The Sgt Pepper Code 2016

The Sgt. Pepper Code

Redwel Trabant In time the hidden truth shall be revealed

Š2016 Redwel Trabant

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

This book is dedicated to Beatles fans all over the world. Their appetite for new stories knows no bounds – I salute you.

I would like to thank in particular Richard M. Compton and Meagan Leigh Compton for their amazing help in pointing out new clues, their unwavering support and for their encyclopaedic knowledge.

I would also like to thank various anonymous contributors on Beatles related web forums. Their capacity to suspend all forms of rational belief defies logic; however, occasionally they do deliver spectacular results!

Introduction ____________________________ “If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient in them, we shall end in certainties”.

Sir Francis Bacon “There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

Nothing you can see that isn't shown”.

Lennon/McCartney Paul McCartney once said; “We wanted the whole of Pepper to be so that you could look at the front cover for years, and study all those people and read all the words on the back”.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, like The Beatles themselves, means different things to different people. To brand it as simply a psychedelic album would be to do it as gross a disservice as it would be inaccurate. To label it simply as the first ever concept album would render it paternally responsible for the crimes of its 1970’s prog-rock offspring. Likewise, to claim it as undoubtedly the finest rock and roll album of all time is to overstate its significance massively. However, whatever it means to you, to me, or to anyone else, you cannot deny the immense influence that the release of that single, twelve-inch, slab of vinyl has had on successive generations and now, as we approach its fiftieth anniversary, this influence shows no sign of declining.

But is all as it seems? Should it all be taken at face value? After all, Paul McCartney has his back facing the camera on the rear of the cover, so, does this not imply that all should not be taken at face value? It is my belief that the album, its lyrics, and most importantly its sleeve design, contains clues to reveal a hidden message.

I believe that the album cover is a treasure map and the clues it reveals can be used to crack a code that has lain previously undiscovered since its release.

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that the clues exist, that they can be linked, and, finally, to decode their meaning. The Sgt. Pepper Code is the Rosetta Stone that will allow you to tap into the Holy Grail of Beatle mystery and symbolism.

I suspect that, like the album itself, the book will elicit a plethora of varying theories and opinions and that is great. It is not for me to

dictate what is and what is not. I may suspect I am right but, I cannot prove it, so I write this as a means that others may begin their own investigations, seek out their own clues and their own truths. All I can demonstrate categorically, without fear of rebuttal, is that the clues exist. As an aperitif, here is an example.

The Sgt. Pepper album cover is famous for its montage of cardboard cut-out celebrities. People The Beatles supposedly like and admire, yet, they are arranged there to pay homage to The Beatles, not the other way around.

One of this list of players, one of the characters that appears in the cover crowd scene, one of the “people we like”, one of The Beatles’ “heroes” was H. G. Wells. We will look later at Wells in greater depth but, let us for a minute, consider one of his printed works, 1933’s ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ and its 1936 film release rebranded as ‘Things to Come’.

The film portrays a vision of a future history from 1940 to 2036 and is set in the fictional British city of 'Everytown', which is based on London. Successful businessman John Cabal cannot enjoy Christmas Day, 1940, with the ominous news of possible war looming. His guest Harding shares his worries, but over-optimistic friend Passworthy believes it will not come to pass, or even if it does, it will do some good by accelerating the rate of technological progress. A bombing raid on the city that night then results in general mobilization and global war.

Some-time later, Cabal, now piloting a biplane, shoots down a oneman enemy bomber. He lands and pulls the badly injured enemy from the wreckage. As they dwell on the madness of war, they have to put on their gas masks as a poison gas drifts ominously in their direction.

When a little girl runs towards them, the wounded man insists she take his mask, saying he is done for anyway. Cabal takes the girl to his aeroplane, pausing to leave the doomed man a revolver. The pilot is left to dwell on the irony that he may have gassed the child's family but yet he has saved her. He then shoots himself.

The war continues for decades, long enough for the survivors to have forgotten why they are fighting in the first place. Humanity enters a

new Dark Age. The world is in ruins and there is little technology left apart from the firearms used to wage war. In 1966, a plague called the “wandering sickness” is spread by the unnamed enemy using its last few remaining aircraft. Dr. Harding and his daughter Mary struggle to find a cure, but with little equipment, it is hopeless.

By 1970, a local warlord called the “Chief” or the “Boss” has risen to power in the south of England and has eradicated the sickness by shooting the infected. He dreams of conquering the “hill people” in order that he can obtain coal and shale to render into oil so his biplanes can fly again.

On May Day 1970, a futuristic aeroplane lands outside the town. The sole pilot, John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of “engineers and mechanics” have formed a civilization called “Wings over the World”. They are based in Basra, Iraq, and have renounced war and outlawed independent nations. The Boss takes the pilot prisoner and forces him to work for Gordon, a mechanic working on repairing the few remaining aeroplanes. Together, they manage to fix a plane. When Gordon takes it up for a test flight, he uses the opportunity to flee to alert Cabal’s friends.

Wings over the World then attacks Everytown with gigantic aeroplanes and drops sleeping-gas bombs on the town. The Boss orders his biplanes to attack but they are soon shot down. The people of Everytown awaken shortly thereafter to find it occupied by the Airmen and the Boss dead.

A montage follows, showing decades of technological progress, beginning with Cabal explaining plans for global consolidation by Wings over the World. By 2036, mankind lives in modern underground cities, including the new Everytown.

However, all is not well. The sculptor Theotocopulos incites the populace to demand a “rest” from the rush of progress, symbolized by the first manned flight around the Moon. The modern-day Luddites are opposed by Oswald Cabal, the head of the governing council and great grandson of John Cabal. Cabal's daughter Catherine and her boyfriend Horrie Passworthy insist on flying the spaceship. When a

mob rushes to destroy the space gun used to propel the spacecraft, Cabal launches the ship ahead of schedule.

Cabal then delivers a speech about progress and humanity's quest for knowledge, asking: “And if we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and live, and suffer, and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. It is this, or that. All the universe or nothing. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

An interesting little tale culled shamelessly, from Wikipedia, however, what is its relevance to The Beatles or to Sgt. Pepper? Well, it tells the story of the rise of a new world order, a one government world that is born from the seed of war and in which technology and knowledge are king and where opposition – here coming from the artistic world – is brutally suppressed. That the new ‘civilisation’ formed as it is from mechanics and engineers, is highly reminiscent of a Masonic style ‘secret’ organisation and their supposed formation by highly skilled builders and architects should also be a key consideration. Its issues, now extremely familiar, would have seemed anathema to the audiences of 1936, or indeed 1966, and yet this theme of secret knowledge and new world order are ones that are repeatedly returned to in Sgt. Pepper, as I will demonstrate.

The “Wings over the World”, this new civilisation, is based in Basra in Iraq, very near to the home of the ancient Sumerian civilisation and Pepper will consistently refer back to the ‘knowledge of the ancients’ and to ‘lost civilisations’. But most intriguingly, “Wings over the World” was the name that Paul McCartney bestowed on his 1975 / 76 world tour with his then vanity project band, Wings.

“Who gain the world and lose their soul – they don’t know – they can’t see – are you one of them?”

The single, sole question asked on Sgt. Pepper and taken from the song ‘Within You, Without You’, and as we shall see, it gets right to the heart of the matter.

“My views on Christianity are directly influenced by a book, The Passover Plot by Hugh J. Schonfield. The premise in it is that Jesus’

message had been garbled by his disciples and twisted for a variety of self-serving reasons by those who followed, to the point where it has lost validity for many in the modern age.”

- John Lennon, The Boston Globe, reported on Dec. 12, 1980 This book, ‘The Passover Plot’ would have an enormous influence on John Lennon. He obtained it, as he did the works of Nietzsche, at the Indica bookshop. The bookshop, along with its attached art gallery, was owned and run by Barry Miles, John Dunbar and Peter Asher.

Lennon’s interpretation of the meaning of these books would lead directly to the so called ‘more popular than Jesus’ comments, and the subsequent furore they caused, in 1966. This, in great part, would lead to The Beatles deciding that they no longer wished to perform live and to their re-invention as a solely studio based band.

This decision would have massive implications for both the band and its management. Indeed, from this point onward The Beatles were never the same band again. No longer were they the lovable moptops of old, beloved of both child and parent. Now they were longhaired, moustachioed, avant-garde gurus striding forth toward cultural immortality.

Except, of course, that they had no perception of this themselves.

The Beatles had always been manipulated; packed off to Hamburg by grasping management, transformed from ‘50’s style bequiffed rockers to a freshly coiffured elfin look by German art students, only to be converted from leather-clad greasers to Pierre Cardin clad mods by the shop owners son, Brian Epstein, and then subsequently deprived of the services of their drummer at the behest of a producer of comedy records.

But, for all of the above mentioned, whose own career paths would reach stratospheric proportions thanks to ‘the boys’, this manipulation was benign and caring, almost paternalistic in its nature.

But what of the new pack? The Miles, Asher, Dunbar triumvirate, enhanced as it was by the influential art dealer Robert Fraser. This was a new breed; left-leaning, socialist inspired vanguards of a

cultural and social revolution but, nevertheless, still Oxbridge educated examples of the old British Establishment order.

Marx reading communists in expensively hand-tailored Savile Row suits.

Clearly they believed in the LSD tinted, anarchic, peace and love, hippy bull-shit they printed in their proto student rag, ‘International Times’, but were they puppets or puppeteers?

How seriously the security services on either side of the Atlantic took the supposed threat that bands like The Beatles and The Stones posed is a moot point. But that the ‘International Times’ faithfully reported on any, or all, of the more subversive aspects of this ‘movement’ can only of been an advantage to the powers that be.

“We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD” said John Lennon to Playboy in 1980. Of course, post the 1970’s CIA mind-control revelations, many were aware by then that LSD was a tool of ‘The Man’; nevertheless John Lennon was, coincidentally, dead before the year was out.

But who knew any of that in the 1960’s?

The Beatles were certainly pro LSD proselytisers but their introduction to the drug was far from organic given that that their drinks were spiked by a dentist ‘friend’.

Is it significant that the wicked dentist was a US trained son of a Metropolitan Police Officer?

Is it significant that the Cambridge educated John Dunbar’s father was a former cultural attaché to Moscow?

Is it significant that Peter, and Jane, Asher’s father was involved in LSD related, medical experiments in the sixties?

For sure the police raids on the ‘International Times’ gave it a certain veneer of respectability, an element of being ‘for the people’, but was this really the case?

It is all too easy to start bandying around terms like ‘Tavistock’ and ‘MKUltra’ and sounding like a conspiracy theorists wet dream when, in reality, there is scant evidence for this level of involvement.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that when a spokesperson for the acid generation was needed, it would turn out to be the ‘cute’ Beatle that stepped up to the plate. The Beatle, who by his own admission, had only tried LSD a couple of times. The Beatle whose ‘establishment’ friend had died whilst driving under the, rumoured (by Marianne Faithfull, then John Dunbar’s husband), influence of LSD. The very same Beatle who could, very well, be the spokesperson for ‘The Man’.

It is interesting also that for all the left-leaning, liberal agenda of the Indica crowd their bottom line was, and is, the selling of product – be it avant-garde art, poorly typeset newspapers, books or records – to the masses and they certainly appreciated the marketing potential of a Beatle to enhance that.

Puppets or puppeteers? Benign manipulators or malignant mindcontrol experts? The jury is still out; however, their influence is all over the Sgt. Pepper concept.

