayer.
	And in the article, John Mayer said, well, he said, I tell you, my greatest accomplishment, he said, I passed 27.
	And that's what John Mayer said.
	So, I mean, these are new artists.
	But I guess they read my book and they know the thing about the 27 thing.
	But all of them are saying, you know, I passed 27.
	So if you're a musician, if you're in music and you're listening to this now and you happen to be 26 and 11 months, get it all into perspective, okay?
	This doesn't happen to everybody.
	That's right.
	Do not play your electric guitar in a bathtub.
	Stay out of small planes.
	Not a good idea.
	Make sure you play safe, as they say.
	Work from home for a year, home recording.
	That's the way to go.
	Well, who knows about that?
	I don't know.
	But these stories are so fascinating.
	And the Joe Meek thing in particular has always fascinated me because I'm interested in recording and the guy designed electronics.
	I'm using some of it right now that 40 years on we're still amazed by and we're still using and there's nothing quite like it.
	But you would have thought that if anybody was going to communicate from beyond the grave, it would be somebody like him.
	Oh, you'd think so.
	Maybe someone's not contacted him yet.
	Do we know of any rock stars who have regularly made appearances from the other side?
	Well, let's see.
	When I do coast to coast, I know that there's a lot of information that comes through.
	I know that there were seances involving John Lennon, and I think it was even a pay-per-view event, but I mean, I think that pretty well fell flat on its face.
	I know that when I was talking to another, probably a mutual friend of ours, you know, Bill Harry from Liverpool, who created Mercy Beat magazine.
	Oh, yes, yes, I do.
	I do.
	I do.
	I was being dense.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, Bill's a good friend of mine, and he was telling me that if you remember John Lennon, he said that one of his quotes was that if there was anything to the afterlife, that he told his son Julian that he would make a white feather float.
	So to watch for the white feather.
	Well, Cynthia Lennon was telling Bill that when Julian's career took off and he was playing the Royal Albert Hall, that he was very nervous.
	And a package came that very day.
	And when they opened the package, it was an American Indian headdress that had been stolen from John Lennon when the Beatles had come to the United States.
	And when the package was opened, these beautiful white feathers came floating into the air.
	And since then, Julian Lennon has become involved.
	I know this because I saw a DVD that he's in the process of making.
	I don't think it's been released yet.
	I might be wrong about that.
	But he's involved in a lot of new age things these days.
	Yes, he is.
	And his mother said that that really gave him the confidence to go out that night and perform.
	So that's it.
	And Bill, being a very good friend of John Lennon's, has had a number of psychics trying to get to him to tell him that Lennon's trying to get in touch with him.
	So we're going to wait and see how that works out.
	So it seems like John Lennon may be very well active, according to a lot of people.
	And of course, you know, I'm sure a lot of this is bogus, but still have only one chance.
	Who knows?
	John Lennon is always interesting.
	You know, being a Liverpuglian and having been very small during the Beatles era, but certainly being aware of it, even like a three, four-year-old boy, you couldn't fail to be aware of it.
	But John Lennon was such a strong character.
	You would feel that if anybody could come back from the other side, if there is another side, then he would.
	And certainly, with all the stuff that's going on in the world at the moment with the subprime mortgage crisis and political instability here, there and everywhere, and are we going to contact extraterrestrials and all the rest of it, if we needed anybody's view on all of this, we need his.
	And that's true.
	And of course, as you said, John Lennon was very fascinated with the occult.
	I remember reading in Petty, well, Petty Harrison, or Petty Boyd's book, Wonderful Tonight, she talked about a seance she attended with John and Cynthia and George, where this couple in Great Britain had promised to get some message to John from the afterlife and that there were going to be two people from the planet Venus there.
	So they all show up.
	Then they announced that the Venetians could not be there and they were very disappointed.
	So they sort of chuckled each other, but I mean, they were always interested.
	And of course, on Walls and Bridges, when John was at the Dakota and he saw a flying saucer, and he said, what do I do?
	Call the news station and say, my name is John Lennon.
	I just saw a flying saucer.
	So if you look at the Walls and Bridges album, he said, on this date, I saw a flying saucer.
	And he wrote it down.
	And Mae Pang was with him.
	She talked about it, too.
	So it seems like he was drawn to a lot of this or things were drawn to him.
	Maybe some sort of great power from metaphysics or whatever, but it's an interesting story.
	Yeah, it'd be nice to think so.
	Tell me about the TV series Dead Famous.
	I was a big fan of that.
	That was a TV series where a team of experts went to places where famous people had lived or died or hung out whatever, homes of people like Marilyn Monroe, and actually tried to sense whatever vibes were there.
	I know you were involved in that.
	Well, I was involved in a series called VH1 Confidential.
	And basically what that was, it was basically a lot of the great legends and stories, and some were investigated that way.
	And I think it would be a good story to go back and do this with some rock stars, you know, I mean, like Jim Morrison and some of the others, and some of the other stories would be great.
	But the one I did was VH1 Confidential, and it was basically a lot of the great stories, the urban myths, and a lot of them were proven, and it was on probably around 2000, 2001, and sometimes it still airs on VH1.
	But I'm always interested in putting new series together, and that sounds like one I'd love to do right now.
	Well, I think you should, because the people who did this, so you weren't involved in Dead Famous yourself.
	No, not me.
	Basically, I'm a consultant.
	So what happens is sometimes VH1 call me and they would say, we're thinking about doing a series called This.
	And they said, do you know anything about that?