Another pertinent event that took place in 1966 was a ‘Time’ magazine article asking “Is God Dead?” Clearly, one cannot prove that John Lennon or The Beatles or any of their inner-circle read this article but its theme, and its subsequent parallels to the ‘Paul is Dead?’ theory, are intriguing when viewed in the light of the obvious religious soul searching that the band were undertaking.

Clearly the ‘Time’ piece didn’t influence Lennon’s comments to the journalist Maureen Cleave that sparked the “more popular than Jesus” outrage. That interview was conducted in March ‘66 and the ‘Time’ magazine didn’t appear until the following month, however, the ‘Time’ article was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s much-quoted postulation “God is dead” and Lennon, at this very time, was heavily influenced by both Nietzsche and ‘The Passover Plot’.

The theme that Lennon took from ‘The Passover Plot’ was that Jesus, far from being born of a virgin as the Son of God, was in fact a master manipulator who carefully engineered his position.

Indeed, he had attempted to fake his own death on the cross, so that he could be ‘resurrected’ and duly considered the true messiah.

Paul McCartney in the book ‘Many Years from Now’ by Barry Miles would set the scene for the origins of Sgt. Pepper as: “We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that fucking four little mop-top boys approach.

Then suddenly on the plane (returning from Kenya) I got this idea. I thought, let’s not be ourselves. Let’s develop alter egos so we do not have to project an image which we know. It would be much more free. What would really be interesting would be to actually take on the personas of this different band”.

An interesting comparison can also be drawn with The Beatles and a movie that came out in the same year as Sgt. Pepper entitled ‘Privilege’.

In the movie, which is set in the future, the main protagonist is a pop star entitled Steve Shorter, the most influential character in Britain.

We are presented with a creation of pop star as prisoner and are introduced to Shorter when we see him being handcuffed, stuffed into a sack, and carried to the stage where two uniformed guards physically dump him out onto the boards.

They then hit him with sticks and lock him in a cage. Dazed and bleeding, he sings just the one song.

Visually, the camera cuts back and forth from shots of the caged singer and his audience, which is filled with tearful, screaming, yearning little girls. They love him. They want him. As long as he’s safely out of reach up there on the stage, they desperately desire him.

This is the psychology that the pop idols managers cynically exploit in ‘Privilege’ and the analogy of that to the mop-top Beatles and their Ed Sullivan staged arrival in America to hordes of screaming teenage girls is plain to see.

The astounding achievement of ‘Privilege’ is that it uncannily predicts the 21st century Britain of today. A world in which there is no discernible difference in the policies of the major political parties.

Factions are bad because they divide the nation and the population is told that the new motto is “We must all conform”. An almost perfect parable of the anodyne, corporate controlled, media-centric UK of today with its “We’re all in it together” mantra that allows the rich to get richer whilst the working classes are pitched against one another to fight over the scraps. Divide and conquer.

In the movie the government decides to use Shorter as a symbol of the new national unity. His managers agree. The three most influential power groups in the country (church, state and public relations) stage a public ceremony in which the singer is divested of his handcuffs, confesses his sins and is set free to embrace the new fascist state.

It is the perfect forerunner of the modern day phenomena whereby we are now constantly spoon-fed the pseudo-tragic backstories of saccharine sweet American Idol / X-Factor contestants. Equally it embodies the Z-list non-entities that peer out from the covers of ‘Hello’ or ‘OK’ magazines to declare their semi miraculous recoveries from their self-induced drinks/drugs/gambling/sex addiction nightmares.

These media manipulated smokescreens are designed to ensure we remain in our Disneyfied blinkers whilst world government lurches wildly to the right. Proof, if any were needed, of the world’s love for the endearing charms of the redeemer. He who has renounced his sins shall conquer the earth.

The Beatles perfectly encapsulate the ‘Privilege’ model. Four, streetwise but lovable, cheeky-chappie, working class lads swept from the slums of Liverpool to miraculously conquer the world and, as reward, are invited to nestle at the bosom of the Establishment.

Shocked at their elevation to the status of deities they rebel and appear to be figureheads for a new movement; spokespersons for the coming new order.

Of course, the promised revolution never arrives and the powers that be maintain the status quo. For the revolutionaries amongst the band that actually believed the hype only assassination awaits, whilst, for those content to toe the line and redeem, knighthoods and the status of national treasure is assured.

So, was this Beatle creation and transformation organic or stage managed?

From lovable, cute, but slightly dangerous pop minstrels to drug-guru counter-revolutionaries in a few short years. Is this the natural order of evolution or test-tube experimentation?

Certainly we now know the LSD hippy phenomena was born from a CIA blueprint so, is it possible that The Beatles were the architects of a cultural revolution or merely sculpted puppets designed to enslave our freedom of thought and expression?

The Illuminati, if one believes in such a concept, are often depicted as being involved on both sides of a war and the Templars of old – upon whose ideals the quasi-masonic Illuminati are apparently based would hide their secrets in plain sight. So, could it be that The Beatles were the tools through whom this coded knowledge of ancient power and control could be drip-fed to the public via Sgt. Pepper and its treasure trove of information and symbolism, or, were their puppet masters using them as agents of disinformation?

Alternatively, could it be that The Beatles are using Sgt. Pepper as an allegory that, when understood, details this looming corporate dystopia and their dissatisfaction at being used as unwitting pawns in bringing about its achievement?

It is my belief that this last theory best fits the bill and as we progress down the rabbit-hole I shall do my best to prove this.

It has been claimed [HERE] that John Lennon read John Fowles’s book ‘The Magus’ around the time that he was away filming ‘How I Won the War’ in 1966, which would segue perfectly were it to be a formative influence for the embryonic Sgt. Pepper concept.

In the book the main protagonist, according to Wikipedia, ‘becomes embroiled in the psychological illusions of a master trickster, which become increasingly dark and serious.’

The book is set on a Greek island and features twins, fake deaths and an aging Magus who induces the main character, Nicholas Urfe, into a number of staged situations whereby he loses his ability to determine what is real and what is deception. In essence Nicholas is Alice in his own version of Wonderland being guided through the various nodes of the tree of life in some forced attempt to make him re-evaluate his views of the world around him. As such there are clear parallels with the ‘nothing is real’ statements espoused on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and the concept of taking “on the personas of this different band” from Sgt. Pepper. It is a forced initiation ceremony. On the Sgt. Pepper cover we also find twin Beatles, a ‘fake’ death and an aging Magus inhabiting a staged fantasy world. They share this world with a number of authors – in whose works are contained codes and ciphers, hidden meanings, allegories and fantastical scenarios – and gurus and actors and psychologists and, or, secret society members. You are being invited to journey through this world and, in so doing, to become initiated.

Perhaps the biggest single influence in the creation of this ‘concept’ is Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’ books. Essentially, Sgt. Pepper is ‘The Beatles through the Looking Glass’.

So, from out of this conspiratorial stew, we shall delve, prod, and probe our way through a forensic autopsy upon the carcass of the world’s most famous funeral scene, all the whilst trying to pick out any pairings, partnerships, codes, titbits and tall tales from the mass of clues that is The Beatles’, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ LP.

This, updated, version of ‘The Sgt. Pepper Code’ will conclude with, what I believe to be, an elegant and simple solution to the code. A solution that I hope you will agree with.

Ultimately, any solution would need to be both simple and elegant as the protagonists had only a short period of time in which to formulate it, however, there is a wealth of material, of potential clues, that we must evaluate before we can arrive at any solution.

It is this journey that I now wish to share with you all.

Yes, this is my interpretation of Sgt. Pepper; it will differ from yours and you almost certainly won’t agree with my deductions. But read the book, read it from start to finish, hear all about the clues and codes and then tell me there is nothing there.

So, as John Lennon said on ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’: “Picture yourself in a boat on a river”, because we’re going on a journey.

Chapter one: Robert Fraser and Tara Browne _______________________________________________________

Robert Fraser and Tara Browne

So, to where can we trace back the origins of the Sgt. Pepper code?

The answer would appear to be 1965 and The Beatles’ second movie, ‘Help!’ In the film we find The Beatles embroiled within a plot line that has them fleeing a mystical eastern cult, lead by a high priestess, who worship a goddess figure and sees the band searching for a lost temple.

The album cover features the group with their arms positioned to spell out a word in flag semaphore. According to cover photographer Robert Freeman; “I had the idea of semaphore spelling out the letters H.E.L.P. But when we came to do the shot the arrangement of the arms with those letters didn’t look good. So we decided to improvise and ended up with the best graphic positioning of the arms.”

On the UK Parlophone release, the letters formed by the Beatles appear to be ‘N.U.J.V.’, whilst the slightly re-arranged US release on Capitol Records appeared to feature the letters ‘N.V.U.J’. The original photograph used on the UK album was reverse printed. Holding it up to a mirror reveals the letters L.P.U.S., which, when pronounced phonetically becomes “Help Us”.

It has been claimed that there is a further, magickal, significance to these symbols and that, they are, representative of the Golden Dawn LVX (pronounced lukes) symbols.

Whether there is any truth in this I cannot be sure, however, it is important to remember that these signs were not just an idle formality to be used without meaning. Each sign was originally shown to a student of the Golden Dawn as he/she underwent an elemental initiation ceremony. Signs from higher grades were not shown to students who had not been initiated into those grades.

This was partly so that when initiation ceremonies were being conducted, it would be simple to make sure that no one was present who hadn’t experienced an initiation into that grade yet.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or, more commonly, the Golden Dawn) was an organisation devoted to the study and practice of the occult, metaphysics, and paranormal activities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Great Britain. Many present-day concepts of ritual and magic that are at the centre of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn.

The three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers were Freemasons and members of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.) It may be apposite, at this juncture, to make mention of another Golden Dawn theme. A key feature of the Sgt. Pepper code is its use of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ references. The classic children’s story was written by Lewis Carroll – who was rumoured to be a Rosicrucian himself – who based the eponymous lead character on a child named Alice Liddell, a relative of the aforementioned Golden Dawn founder Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

It is also no coincidence, I believe, that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ symbolism was heavily utilised by the CIA, amongst others, when developing mind-control techniques.

Whatever the truth of the ‘Help!’ LP imagery The Beatles, by 1965, were, by their own design, or by manipulation, displaying coded messages on their album sleeves. This would be a recurring theme.

I said in the introduction that the line “Who gain the world and lose their soul – they don’t know – they can’t see – are you one of them?“ from the song ‘Within You, Without You’ on the Sgt. Pepper LP was the one, sole question asked by The Beatles on the record cover.

This is nonsense, there are dozens; “So may I introduce to you” is the very first, found on the album’s title track, this is followed by “What would you think if I sang out of tune, Would you stand up and walk out on me”, “Will you still be sending me a Valentine”, “Will you still need me, Will you still feed me”, “May I inquire discreetly, when are you free, to take some tea with me” etc. etc. are all further examples.

They are numerous and various; indeed one may describe them as plentiful. In fact my ‘single question’ statement begs a question of its own, why would I say such a thing?

And therein lies the answer. In that curiously shaped curly appendage that is formally known in the English language as the question mark.

That form of delineation, of demarcation, of symbolism that signifies to the reader when, and only when, a question has been asked.

Of the many firsts that Sgt. Pepper brought to the world stage its use of the printed lyric has become one of the most important. It has become common place for the artist to inform us of his or her own tortured genius via the medium of the printed lyric; the de-facto forum for the forthcoming confessional, therapy or intervention. The myriad of odes to unrequited love, forbidden love, forgotten love, shattered love, all manner of love all recorded for posterity on a foot square piece of cardboard or the glossy liner of a CD. Invented especially for the occasion, by one Gene Mahon, then laid out with military precision to overlay an image of our heroes in military uniforms on the back cover of the, at that time, most expensive piece of musical embellishment known to man. Grammatically correct in all other ways including the use of full stops, of commas, of hyphens and exclamation marks. Does it not beggar belief that nobody noticed that the one, the only, the sole, the singular use of a question mark comes

at the end of the question from ‘Within You, Without You’, “Who gain the world and lose their soul – they don’t know – they can’t see – are you one of them? “. Unless, of course, it was all highly intentional.

Read again the question asked, “Who gain the world and lose their soul – they don’t know – they can’t see – are you one of them?”, this could be a description of Freemasonry, a mission statement for the Illuminati, a recruitment campaign for the Rosicrucian’s or, at the very least, the strap line for the latest Dan Brown novel, it is all very ‘Da Vinci Code’.

Look at the lyrics at the beginning of this song, “We were talking – about the space between us all and the people - who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion”.

Firstly, look at The Beatles. There is no space between them all; was that just a coincidence or a deliberate concept designed to reinforce the statement? Secondly, consider just who are the people hiding themselves behind a wall of illusion? At first glance one could argue that The Beatles are referring to the celebrities who appear on the record cover with them, except, of course, they are all visible. Or are they?

We shall look later on at some of the characters who, for whatever reason, fell by the wayside or were simply removed or airbrushed out of the picture. For now we shall focus on a row of figures that were, quite deliberately, by dint of being placed immediately behind The Beatles, hidden from view on the final cover shot. Hidden behind a band who were dressing up as somebody else, these people are literally hiding behind a wall of illusion.

Who are these hidden people? Well, interestingly, none are who they claim to be for they are all actors in character. There is Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni from the film ‘Marriage Italian Style’, there is actor Timothy Carey appearing as he does in a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Killing’, and finally, and most significantly, there is the actress Bette Davis dressed as Queen Elizabeth I from the film ‘The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex’.

Sgt Pepper: The full cast list

Why go to all the trouble of sourcing, cutting out, colouring and placing these characters into the final tableaux and then hiding them behind The Beatles? If we can understand that, or perhaps who sanctioned that, then we will go a long way to decoding the riddle.

So may I introduce to you? The act you’ve perhaps never heard of, the one and only…. Robert Fraser.

Paul McCartney first met Robert Fraser at the flat of Marianne Faithfull and her then husband, and owner of the Indica art gallery, John Dunbar, in the spring of 1966.

Robert Fraser was the Eton educated art gallery owning, establishment figure who would act as tour guide for The Beatles – McCartney in particular – and The Rolling Stones into the wonderful world of the avant-garde. From the personal perspective of this author as someone whose appearance on this planet coincided with the tail end of the sixties, avant-garde seems to have been the catch all term applied to any sort of artistic endeavour that couldn’t be easily referenced, or regarded as, mainstream and subsequently encapsulated an awful amount of dross. My apologies then to those who think I am being disingenuous to some of the greatest art, or artists, or movements of the twentieth century, however, the term coined by George Harrison to describe it as “avant-garde a clue” seems to best describe it for me.

For Fraser though, it was his niche, his avenue to the big time and to the big players and through his vast network of friends and associates he would lead The Beatles into a world of high society, high flying intellectuals who brought with them the agendas of those who have received a classical and highly expensive education.

In the book ‘Up and Down with the Rolling Stones’ by Spanish Tony Sanchez, Sanchez speaks about the gambling debts that Fraser had built up and, in particular, those which he had accrued with the notorious London gangsters the Kray Twins. Sanchez claims he personally met with Krays to barter an arrangement on behalf of Fraser and his debts. Quite what was offered to assuage the Krays appetite for violence is unclear; however, immediately after this the

crime barons turned their attentions towards Beatles manager, Brian Epstein.

The Krays told Glasgow crime-lord Arthur Thompson that they were blackmailing Epstein and were going to take The Beatles from him.

Thompson apparently convinced the twins that The Beatles career would go downhill fast if they were associated with the Krays. They settled for blackmailing Epstein for cash instead.

On the 27th August 1967 Brian Epstein was found dead in the locked bedroom of his home in London. Nearly a year and a half later, in December of 1968, Beatles lawyer and Epstein’s close friend, David Jacobs, was found hanging from a length of satin tied to one of the beams of the garage at his seaside home.

It has been rumoured that Ronnie Kray may have ordered the murder of the flamboyant showbiz lawyer for refusing to help him, and his twin brother Reggie, to beat the murder charges for which they were due to stand trial at the Old Bailey in January 1969.

Jacobs was the suave, arrogant, senior partner in the firm of M.A. Jacobs Ltd of Pall Mall. His clients, aside from The Beatles, included Pepper cast members Marlene Dietrich and Diana Dors as well as The Rolling Stones.

Another intriguing possible link, and example of Fraser’s influence and pull, concerns Tom Driberg. Driberg was a homosexual Labour MP and fan and friend of Aleister Crowley. He was also rumoured to have had a romantic relationship with Ronnie Kray. In addition to all his other vocations and interests Driberg was also a spy for MI5 and was controlled by an individual named Maxwell Knight (Knight may also have been an apprentice of Crowley’s).

In 1967 Driberg would speak on behalf of both Fraser and Mick Jagger after the Redlands bust and would later try to convince Jagger to stand as a Labour MP. Fraser clearly had designs on both The Beatles and The Stones; however, the inbred snobbery and superiority that he and his ilk engender may well have served to temper the enthusiasm of Lennon,

Harrison and Starr. But Paul McCartney, still at this time safely ensconced in the bosom of the similarly minded and educated Asher family, lapped up the influence and teachings of Fraser and his acolytes from the Indica Gallery.

In the ‘Beatles Anthology’ McCartney says “While the others had got married and moved out to suburbia, I had stayed in London and got into the arts scene through friends like Robert Fraser and Barry Miles and papers like the ‘International Times’. We opened the Indica gallery with John Dunbar, Peter Asher and people like that”.

Indeed, when McCartney decided to publish his memoirs, ‘Many Years from Now’, he chose Barry Miles as its author, one of that same Fraser/Indica set and founder of the McCartney funded paper ‘International Times’. In this book McCartney says, “The most formative influence for me was Robert Fraser”.

It is Fraser’s influence that would lead The Beatles to abandon the original artwork for the cover of Sgt. Pepper, designed by the Dutch psychedelic artists, The Fool, and bring them into the sphere instead of Peter Blake.

However, we are getting ahead of ourselves, I shall return to this subject shortly.

It is Fraser’s more malevolent influence that would bring The Beatles and The Stones into contact with the cinematic works, and acquaintance, of occultist film-maker and Aleister Crowley adept, Kenneth Anger. Anger’s influence, and contacts, in turn, would then permeate deep within the hearts of both these camps formulating and regulating their works for a long time forward, possibly, even to the present day.

As mentioned above, Fraser was present at the Redlands home of Stones guitarist Keith Richards when he and his party were the recipients of the famous ‘bust’ that would ultimately lead to the brief jailing of Mick Jagger, the very brief jailing of Keith Richards and the rather more substantial incarceration of Fraser himself; the victim of his self-inflicted heroin addiction.

Fraser was also present at the infamous ‘false rumour’ event.

The February 1967 copy of the Beatles monthly magazine carried an article stating that there was no truth to rumours that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car accident on the 7th January 1967 whilst driving in his black Mini Cooper car on the M1 motorway.

Subsequent articles would claim that McCartney was travelling with Jagger, Richards, Brian Jones, antique dealer Christopher Gibbs and the aforementioned Fraser, and that they were travelling on the M1 motorway having been on their way to Jagger’s home in Hertfordshire. Again, later, it was claimed that there were, in-fact, two Cooper’s travelling in convoy; one belonging to Jagger that contained the gang, the other, McCartney’s, that contained Fraser’s boyfriend cum man-servant Mohammed Chtaibi – aka Mohammed Hadjij - and the drugs. This vehicle, apparently, whilst travelling at seventy miles an hour was involved in a head first smash into an inconveniently placed lamp-post and that, whilst its sole occupant managed to escape without injury, Mr McCartney had been rather ticked off at the loss of his stash; though presumably not his car?

At no point are the details ever questioned. Details such as could six grown men ever fit into a Mini Cooper? That Jagger did not at this time own a home in Hertfordshire or that at no time did McCartney own a black Mini Cooper (his was green). This leads one to naturally ponder the point of the article?

If there was a big media fuss about this event at the time it has passed me by, so who, or what was the source of this rumour? One could speculate that this was a deliberately placed and created piece of journalism designed to seed a legend; the legend of a hoax. And that mention of a hoax brings us nicely onto the elephant in the room,

a subject that has to be confronted when writing a book about The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper, namely the ‘Paul is Dead’ myth.

Ringo knows there’s an Elephant in the room

‘Paul is Dead’, or ‘PID’, was born on the college campuses of Michigan in 1969 and revolved around a rumour that Paul McCartney had died, in a car crash, in November 1966 during the recording of the Sgt. Pepper sessions and that he had been subsequently replaced by a double.

However, not content to have successfully masterminded this deception, The Beatles had been, thoughtfully, leaving clues of Paul’s demise on the covers of their records for the discerning fans to discover and unravel.

I should, at this juncture, declare my position on the rumour; it is nonsense. The assassination of John Lennon in 1980 proves that you could not supress the death of a Beatle. It cannot be done, it is a hoax, and it is a conspiracy theory.

That said it is by far my most favourite conspiracy theory of all time, bar none. I am not saying that I wish the venerable knight of the realm were dead, I am merely saying that, as a concept, or a construct this theory is quite brilliant and it is almost certainly deliberate.

So, what is ‘Paul is Dead’? An accident or a quirk of fate? The product of too many over active or over stimulated minds? A massive

hoax or plain good old disinformation? I shall leave it up to you to decide; however, that the clues exist is a matter of fact and once you start to look you will see there are clues aplenty!

Uppermost amongst this dearth of clues is the fact that what is being depicted upon the cover of Sgt. Pepper is, undoubtedly, a funeral scene. This I hold to be true, that this funeral is for Paul McCartney I do not.

During my lengthy research there are two names that crop up time after time. One is our friend, the aforementioned Robert Fraser; the other is, I believe, the intended recipient of this well-heeled and wellattended send off.

All of which brings us to Tara Browne. The Hon Tara Browne, heir to the Guinness fortune and archetypal golden child of the 1960’s, whose death at 21, in a car crash, inspired The Beatles song ‘A Day in the Life’.

It was just a week before Christmas 1966, at the height of the Pepper sessions, when he was with killed as he drove his turquoise Lotus Elan through a red light at high speed and collided with a parked van in Redcliffe Gardens, in Earl’s Court, London.

As The Beatles sang in ‘A Day in the Life’ on Sgt. Pepper: He blew his mind out in a car He didn’t notice that the lights had changed A crowd of people stood and stared They’d seen his face before Nobody was really sure If he was from the House of Lords.

The British newspaper, The Telegraph, stated on 22 June 2012 that ‘Paul McCartney told interviewers that he took LSD for the first time with Tara Browne, and Marianne Faithfull has asserted that Browne “was on acid” the night he died’. Could McCartney have been present on that fateful night?

What exactly was the nature of Paul and Tara’s relationship? Could Sgt. Pepper be an elaborate homage to a fallen friend or indeed, lover?

As an aside, Paul to this day uses a piano on stage that is replete with a psychedelic mural design painted by Dudley Edwards - of Binder, Edwards and Vaughan - that is a replica of the design that Edwards had painted onto another of Tara’s cars. Tara was also believed to have been travelling on that fateful night to meet Edwards and see how the work was progressing on a window-design for Tara’s shop, Dandie Fashions.