	So they would call and try to pick my brain for a while, but they have so much turnover.
	And unfortunately, in the music industry in the United States, what VH1 and MTV should have been, they've now become reality shows and the music has suffered greatly from it.
	So that's the sad part.
	Well, that's a sign of the times.
	And I wonder if, because all things are cyclical in this world, I wonder if that particular cycle is going to go the other way and they will go back to the music.
	I think you're right.
	Every time I turn them on, there's something that is not musical on there.
	And I'm thinking, you know, where are the videos?
	Well, that's what it was supposed to be in the beginning.
	I remember when MTV came on, it wasn't offered on my cable service, but if I drove 15 miles to my friend's house, he had it.
	So we were playing in a band together.
	I'd bring my VHS recorder.
	I'd sit it down and I'd record eight hours of MTV and bring it back and watch it.
	That's how great it was.
	And today it's nothing.
	I think that's what it's pretty bad for a new generation growing up not understanding exactly how great the music was because VH1 really launched a number of great artists.
	Totally.
	I can remember my first experience of it was in a hotel room in France and they had MTV there and I thought, I have never seen anything like this.
	I mean, I was quite late to it.
	What was the video that I saw?
	It was Bjork's Human Behavior.
	Okay, great video.
	If you ever get the chance to see the video to Human Behavior, it is one of the all-time, as far as I'm concerned, one of the all-time great videos.
	But this stuff changed people's perceptions of music.
	Oh, and it made more people get into music.
	And it created a market for a lot of people who the record companies thought were unmarketable.
	And then they launched to fame because, you know, music is for the masses.
	And you have a small company that controls everything.
	I mean, music was always regional.
	You had the DJ who launched it.
	And the bands from the South, the bands from Liverpool, those were the bands that were promoted by the promoters in those areas, and they became national hits, national artists.
	Today, we have playlists made in Los Angeles for places like Charlotte, North Carolina, and you don't have that.
	I think that takes away a lot of the romantic impact of the music and makes a lot of artists not able to get their music out to the populace.
	And the same thing is happening in the UK.
	If you listen to radio stations, if they belong to the same chain of radio stations owned by the same company, if you tune up and down the dial, you will very frequently hear the same song being played at the same time because it's on the same rotation.
	I wonder what that is doing to music.
	What is that doing to music?
	In the old days when all this started, of course, there wasn't the computerization and we didn't have the finesse and sophistication that we have now.
	But people on a local basis would have to make local decisions and stick with those decisions.
	And sometimes those decisions would be genius and sometimes they wouldn't be so good.
	But at least those decisions were individual and local.
	Yes, and that's how music evolved in rock and roll history, whether it was in Memphis or St. Louis or New Orleans, wherever, or Liverpool or Manchester or London.
	Those elements created probably one of the greatest eras in music.
	Why don't we have it now?
	So do you think 2008 is the day the music died?
	Well, it may have died a few years before.
	It could well be.
	I don't know.
	Maybe Howard, that's what our project should be to restore it the way it was.
	What do you think?
	That would be nice.
	An awful lot of people seem to be thinking that way, but not a lot of people seem to be doing very much.
	So if you're thinking, time to stop thinking, time to get doing, I would say.
	Gary, it's great to talk to you.
	What is your website?
	Well, my website is www.rgarypatterson.com.
	That's Gary with one R and Patterson with two T's.
	And you can email me there.
	I'd love to hear from all your listeners, and I'll try to get all the answers to any questions they may have.
	Or hopefully they may know a story that I'd become very interested in.
	I'm working on a new book, so I'd like to have more and more information, more stories that can fit into what I do well.
	And that's the irony of rock and roll.
	I think what you want to do is to go to Liverpool, spend some time there, because there are a lot of old guys in Liverpool, and they are.
	You know, they're getting on now because all this happened 40-odd years ago.
	But they were around when the Beatles were coming up.
	They perhaps didn't make it like the Beatles, although some of them did, but it didn't persist for them.
	It was just a short-term thing.
	But they all have stories to tell.
	So I reckon what Gary Patterson needs to do is get himself to Liverpool at some point.
	Well, I intend to do that.
	But then I recommend that for everybody.
	Well, I'm usually in London, but I need to go to Liverpool.
	I've been to London at least once a year.
	Two and a half hours on the train, you know, and you're there.
	You're right in the middle of it.
	And I tell you, nobody would enjoy it any more than I would because it's been a dream to go to Liverpool.
	I've just never had the opportunity, but I will make the opportunity.
	Well, everybody's a comedian.
	People think that that's a myth.
	It isn't.
	It's true.
	Everybody's a comedian in Liverpool.
	Well, that's great.
	I'll be entertained.
	You will be.
	I can guarantee it.
	Gary, thank you very much for coming on the Unexplained.
	We will talk soon, I am sure.
	The man you've been listening to is our Gary Patterson, and we'll put a link on our website to his so that it's nice and easy for you to get through.
	Now, thank you to Graham Mullins, my webmaster, for putting this show out to you.
	Thank you to Martin for the theme.
	Don't forget if you want to email me about this show with future ideas, anything that you think we need to be getting into, like, as I said, time travel.
	Unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk is my email address, unexplainedh at yahoo.co.uk.
	This website, if you're not listening to the show via the website, if you're listening to it on iTunes or somewhere else, please go to the website.
	It's triple w dot the unexplained.tv.
	www.theunexplained.tv.
	That's enough self-promotion for now.
	We'll be back very soon.

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