Whatever the answer to those questions, it is certain that Paul and Tara were no strangers to drug fuelled motor accidents. The following extract from the ‘Beatles Anthology Book’ will allow Paul to tell the story.

“I had an accident when I came off a moped in Wirral, near Liverpool. I had a very good friend who lived in London called Tara Browne, a Guinness heir - a nice Irish guy, very sensitive bloke. I'd see him from time to time, and enjoyed being around him. He came up to visit me in Liverpool once when I was there seeing my dad and brother. I had a couple of mopeds on hire, so we hit upon the bright idea of going to my cousin Bett's house.”

“We were riding along on the mopeds. I was showing Tara the scenery. He was behind me, and it was an incredible full moon; it really was huge. I said something about the moon and he said 'yeah', and I suddenly had a freeze-frame image of myself at that angle to the ground when it’s too late to pull back up again: I was still looking at the moon and then I looked at the ground, and it seemed to take a few minutes to think, ‘Ah, too bad – I’m going to smack that pavement with my face!’ Bang! There I

was, chipped tooth and all. It came through my lip and split it.

But I got up and we went along to my cousin’s house. When I said, ‘Don't worry, Bett, but I've had a bit of an accident,’ she thought I was joking. She creased up laughing at first, but then she went ‘Holy...!’ I'd really given my face a good old smack; it looked like I'd been in the ring with Tyson for a few rounds. So she rang a friend of hers who was a doctor.”

“He came round on the spot, took a needle out and, after great difficulty threading it, put it in the first half of the wound. He was shaking a bit, but got it all the way through, and then he said, “the thread’s just come out – I’ll have to do it again!’ No anaesthetic. I was standing there while he rethreaded it and pulled it through again.”

“In fact that was why I started to grow a moustache. It was pretty embarrassing, because around that time you knew your pictures would get winged off to teeny-boppery magazines like 16, and it was pretty difficult to have a new picture taken with a big fat lip. So I started to grow a moustache - a sort of Sancho Panza - mainly to cover where my lip had been sewn.”

“It caught on with the guys in the group: if one of us did something like growing his hair long and we liked the idea, we’d all tend to do it. And then it became seen as a kind of revolutionary idea, that young men of our age definitely ought to grow a moustache! And it all fell in with the Sgt. Pepper thing, because he had a droopy moustache.”

That this accident happened is beyond doubt – the injuries at any rate - as there is photographic evidence to prove it, however, exactly when is an issue still open to debate. No date is given in the piece above for the accident but it is widely held to have occurred on December 26, 1965. We must remember that when McCartney recalled this event it was many years later, however, his comment that “it was an incredible full moon” has to be questioned as lunar records state that the moon was in its new moon phase at this point.

Further doubt concerning this incident can be cited on the grounds that in the videos for ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’, filmed on the same day in May 1966, and some six months after the alleged incident, Paul still clearly has a broken tooth. No moustache either, despite McCartney’s protestations of embarrassment! Michael McCartney’s book ‘Thank U Very Much’ also confirms this story, though dates it to 1966.

As already mentioned, Tara Browne came from an influential and well connected family and stood to inherit a sizable sum from the Guinness family legacy had he lived. He was connected, through the marriage of a Guinness cousin, to the Rothschild’s and an interesting Knights Templar connection can be found in the family crest, which adorns his headstone. It bears the image of a double-headed eagle, an image which according to Jacques De Molay, Templar founder, means “A black two-headed Eagle is GOD;”

So, what do we have? A litany of accidents and reports thereof, the death of a socialite and the birth of a myth: All of which brings us back neatly to ‘PID’.

One of the major clues of the ‘PID’ theory is the supposed mirrored message found in the Sgt. Pepper drumhead. If one takes a mirror and lays it across the middle section of the drums – where it says lonely hearts – a message will be revealed that reads ‘1 one 1X he ◊ die’. To the believers this is a coded message revealing McCartney’s death date if you read it as ‘11/9 he die’, the only flaw being that it gives an entirely different date depending upon which side of the Atlantic you choose to read it. To those of us of the British persuasion 11/9 reads as the 11th September whilst it would be 9th November to our American brethren.

No matter though, at least for those of us from the school of nonbelievers. Of more interest perhaps is the fact that the date, 9 November 1966, is an important one in the Beatle lexicon for it is the (official) date when John Lennon first met Yoko Ono at her Unfinished Paintings and Objects exhibition held, perhaps unsurprisingly, at the Indica Gallery. Oh, by the way, one Robert Fraser sponsored the event.

Before we depart this subject, however, it would be remiss of me not to mention another candidate as being the subject of the funeral scene.

Stuart Sutcliffe was a member of a proto-Beatles, that traded under various names such Long John and the Silver Beetles, and Stuart was a major player in The Beatles early Hamburg days.

Tragically Stuart died on April 10, 1962, and this event is marked by his inclusion on the Sgt. Pepper cover.

We shall return to Stuart, and his significance, in the fullness of time.

So there you have it. I do not know if Tara Browne introduced Robert Fraser to The Beatles or if Robert Fraser introduced Tara Browne.

What is certain though is that they moved in the same circles, had access to some of the world’s most glamorous people and would influence The Beatles in more ways than are imaginable.

Chapter 2: Creating that sleeve _______________________________________________________

“It didn't occur to me that the waxworks of the suited Beatles looked like ‘the Beatles are dead; long live the Beatles’ and that they were looking at their funeral flowers, but it's an interesting idea. We set up a couple of myths to find in the puzzle, but most of them are dead ends. What's intriguing is how the mythology never stops.” – Peter Blake Mojo March 2007

When The Beatles released ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ in 1967 it was, quite rightly, universally lauded as breaking musical barriers and set the template for rock albums for decades to come.

What is, perhaps, not quite so well known is the story behind the record cover itself and the concealed story that it contains. Here, for the first time, we shall attempt to break the code of the Sgt. Pepper cover and decipher the treasure trove of clues that it contains.

So, let us start at the beginning. As discussed in the previous chapter Paul McCartney had struck up a friendship with the art gallery owner Robert Fraser and it was he who took Paul to Paris to meet Alexandre Iolas in 1966. Iolas acted as agent for the artist Rene Magritte, who Paul admired greatly, and Paul was shown a number of Magritte’s works. He chose two oils ‘Cibria’ and ‘The Countess of Monte Christo’, which he bought. Magritte was on the initial shortlist of candidates to be included on the album cover but who, for some unknown reason, was omitted from the finished piece.

The visit proved to be a timely one as Magritte would die the following year in August 1967. One of his last works was a painting etitled ‘Le Jeu de Mourre’ (The Guessing Game). Fraser brought the painting to Paul’s house in Cavendish Avenue and, seeing Paul was busy with other things, placed it on a table and left unannounced. Paul bought it. It was a painting of a large apple and it is widely believed that this is the work that would inspire the Apple logo.

Having educated his young friend with a crash course in art history it was Robert Fraser who commissioned his client, Peter Blake, to paint a copy of Sir Edwin Landseer’s 1851 painting ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ to hang above McCartney’s fireplace in 1966. Quite what the significance of this painting is remains unclear, but both McCartney and Landseer resided in St. Johns Wood in London, an area that in ancient times belonged to the Knights Templar. It is possible that the area was used as a deer reserve for hunting and that the picture commemorates this, however, the Knights Templar are also the model for all manner of ancient and modern secret societies, and as we shall see the Pepper cover seems to reference a large number of these secret societies.

Moreover, the area surrounding the McCartney home and Abbey Road studios sits on an ancient London Ley Line known as the Mary Line. It may be that Fraser and McCartney were aware of the areas sacred pagan history and attempted to tap into its spiritual power. It is no secret that McCartney built a glass domed ‘meditation centre’ in his garden back in the sixties.

Indeed, it has been said, although not substantiated, that Paul became so obsessed with the Tarot tree of life that he built a literal Tarot zigzag path in his garden at Cavendish Avenue and put a series of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ statuettes at each of the nodes.

The Landseer commission however, would prove fortuitous for Peter Blake as he, and his then wife Jann Haworth, who had also exhibited at Robert Fraser’s gallery, were approached to take over the Sgt. Pepper sleeve project.

Peter Blake: “The Beatles already had a cover designed by a Dutch group called the Fool, but my gallery dealer, Robert

Fraser, said to Paul: “Why don't you use a ‘fine artist’, a professional, to do the cover instead?” Paul rather liked the idea and I was asked to do it. The concept of the album had already evolved: it would be as though The Beatles were another band, performing a concert, perhaps in a park. I then thought that we could have a crowd standing behind them, and this developed into the collage idea. In 1964 I began a painting titled ‘The Battle’, which featured Elvis Presley, Tony Curtis, Shirley Temple, W.C. Fields and Lou Costello all in the crowd.

So the idea of a crowd made up of famous people actually predated Sgt. Pepper by three years. The concept eventually evolved into The Beatles dressing up as the pretend group and being surrounded by some of their pop culture and historical heroes. The last vestiges of the “park” idea surfaced in the floral display that spelled out The Beatles at the bottom of the cover.”

“We had an original meeting with all four Beatles, Robert Fraser and Brian Epstein,” Blake remembered later. “Most of the subsequent talking was done with Paul at his house and with John there sometimes.”

Despite the Fool’s initial contribution Paul McCartney clearly had a similar idea in mind as he recalls in an excerpt from his biography ‘Many Years from Now’ written by Barry Miles.

‘As the recording sessions for Sgt. Pepper had progressed, so too did the work on the sleeve. First came Paul’s initial concept of The Beatles standing before a wall of framed photographs of their heroes. One of his pen-and-ink drawings shows the four Beatles, all sporting moustaches, wearing long military-band jackets complete with epaulettes, holding brass-band instruments: Paul has an E- flat bass, the same brass instrument that his grandfather played; John holds a clarinet, George a trumpet and Ringo a kettle drum. John has a sash and Ringo a medal. They stand in an Edwardian sitting room with a wall of framed photographs behind them and a few trophies and shields. To the left of the framed photographs is a pin-up poster of Brigitte Bardot in one of her famous late-fifties poses: kneeling with her hands behind her head. By some oversight, Brigitte did not make it on to the final album sleeve.

Next, Paul made a series of pen-and-ink drawings of The Beatles being presented to some dignitaries in front of a floral clock. Paul: “I did a lot of drawings of us being presented to the Lord Mayor, with lots of dignitaries and lots of friends of ours around, and it was to be us in front of a big northern floral clock, and we were to look like a brass band. That developed to become the Peter Blake cover.”’

So, it remains unclear quite whose idea it was to include their ‘heroes’, though that it was always a staple part of the concept is apparent.

Blake and Haworth then began putting together the cover’s collage, titled “People We Like,” by taking suggestions from the band. Jann Haworth claims that she and Blake chose about 60 per cent of the participants as The Beatles hadn’t come up with enough. She also confirms that all the women depicted were their choice, as The Beatles chose none.

“I still have no idea who chose some of those people. I think Peter Blake put a lot more of the confusing people in there. It was just a broad spectrum of people. The ones I wanted were people I admired. I didn’t put anybody on there because I didn’t like them (unlike some people...).” George Harrison – Beatles Anthology.

Some of the original suggestions for inclusion did not make the cut and it is interesting to speculate as to why? Neil Aspinall went looking for portraits of everyone on the list as it stood before Peter Blake was involved. The list he brought into Indica Bookshop read as follows: Yogas, Marquis de Sade, Hitler, Nietzsche, Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Aleister Crowley, Dylan Thomas, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, William Burroughs, Robert Peel, Stockhausen, Aldous Huxley, H. G. Wells, Einstein, Carl Jung, Beardsley, Alfred Jarry, Tom Mix, Johnny Weissmuller, Magritte, Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Richmal Crompton, Dick Barton, Tommy Handley, Albert Stubbins, Fred Astaire.

Let us examine this list for a second; no fewer than eight of this original list will fail to appear on the finished piece; Hitler for reasons that will become apparent shortly. As for the rest however, we shall need to seek the reasons as to why this should be. Of the survivors from the above list is James Joyce, who does appear but is not formally listed. It seems bizarre that so many get the chop when the very concept was that these were ‘people we like’ and our ‘heroes’, not to mention Jann Haworth’s claim that The Beatles hadn’t made sufficient suggestions.

Additionally, of these original suggestions there is indeed a woman included; Richmal Crompton. Crompton was responsible for writing the ‘Just William’ series of books that The Beatles, in particular John Lennon, were fans of. In some of the Pepper out-take photos there is an image of what appears to be a young boy. The images are blurry and out of focus but I have wondered if it may be of an early ‘Just William’ incarnation? It seems most likely that it is an image of William Graham who portrayed the character in 1940’s.

Peter Blake: “I asked them to make lists of people they’d most like to have in the audience at this imaginary concert. John’s was interesting because it included Jesus and Ghandi and, more cynically, Hitler. At the very last minute we took out Adolf Hitler and Jesus. John (Lennon) had inserted them in a joking kind of way but this was just a few months after the US furore about his ‘Jesus’ statement, so they were all left out.”

Lord Buckley seems an odd choice at the outset. Lord Buckley was an American comic performer who was most likely considered because of his old routine, Willy the Shake, which may have been the inspiration for Billy Shears and an example of hidden or concealed identities. Billy Shears is really Ringo in disguise whilst William Shakespeare is really Sir Francis Bacon in disguise. What this tells us is that Sgt. Pepper has hidden, un-credited writers, or, at the very least, unseen influences.

If we are to believe the initial list then where did the suggestions for Gandhi and Jesus come from, as they do not appear on it? A Gandhi cut-out certainly existed as he appears in the original photo and had to be airbrushed out of the final piece. Did Jesus actually exist?

Perhaps that question is too big for the scope of this book to answer, however, joking aside, there is no evidence to suggest a Jesus cutout was ever produced.

Curiously, in an article in Mojo in March 2007, Peter Blake claimed that the Hitler cut-out was used, and was simply obscured in the final image by Johnny Weismuller, though there is photographic evidence to suggest that Hitler was in fact moved out of shot before the final images were taken.

Nobody to the right of Hitler!

Peter Blake: “Yes he is on there - you just can’t see him. Hitler and Jesus were the controversial ones, and after what John said about Jesus we decided not to go ahead with him - but we did make up the image of Hitler. If you look at photographs of the out-takes, you can see the Hitler image in the studio. With the crowd behind there was an element of chance about who you can and cannot see, and we weren’t quite sure who would be covered in the final shot. Hitler was in fact covered up behind the band.”

What all this does suggest, however, is that The Beatles’ list was revisited. In ‘Many Years from Now’ it states that Lennon added Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe later and this may be a truly startling revelation.

Stuart Sutcliffe, the former Beatle member who sadly died aged 22, is another who is missing from the initial list but who subsequently appears. It is inconceivable that his appearance could be attributed to anyone other than one of The Beatles; again, most likely, John Lennon.

Bob Dylan, friend and influence and not to mention the man who would introduce The Beatles to marijuana, is there though he too is missing initially. Would he have been a Blake, Haworth or Fraser suggestion? It seems unlikely.

Talking of musical influences, there is no Elvis and no Buddy Holly.

One can only ask why? Likewise, Brigitte Bardot is nowhere to be

seen despite, supposedly being in McCartney’s original sketch. Bill Harry in an article suggests: “By rights, Bardot should have appeared on the cover of the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album.”

When Paul originally began to sketch out the ideas for the Sgt. Pepper sleeve he had the four Beatles standing before a wall, which was covered, in framed pictures of their heroes - and taking prominence was a pin-up poster of Bardot. Although Bardot was drawn ten times larger than any other figure on Paul's original drawing, she was absent from the final tableau, indicating that a number of The Beatles original suggestions were left off the final piece.

Blake had borrowed a wax figure of Diana Dors from Madame Tussauds and placed it prominently in the assembly. Probably thinking that one blonde bombshell was enough, Blake didn’t include Paul’s choice of Bardot. Dors wasn’t a Beatles heroine, but Bardot was, which indicates that the Sgt. Pepper sleeve wasn’t really the collection of Beatles’ choices that people have always been led to believe.

So, is this really ‘people we like’ and ‘heroes’ or is there a deeper, hidden reason behind the selections in the characters we see on the album sleeve? Peter Blake continues: “George’s list was all gurus. Ringo said, “Whatever the others say is fine by me”, because he didn’t really want to be bothered.

Robert Fraser and I also made lists. We then got all the photographs together and had life-size cut-outs made onto hardboard.”

Despite what Peter Blake says about Ringo’s lack of suggestions Wikipedia states that Mexican actor and comedian German Valdes claimed Ringo approached him to appear on the front cover. He declined and requested that Ringo swap him for a Mexican tree known as a “Tree of Life”. Ringo Starr agreed and placed it in the lower right corner of the cover.

I believe that this Tree of Life became an important part of the Pepper symbolism and this is a facet we shall return too.

This then is a potted history of how the assemblage of actors, singers, writers, comedians and political and sporting figures was compiled. Wax effigies of The Beatles’ were also borrowed from Madame Tussaud’s (which in itself presents a mystery that we shall explore) while Blake himself claims he chose to include figures like comedian Max Miller and the singer Dion. He and Haworth set up the garden with flowers, plants, statuettes, trophies, candles, a hookah, and the word “Beatles” spelled out in hyacinths. There was even a portable TV set, brought in on the day of the photo shoot by John Lennon. “Television is very important to me just now”, he assured the art director.

EMI realized that because many of the people that were being depicted were still alive they might sue the company as permission had not been sought for their visages to be used. In ‘The Beatles Anthology’ McCartney remembered having to calm tensions with the record label about the cover and even met with EMI head Sir Joseph Lockwood about Sgt. Pepper. “I said, “Don’t worry, Joe – it’s going to be great, man.’” “He said, ‘We’ll have dozens of lawsuits on our hands – it will be absolutely terrible. The legal department is going mad with it.’ I told him, “Don’t worry, just write them all a letter. I bet you they won’t mind.”

As a precaution, The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, who was very wary of all the complications in the first place, had his assistant write to everyone. Mae West replied, “No, I won't be in it. What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?” So The Beatles wrote her a personal letter and she changed her mind.

Jann Haworth said that: “I’m the person who didn’t do 50 per-cent of the Sgt. Pepper cover. I did the other 50 per-cent. It’s sort of invisible, but in a way it’s the whole thing: It was to build it like a set. The idea of the front row being three dimensional, leading into a twodimensional flat frame was very much the territory of my work”.

Jann’s father, the art director Ted Haworth, was in London at the time, working on the film ‘Half-a-Sixpence’. When she visited him on the movie set, he advised her not to make a background piece for the album. He thought the idea was too Hollywood and too expensive for

the budget. So Haworth resorted to blue paper for the sky, and blackand-white cut-out photographs for the heads and bodies.

Gene Mahon, a designer who was hired as co-ordinator on the project, selected the more than sixty photographs collected from libraries and magazines and supervised the enlargements. These lifesize cut-outs were then hand-coloured and glued to hardboard sheets.

“I hand-tinted all the photographs for colour, and nailed them to batons on the back wall”, said Haworth. “Then put the front row in 3D. That’s an old movie trick.”

Michael Cooper was a business partner of Robert Fraser and an excellent photographer so he was commissioned to do the shoot. For the cover, Blake and Haworth constructed a life-size sculptural collage of cut-outs, plants, props and wax figures in Cooper’s Chelsea studio. Each life-size cut-out figure was placed in position behind the constructed stage and The Beatles, decked out in their faux military uniforms rented from Burman’s theatrical costumers, came in and were photographed by Cooper.

Peter Blake explains some of the problems he faced using a staged set rather than a photographic collage: “It’s a retouched photograph. In the original photo the blue paper behind them, which represented the sky, was slightly bumpy so it was retouched. And there was an artificial palmtree on the right-hand side which was rather gloomy, so it was completely retouched and then became a rather badly painted palm-tree. It was all done by a professional re-toucher but not very sympathetically. I was very unhappy with it. It killed whatever we’d done. It was meant to be a happening, an environment, but all that got lost. Looking back, it would have been much easier to have just made a collage. I could have done it in a couple of days.

“I worked in Michael Cooper’s studio for a fortnight constructing the set, fixing the top row to the back wall and putting the next about six inches in front and so on, so that we got a tiered

effect. Then we put in the palm-tree and the other little objects. I wanted to have the waxworks of The Beatles because I thought they might be looking at Sgt. Pepper’s band too. The boy who delivered the floral display asked if he could contribute by making a guitar out of hyacinths, and the little girl wearing the ‘WMCA Welcome the Rolling Stones, Good Guys’ sweatshirt was a cloth figure of Shirley Temple, the shirt coming from Michael Cooper’s young son Adam.

The Beatles arrived during the evening of March 30. We had a drink, they got dressed and we did the session. It took about three hours in all, including the shots for the centre fold and back cover. I’m not sure how much it all cost. One reads exaggerated figures. I think Robert Fraser was paid £1,500 by EMI, and I got about £200. People say to me, ‘You must have made a lot of money on it’ but I didn't because Robert signed away the copyright. But it has never mattered too much because it was such a wonderful thing to have done”.

As with all things Pepper however, I have also come across some information pertaining to the jumper that is worn by the ‘Shirley Temple’ doll on the Sgt. Pepper sleeve that is contradictory to Blake’s version. This story comes from the August 1966 edition of ‘Hit Parader’ magazine and tells the tale of a young woman named Mary Scruggs aka Mary Ann May. From the magazine version it would appear that young Mary entered a competition organised by the local AM radio station, W.M.P.S. to design some artwork for the chance to meet The Rolling Stones backstage at a gig in Memphis.

Whilst most entrants took the standard pencil and paper route, Mary went down the knitwear path. According to the article, she was ‘17, a Senior at Immaculate Conception High School and an officer in a local Rolling Stones Fan Club.’

When her entry was chosen as the winner she gave the sweater to Mick Jagger, reportedly at his request. Far from dumping it as soon as she departed he seems to have taken care to bring it back to the

UK, thus ensuring its place in history when it was photographed in glorious Technicolor on March 30th 1967.

So, it would appear that the sweatshirt says, ‘WMPS’ and not ‘WMCA', despite what practically every source says, and that it must have been given to The Beatles by Jagger himself and therefore, did not come from Pepper sleeve photographer Michal Cooper’s son, Adam.

Which story is the correct one? Who knows, however, it proves yet again that when dealing with stories concerning The Beatles and the Sgt. Pepper sleeve you just never know what is fact and what is fake.

As John Lennon famously said on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, nothing is real!

Indeed, since the first edition of this book was published I was contacted by Mary May and she assures me it said “The WMPS Good Guys Welcome the Rolling Stones” and that she gave it to Jagger.

The morning after the shoot, Blake returned to Cooper’s studio only to find that Robert Fraser and a couple of his friends had already dismantled the stage and taken the pick of the sculptures. “I got about six, including W.C. Fields, Max Miller and the wax work of Sonny Liston”, he says. One wonders what the rush was to remove the evidence.

Even more remarkable was the sale at Sotheby’s of one of two original Sgt. Pepper drum skins, painted by fairground artist, Joe Ephgrave. The drum skin, estimated to reach between £25,000 and £35,000, sold for £52,100, after Blake had authenticated it for Sotheby’s. “There were two made”, he recalls. “Paul has one, the alternative one that was not used. I thought John had the other, but, in vaguely mysterious circumstances, this one came through Mal Evans’ estate.”

So, let us end this chapter with mystery number one; the record cover clearly depicts a funeral scene, indeed this is backed up Blake’s initial sketch, and yet nobody ever makes mention of this fact. McCartney in ‘Many Years from Now’ says “the idea did get a bit metamorphosed

when Peter was brought in; they changed it in good ways. The clock became the sign of The Beatles in front of it, the floral clock metamorphosed into a flowerbed. Our heroes in photographs around us became the crowd of dignitaries, and it was them that was presenting us with something, except no one was getting presented with something any more. So the idea just crystallized a bit. Which was good. It took a lot of working out but it’s one of the all-time covers, I think, so that was great.�

Chapter 3: Pepperback Writer _______________________________________________________

As I have already speculated, the cover depicts a grave scene complete with red hyacinths spelling out the word ‘Beatles’. It may imply something as simple as a reference to the death of The Beatles, in that, having abandoned touring and performing live because the band could not make themselves heard over the cacophony of hysterical teenage screaming they were symbolically killing off the old ‘mop-top’ Beatles and re-launching themselves as serious, studio based musicians.

An alternative interpretation for the use of the funeral imagery and the hyacinths could lie in the story of Apollo and Hyacinthus. In Greek mythology there once was a beautiful young boy called Hyacinthus.

He was the favourite companion of the Greek God of music Apollo, as well as being much loved for his beauty by Zephyr, the God of the West Wind.

One day Apollo and Hyacinthus were playing a game to see who could throw a discus the furthest. Zephyr saw this and became jealous, so when Apollo took up the discus and threw it, Zephyr blew the discus from its course and it struck Hyacinthus on the head.

Apollo was horrified and tried to stop the blood that came from his friend’s wound. But it was too late and Hyacinthus died. The blood that spilled from his wound onto the ground turned into a flower – and Apollo named this flower after him - the Hyacinth.

One could argue that the circumstances surrounding the death of Tara Browne are connected to Paul McCartney and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. For starters, Tara Browne died during the same three-month time span that the ‘Paul is Dead’ rumour stipulates that McCartney died. As we will see, this date has been derived from a mirror image message contained in the drum that appears on the Sgt. Pepper record sleeve. Tara Browne’s crash is extremely similar to some of the accounts of Paul McCartney’s fatal accident.

A girlfriend named Suki Potier was in the car with Tara Browne when he was killed. Suki was an English model. Almost immediately following the crash, Potier started dating Brian Jones, who had also been a great friend of Tara’s. Suki would later share Jones’s fifteenthcentury farmhouse with him for the last few months before his untimely death.

Tara Browne was with Paul McCartney when he crashed his moped in 1965, and received facial injuries.

When in 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper it included the song ‘A Day in the Life’. The song has become famous for its lyrics describing a car accident. John Lennon has confirmed that the lyrics for ‘A Day in the Life’ were written about the death of Tara Browne, or “that Guinness child” as he refers to him. “He blew his mind out in a car. He didn’t notice that the lights had changed. A crowd of people stood and stared. They’d seen his face before, nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords.”

Tara Browne’s father was indeed a member of the House of Lords, the longest serving ever, I believe; though rarely seen in attendance.

Furthermore, it has been suggested that Paul McCartney was in the car with Tara Browne when he was killed. Alternatively, some people have suggested that McCartney died that night and Tara replaced him in The Beatles, or that it was really Brian Jones in the car crash.

Add to this the rumours of a homosexual relationship between Jones and Browne or, Browne and McCartney.

It is an interesting fact that both John Paul Getty II and Keith Richards named their sons Tara after Tara Browne. So, could it be that the story of Apollo and Hyacinthus was employed as an analogy for the Tara/Paul/Brian triangle? Certainly McCartney embraced the pseudonym ‘Apollo C. Vermouth’ when he produced the song ‘I’m the urban spaceman’ for the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, who appeared alongside The Beatles in the film ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, and who later repaid the favour by recording the song ‘Mister Apollo’.

Interestingly, hyacinths are sometimes associated with rebirth and what should appear on the Browne family crest that appears on

Tara’s tombstone but a double-headed eagle or phoenix, the bird that is famously reborn from its own ashes.

What is beginning to appear is a pattern of symbolism and hidden, deeper meanings that are embedded within the Beatle imagery.

Perhaps we should explore the background to this.

Pivotal to the advancement in The Beatles’ education was Paul McCartney moving into the family home of his then lover, Jane Asher.

The Asher’s would introduce McCartney to a world of classical music and literature and, crucially, to Jane’s brother Peter. It was through Peter that Paul would meet John Dunbar, husband of Marianne Faithfull and owner of the Indica gallery, and Barry Miles who ran the Indica Bookshop. It was through John Dunbar that The Beatles would first encounter Robert Fraser and, therefore, presumably, Tara Browne? What is certain though is that this would open up a whole world of inspiration and education for those Beatles who were keen to absorb it.

For McCartney and Lennon this was an opportunity too good to miss and they would jump into this vat of learning headfirst. For two ordinary, working class, lads this was a sphere that would not ordinarily be available and through this looking glass they would discover that all that they previously thought to be true, and held dear, should, in fact be questioned and re-examined.

Though The Beatles song-writing ability had been developing greatly with each passing LP a telling moment in this development occurred when Paul McCartney’s used a pseudonym upon the handwritten lyrics for his song ‘Paperback Writer’. Here he employs the name Ian Iachimoe; supposedly the sound of his real name when played backwards on tape, and this name would also be listed as an emergency contact for the publication the ‘International Times’.

‘International Times’ was an underground newspaper that flourished in the avant-garde world of the mid-sixties, though whether it would have enjoyed any success at all had McCartney not secretly bankrolled it in its early days is a moot point. One of its editors was McCartney’s friend, and later, his biographer, Barry Miles.

The choice of the Ian Iachimoe name as an alter ego is intriguing as it introduces for the first time, what will prove to be a recurring theme, that of connections to William Shakespeare / Francis Bacon. Iachimo is a character in the Shakespeare play Cymbeline. Cymbeline is a name of an ancient tribal King of England, that of the Catevulauni tribe who ruled in south-east England. In the play, the King’s daughter Imogen is secretly married to Posthumus Leonatus, a man raised in her father’s court who is described as possessing exceeding personal merit and martial skill.

Not only is this a play about secret, forbidden, love but it also tells a tale of a King who is over protective towards his daughter because his two elder sons have been previously abducted by a banished courtier.

Sir Francis Bacon was alleged to have been the real author of the Shakespeare plays and was Lord Verulam, Lord of St. Albans, which, not incidentally, was part of the ancient Catevulauni territory. Not only is Bacon a contender to be the true author of Shakespeare but he is also rumoured to have been, along with his half-brother Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the illegitimate sons of Queen Elizabeth I. The story goes that documents in the Spanish archives tell of a secret marriage between Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and that, therefore, Bacon, as their offspring, was the true heir to the throne of England but had been excluded from taking his rightful place at the helm of the nation. This tragic life-story was the secret hidden in code in the plays of Shakespeare.

Certainly in Cymbeline we can see the parallels; the tale of a Princess and her forbidden love with a knight of the court, and of the two Princes denied their birth right by virtue of being forcibly hidden from public sight. Could McCartney have been initiated into this world of secret knowledge? Could he or part of his circle have wished to encode this knowledge into the design for the Sgt. Pepper LP? Fanciful, far-fetched and unlikely I sense you’re thinking but let me throw something else into the mix. As mentioned previously, hidden behind The Beatles in their gaudily coloured military uniforms on the

Sgt. Pepper cover are some obscured characters whose appearance has never been acknowledged.

Principal amongst these is a cut-out of Bette Davis dressed as Queen Elizabeth I and taken from the film ‘The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex’. The film details the relationship between Elizabeth and another of her rumoured sons, the Earl of Essex. Quite how this would fit into the realm of ‘people we like’ is unclear; however, as a clue it is certainly intriguing!

Still not convinced? Then let us consider some lyrical clues. In the first song on the album, ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ we are invited to meet the albums KEY character, an ACT, apparently, that we’ve “known for all these years”. “So let me introduce to you, the one and only BILLY SHEARS”. The emphasis is mine however the implication is not. Billy is short for William and Shears is an amalgam of shake and spear, or, in other words, Shakespeare.

Consider also the song that Billy then sings for us, ‘A little help from my friends’ which contains the line “LEND ME YOUR EARS and I’ll sing you a song and I’ll try not to sing out of KEY”.

Here we are being given a line from a Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, and being told that it is the key!

Another Shakespeare / Caesar allusion can be found on the back cover in the two songs sandwiched in between ‘A little help from my friends’. If you take your copy of Sgt. Pepper and scan down the lyrics to the opening track, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, you will find that the opening letters, capitalised, to the last four lines begin with the letters, S.T.A.B. Go now, to the third track ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, and beginning with the line ‘A girl with kaleidoscope eyes’ and you will find the lines begin with the letters A.C.T. Stab Act. This could be a reference to the stabbing of Caesar

by Brutus.

Remember how I spoke of the obscured characters that are lurking invisibly behind The Beatles on the cover. One of these is the actress Sophia Loren. Sophia is honoured as a Goddess of wisdom within the Neo-pagan and New Age movements, as well as within feministinspired Goddess spirituality. Sophia in Hebrew means wisdom; could it be that The Beatles are urging us to seek the hidden wisdom?

Quite possibly I believe. Certainly they are urging us to reconsider what we hold to be true about conventional religion.

Alternatively, Stab Act could be seen as an anagram. Could stab act = Bast cat? Bast, or Bastet, was an Egyptian goddess and daughter of Ra, the sun god. According to this site Bast was the goddess of witchcraft and sexual magick in the Egyptian pantheon.

Crowley's concept of the Scarlet Woman or Babalon is another name for the goddess Bast. Scarlet is chosen because it is the colour of blood (also the colour chosen for the cover of The Book of the Law).

Does this explain the inclusion on Pepper of this doll?

Does she represent the scarlet woman? Alternatively, could Diana Dors also represent the scarlet woman?

The Stab Act clue brings us to the song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ so let us consider what that may be telling us.

Most of you will be aware of the supposed reference to LSD contained within the song title that utilises the capitalised letters in the song’s title, a reference that John Lennon always denied. I know not the validity of the tale or the denial; however it does act as a convenient smokescreen for what the song may really be telling us.

We are informed in the lyrics that ‘Lucy’ is ‘a girl with kaleidoscope eyes’.

Eyes are organs that detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses. In Masonic lore we have the All Seeing Eye or the eye of Horus which represents the eye of Lucifer.

Lucifer is the light bearer, the morning star, the planet Venus and is a fallen angel. Lucifer can be shortened to Lucy. A kaleidoscope is a device which distorts light through the use of mirrors. Therefore, could Lucy, the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes, be a reference too, or a metaphor for Lucifer?

After all, do not the lyrics also ask us to ‘Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes’?

Is the Statue of Liberty, in New York, truly an image of Libertas, or is it in fact a representation of Sol Invictus, the sun god?

The statue wears a crown of six sun rays like the ones pictured on images of Mithra and Helios.

As torch bearer, the Statue of Liberty is Lucifer, “the bearer of the light” or a symbol of enlightenment.

One of the keys to cracking the Sgt. Pepper Code can be obtained by understanding the hidden word-play elements that certain members of the Pepperati provide. Diana Dors is a perfect example. Diana means heavenly and D’or translates as golden in French and Diana Dors (heavenly gold) is resplendent in her gold dress on the cover. Is she, therefore, illustrative of a solar temple of the sun king?

The golden doors of the temple are opened to signify a Masonic meeting has begun. Could Diana Dors represent the doors to the holy of holies, Solomon’s Temple?

The former gateway to the United States – the living embodiment of the Masonic ideal - Ellis Island is also known as the Golden Doors as it represents the entrance to America. Next to Ellis Island, of course, is the Statue of Liberty – which is, in some ways, reminiscent of Diana Dors and has major Masonic influences.

Diana (Artemis) is the sister of Apollo.

The Statue of Liberty is also believed to have been a representation of Mary Magdalene.

This reminds me of a legend that suggests that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus as well as his half-sister.

According to this story Mary Magdalene’s actual name was Cleopatra Selene and she was the offspring of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony and had two brothers in addition to her half-brother, Jesus.

Jesus, according to this tale was actually Caesarian (or Little Caesar) or Ptolemy XV, the last Pharaoh of Egypt and the result of the union between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. Cleopatra claimed herself to

be the reincarnation of the virgin goddess Isis; therefore, Caesarian would have been the son of a Virgin Mother Goddess.

Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by his adopted son Octavian, who then seized power as the new Roman Emperor.

Since Caesarian was Caesars’s son and the rightful heir to the Empire, Octavian wanted him killed. Cleopatra feared for his safety, so when Octavian and his Roman Army invaded Egypt, Cleopatra arranged for Caesarians escape with her most trusted servants; Mary of Arthenia and Joseph of Arimathea.

Octavian overthrows Egypt and Mark Antony and Cleopatra commit suicide thus Caesarian is forced to hide his identity and changes his name to Esu, which means Son of Isis.

As an adult, Esu returns to Egypt, where he grew up as a boy. He spends three years in Egypt before looking for his younger half-sister and two younger half-brothers, fathered by Mark Antony.

Within this tale we can see yet more similarities to that of the Shakespeare play, Cymbeline, that we discussed earlier.

Esu finds his half-sister Cleopatra Selene and changes his name to Jesus Christ, which incorporates his Fathers initials. Later I will talk about the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs who also utilises the JC initials for the lead characters in his Tarzan and John Carter books.

Jesus then plans to reclaim his Fathers kingdom, the Roman Empire.

He plans not to capture it with weapons and armies, but by creating a new religion and by transforming the ‘Roman Empire’ into the ‘Holy Roman Empire’.

Jesus then survives the crucifixion and starts a family with Cleopatra Selene/Mary Magdalene. This crucifixion survival theme echoes that contained within ‘The Passover Plot’ which, as mentioned earlier, so heavily influenced John Lennon.

In a similar vein, we can find another lyrical clue contained within the song ‘Lovely Rita’.

Took her out and tried to win her.

Had a laugh and over dinner, Told her I would really like to see her again.

Got the bill and Rita paid it.

Took her home I nearly made it, Sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.

Oh, lovely Rita meter maid, Where would I be without you Give us a wink and make me think of you.

Reading from the bottom line up, and excluding the italicised line, we can see the word GHOST appears. I have highlighted the relevant letters in bold for ease of reading.

Could this be a reference to the Holy Ghost? The italicised line above includes the words without you. Could this be another pointer to the song ‘Within You, Without You’ which talks, as we know, about the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion?

Chapter 4: The Initiation _______________________________________________________

Let us start with a list of the Sgt. Pepper characters: 1. Sri Yukestawar Giri (Guru) 2. Aleister Crowley (Dabbler in Sex, Drugs and Magic) 3. Mae West (Actress) 4. Lenny Bruce (Comic) 5. Karlheinz Stockhausen (Composer) 6. W. C. (William Claude) Fields (Actor/Comic) 7. Carl Gustav Jung (Psychologist) 8. Edgar Allen Poe (Writer) 9. Fred Astaire (Actor) 10. Richard Merkin (Artist) 11. The Vargas Girl (by Artist Alberto Vargas) 12. * Leo Gorcey (Actor) 13. Huntz Hall (Actor with Leo Gorcey, one of The Bowery Boys) 14. Simon Rodia (Creator of Watts Towers) 15. Bob Dylan (Musician) 16. Aubrey Beardsley (Illustrator) 17. Sir Robert Peel

18. Aldous Huxley (Writer) 19. Dylan Thomas (Poet) 20. Terry Southern (Writer) 21. Dion (di Mucci) (Singer) 22. Tony Curtis (Actor) 23. Wallace Berman (Artist) 24. Tommy Handley (Comic) 25. Marilyn Monroe (Actress) 26. William Burroughs (Writer) 27. Sri Mahavatara Babaji (Guru) 28. Stan Laurel (Comic) 29. Richard Lindner (Writer) 30. Oliver Hardy (Comic) 31. Karl Marx (Philosopher, Socialist) 32. H.G. (Herbert George) Wells (Writer) 33. Sri Paramahansa Yoganandu (Guru) 34. Anonymous (Wax hairdressers’ dummy) 35. Stuart Sutcliff (Artist, former Beatle) 36. Anonymous (Wax hairdressers’ dummy) 37. Max Miller (Comic)

38. Lucille Ball Petty Girl (by Artist George Petty) 39. Marlon Brando (Actor) 40. Tom Mix (Actor) 41. Oscar Wilde (Writer) 42. Tyrone Power (Actor) 43. Larry Bell (Artist 44. Dr. David Livingstone (Missionary & Explorer) 45. Johnny Weismuller (Swimmer and Actor) 46. Stephen Crane (Writer) 47. Issy Bonn (Comic) 48. George Bernard Shaw (Writer) 49. H.C. (Horace Clifford) Westermann (Sculptor) 50. Albert Stubbins (Soccer Player) 51. Sri Lahiri Mahasaya (Guru) 52. Lewis Carroll (Writer) 53. T.E. (Thomas Edward) Lawrence (Soldier, Lawrence of Arabia) 54. Sonny Listen (Boxer) 55. Binnie Barnes Petty Girl (by Artist George Petty) 56. Wax Model of George Harrison 57. Wax Model of John Lennon

58. Shirley Temple (Child Actress) 59. Wax Model of Ringo Starr 60. Wax Model of Paul McCartney 61. Albert Einstein (Physicist) 62. John Lennon (Holding a French Horn) 63. Ringo Starr (Holding a Trumpet) 64. Paul McCartney (Holding a Cor Anglais) 65. George Harrison (Holding a Flute) 66. Bobby Breen (Singer) 67. Marlene Dietrich (Actress) 68. ** Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Indian Leader) 69. Legionnaire from the Order of the Buffaloes 70. Diana Dors (Actress) 71. Shirley Temple (Child Actress) 72. Cloth Grandmother Figure by Jann Haworth 73. Cloth Figure of Shirley Temple (Child Actress) by Jann Haworth 74. Mexican Candlestick 75. Television Set 76. Stone Figure of Girl 77. Stone Figure

78. Statue from John Lennon's House 79. Trophy 80. Four-Armed Indian Doll of the Indian Goddess Lakshmi 81. Drum-Skin, Designed by Joe Ephgrave) 82. Hookah (Water tobacco pipe 83. Velvet Snake 84. Japanese Stone Figure 85. Stone Figure of Snow White 86. Garden Gnome 87. Tuba * Leo Gorcey was painted out because he requested a fee to use his image. ** Gandhi was painted out by request of EMI as they feared it would offend record buyers in India.

Perhaps we should consider why The Beatles have included the subtle allusions to Shakespeare and, more specifically, Sir Francis Bacon? Well, we are being asked to look for hidden clues and meanings and also, I believe, a certain duality between the characters depicted upon the cover. It is not enough to perceive the references to Shakespeare we must look beyond and find the clues that suggest that Shakespeare was merely a front, the public persona that masks the real or key players and what the underlying message is.

I will attempt to establish the duality, or the connections, between the individuals that appear on the LP cover, but there is, I believe, an added facet to consider at this juncture, namely secret societies.

Could it be that what The Beatles are pointing to is a hidden knowledge that these societies conceal? Are The Beatles’ members

of a secret society? Are they, through Sgt. Pepper, inviting us to a secret society initiation ceremony?

Far-fetched and a figment of your imagination I hear you cry, well, I shall attempt to alleviate those concerns by taking a look at some of the luminaries listed above and considering why they might have been included.

If we can assume that Sir Francis Bacon is present, at least by means of allusion, then he should be our starting point. Bacon has been long connected with that influential Society which flourished in England in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, known as the ‘Rosicrucian’s’, whose very existence was so carefully concealed that few outside of its fellowship knew of its existence. The following passage has been attributed to Bacon.

I was twenty when this book was finished; but methinks I have outlived myself; I begin to be weary of the sun. I have shaken hands with delight, and know all is vanity, and I think no man can live well once but he that could live twice. For my part I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the minutes of my days; not because I have not lived well, but for fear that I should live them worse. At my death I mean to make a total adieu of the world, not caring for the burthen of a tombstone and epitaph, but in the universal Register of God I fix my contemplations on Heaven. I writ the Rosicrucian Infallible Axiomata in four books, and study, not for my own sake only, but for them that study not for themselves. In the law I began to be a perfect clerk; I writ the idea of the Law, et., for the benefit of my friends, and practice in King’s Bench. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that knows less..... Now, intake midst of all my endeavours there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacies amongst my dearly beloved and honoured friends.

I have highlighted the striking phrase, “I begin to be weary of the sun”, as it is also a line in “Macbeth”, as “I ‘gin to be a weary of the sun”, and helps further strengthen the Bacon as Shakespeare argument.

That the Rosicrucians, who are based on or descended from the Knights Templar, can be seen as a model and forerunner for all manner of other organisations, most notably perhaps the Freemasons, is well documented. That there should be eleven Freemasons*, three 33° Master Freemasons, three OTO members and two Golden Dawn members on top, of course, of the Legionnaire of the Order of Buffaloes, depicted on the album cover and we see something of a pattern beginning to emerge. *Subsequent research has uncovered the existence of a twelfth Pepper freemason.

I do not believe that it is too much of a stretch to say that the Sgt. Pepper album performs the function of a Masonic initiation ceremony for the listener. As you look at the front of the sleeve you will see the twin torch pillars known as Boaz and Jachin that represent Solomon’s Temple. The pillars in this instance are symbolized by the Diana Dors and Sonny Liston characters.

Jachin is derived from the Hebrew word for moon, so Jachin, on the right and represented by DIANA Dors, is the moon, the Goddess figure, and Boaz, on the left and represented by SONNY Liston, is the sun God. Diana, a moon Goddess, was the twin sister of Apollo. Interestingly, there is a Dianic Temple in Cefalu, Sicily, where Aleister Crowley had his Abbey of Thelema. The site of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is also believed to be located at the site of where a temple dedicated to Diana once existed. Apollo is linked to Lucifer, the light bearer.

Queen Elizabeth I was also the subject of a Dianic cult in which she was the chaste, virgin moon goddess.

In a set of Tarot cards the twin pillars of Jachin and Boaz are represented by the High Priestess card.

We should not underestimate the pagan symbolism that is on display here as it is the key to understanding the underlying point that the Sgt. Pepper code reveals.

The original pillars in the Temple of Solomon were decorated with two hundred carved pomegranates (highly symbolic fruit believed by some to be the ‘forbidden fruit’ from the Garden of Eden. Maybe The Beatles simply substituted the pomegranate for an apple as the modern bible does. The pomegranate symbol was used by Henry VIII, father of Queen Elizabeth I, and also the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I who was a leading Rosicrucian and whose family crest bears the same double headed eagle as Tara Browne’s family). The pillars were wreathed with seven chains and adorned with lilies. It is also possible that they were designed to have flames at the top, possibly as beacons of light.

As you can see from the image above Royal Arch degree masonry tracing boards feature the twin pillars as well as a symbolic coffin at the bottom of the piece. This is reminiscent of the Sgt. Pepper sleeve and its grave scene. It is also highly reminiscent of the frontispiece from Bacon’s final work, New Atlantis, and uses the twin pillar theme to represent the Pillars of Hercules as the end of the known world and the entrance to another world of hidden knowledge.

Some Masonic tracing boards also depict a third, central, pillar.

As illustrated above, we can see this third pillar. The W emblazoned upon it stands for wisdom. We have already discussed the inclusion of some hidden characters on Pepper, including Sophia Loren.

Sophia, in Hebrew, translates as wisdom; hidden wisdom in this case, as illustrated by the obscuring of the Sophia Loren character.

To further reinforce the idea that the inclusion of Sonny Liston and Diana Dors is illustrative of these Masonic pillars we should consider that the S emblazoned on the left (the Sonny Liston column) pillar stands for strength, whilst the B on the right (Diana Dors column) pillar stands for beauty.

The tracing board image also shows a very prominent ladder. This is representative of Jacob’s ladder which is a Biblical reference to an earthly connection with heaven.

Clearly there is no ladder, either real or symbolic, on the Sgt. Pepper cover. There is however, the renowned author of the Alice in Wonderland books, Lewis Carroll, who invented word ladders. A word ladder puzzle begins with two words, and to solve the puzzle one must link the two, so that two adjacent words (that is, words in successive steps) differ by one letter. The player is given a start word and an end word. In order to win the game, the player must change the start word into the end word progressively, creating an existing word at each step.

The first and last words on Sgt. Pepper are IT and ON.

The solution = IT – IN – ON. There are 2560 (2+5+6+0=13) words on the Sgt. Pepper lyric sheet, the middle word (1280(1+2+8+0=11)) is SHE: SHE and IN make SHINE. IT SHINE ON? Perhaps they were pre-empting the lyrics to John Lennon’s song ‘Instant Karma’, where, we all shine on!

Aleister Crowley wrote a poem called the ladder and, in 1971, a rumour surfaced that three of The Beatles (John, George and Ringo) were going to reform, along with Klaus Voorman as The Ladders.

The song ‘I’m the greatest’ written by Lennon for Ringo – and which is the only song that features The Ladders line-up – includes a reference to Billy Shears; The song also references ‘boogaloo’ – supposedly a nickname for Paul McCartney, but that could also refer to ‘Back Off, Boogaloo’, another Ringo Starr tune, which included the lyrics; Wake up, meat head, Don't pretend that you are dead, Get yourself up off the cart.

All of which could be taken as examples of hidden wisdom, as so defined by the obscured inclusion of Sophia (wisdom) Loren on the Pepper cover.

I believe this may also explain the inclusion of the character labelled Legionnaire of the Order of the Buffaloes, or American Legionnaire (No: 69). There is a slight use of word play involved here as the real title of this organisation is the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes and according to Wikipedia, it is a ‘Fraternal, Benevolent and Social Organisation in the United Kingdom. It has no royal patronage; it was founded after the Flood, it is not a recognised Order of chivalry and has no connection with buffaloes’.

What is it then? Ostensibly it is an organisation created by stagehands and for whom there may be a Beatle connection via John Lennon’s uncle Charlie who was a member.

The Legionnaire image used on the final cover is intriguing as it appears to have been altered or manipulated. In some of the original cover shoot photos it appears as if the character is wearing a Masonic apron that has been subsequently concealed in the final piece.

However, the real clue here is revealed in the characters positioning on the sleeve and the word Antediluvian.

The Antediluvian period – meaning “before the deluge” – is the period referred to in the Bible between the Creation of the Earth and the Deluge (flood) in the biblical cosmology. The Legionnaire character is a nod to the author Ignatius L Donnelly. In 1882, Donnelly published ‘Atlantis: The Antediluvian World’, his best known work. It details theories concerning the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Donnelly suggested that Atlantis had been destroyed during the same event remembered in the Bible as the Great Flood.

It is interesting that in The Beatles film ‘Yellow Submarine’ the mythical destination of Pepperland is described as an “Earthly paradise” and that it lies 80,000 leagues beneath the sea!

Donnelly was also a great believer in the theory that Sir Francis Bacon was the true author of the works of Shakespeare and in 1888 he published ‘The Great Cryptogram’ in support of this belief.

Consider also where they have chosen to position this seemingly incongruous character on the record cover; directly behind the Shirley Temple and Diana Dors images but just in front of Lewis Carroll and Marlene Dietrich.

If I were to inform you that in German ‘Dietrich’ translates as ‘skeleton key’ then what we have here is a blatant clue: Carroll is the key to the temple door.

The Sgt. Pepper Rebus: If we ignore the hidden RAOB character we can see Lewis CARROLL, Marlene DIETRICH, Shirley TEMPLE and Diana DORS. Dietrich, Temple and Dors are all actresses, therefore, are not necessarily what, or whom, they seem to be.

Dietrich in German means skeleton key – a key that can open any lock – therefore we are left with CARROLL – KEY – TEMPLE – DO(O)RS. Or possibly just CARROLL = KEY.

The term ‘Masonic Temple’ originates in Masonic ritual and tradition.

Masonic tradition, as expressed through the fraternity’s ritual, holds that the first Masonic Lodge was formed at the building of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

We can possibly extend this thought further. There are three Shirley Temple characters listed as being present on the album cover. One is seated on the lap of the ‘Grandmother figure’ designed by Jann Haworth. The Shirley Temple doll seated on her lap, therefore is the original, or first, Temple of Solomon.

The Legionnaire character, placed as he is behind the second Shirley Temple and with his clearly Masonic influences, could be construed as a ‘Brethren Mason’, another name for the Knights Templar. The aim of the Templars was to rebuild the Temple of Solomon, thus making them the builders of the second Temple, and the Legionnaire, therefore, a symbolic reference to the Knights Templar.

To bring this full circle, Francis Bacon’s book ‘New Atlantis’ features a fictional institution called Salomon’s House (i.e., Solomon’s House) that is a seat for the collection of all knowledge and led directly to the formation in 1660 of the Royal Society as a device to collate knowledge. The book which was published in English in 1627, the year after Bacon’s death, is a portrayal of a fictional land based on the foundation of knowledge and wisdom. It is largely seen as a blueprint for the foundation of the United States of America under Masonic principles.

The third and final Shirley Temple depiction on the cover appears on the opposite, or west side, of the cover. She is largely obscured by the waxwork Beatles. Could this be a reference to the secretive goings-on of Scottish Rite Freemasonry which is largely based in the US and as such could be a symbolic reference to the hidden activities of the illuminati? Could this also be why the Legionnaire is referred to as an American Legionnaire on the CD cover?

A further initiation clue can be gleaned from the lyrics of the song ‘Getting Better’.

In the previous chapter we spoke about the discovery of the ‘STAB ACT’ clue from tracks one and three. ‘Getting Better’ is track four, immediately after the clue.

This ‘Stab Act’ could possibly be interpreted as a reference to Hiram Abiff and, therefore, relate to the Third Degree of Masonry.

The Blue Lodge (degrees 1 - 3) are centred upon the legend of Hiram Abiff.

This legend, loosely, has its historical basis in 1st Kings 7 and 2nd Chronicles 2. King Hiram of Tyre sent a skilled man, also called Hiram, to Israel to help King Solomon build the Temple of the Lord.

Hiram Abiff, “a widow’s son” from Tyre, skilful in the working of all kinds of metals, was employed to help build King Solomon’s Temple.

The legend tells us that one day, whilst worshipping the Grand Architect of the Universe (GAOTU) within the Holy of Holies, Hiram was attacked by three ruffians, (called ‘Jubela’, ‘Jubelo’ & ‘Jubelum’ and known collectively as ‘The Juwes’) who demanded the “Master’s word”, that is, the secret name of God. The first ruffian, named Jubela, struck Hiram across the throat with a 24 inch gauge. The second ruffian, named Jubelo, struck Hiram’s breast, over the heart, with a square. The third ruffian, named Jubelum, struck Hiram upon the forehead with a gavel, whereupon Hiram fell dead. His blood, therefore, was shed within the temple.

Hiram, having been killed, was carried out the East gate of the Temple and buried outside Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, incidentally where Jacob had his dream of a ladder unto heaven.

Early the following morning, King Solomon visited the temple and found the workmen in confusion because no plans had been made for the day’s work. Fearing evil had befallen Hiram, King Solomon sent out twelve Fellowcraft Masons to look for Hiram. King Solomon himself accompanied the three who journeyed towards the East.

Having finally located the grave of Hiram, Solomon and his fellow Masons exhumed the body. A search was made for the Master’s word (the Name of God), but all that was found was the letter “G”.

Finding the word lost, a lament went up: “O Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow’s son?”

They first took hold of Hiram’s body with the “Boaz” grip of the first degree. This failed to achieve its purpose.

They then re-positioned their hold upon Hiram's body using the “Jachin” grip of the second degree. This also failed to accomplish its purpose.

Solomon finally raised Hiram from the dead by using the third degree grip of the Master Mason, the five points of fellowship, and by uttering in Hiram’s ear the phrase “Ma-Ha-Bone”.

These first three degrees are based upon the legend. The Scottish and York Rites base themselves largely upon the Hiramic legend that follows after Hiram Abiff’s ‘resurrection’.

Hiram Abiff has been raised from the dead. However, he soon leaves the legend, for he has been ushered into a more glorious existence.

Solomon is left to continue building the Temple. Many decisions have to be made. Solomon first selects seven expert masons to guard the Temple, before holding a requiem for the departed Hiram Abiff.

Solomon then appoints seven judges to hand out justice to the workmen building the Temple.

Five superintendents are installed to oversee the continuing building of the Temple. Solomon then focuses upon apprehending the assassins of Hiram Abiff. He appoints nine Masters, who begin the search for the assassins. The first assassin is discovered asleep. He is stabbed in the heart and head and then decapitated.

It is upon this tale that the basis for the Masonic initiation ceremony is formed. Within these ceremonies the candidates – those being initiated – will find themselves being held down and turned around and being asked for a secret password.

So, to return to ‘Getting Better’ we see it includes some intriguing lyrics; in the first verse: It’s getting better all the time I used to get mad at my school (No, I can’t complain) The teachers who taught me weren't cool (No, I can’t complain) You’re holding me down (Oh Oh) Turning me round (Oh Oh) Filling me up with your rules (Oooh)

And in the second verse: Me used to be angry young man Me hiding me head in the sand

You gave me the word, I finally heard I'm doing the best that I can

Viewing the lyrics from the perspective of a Masonic initiation one could argue that they talk about the initiation itself and then the effects of that initiation on the candidate.

Holding me down. Restrained in order that you will know the true meaning of freedom.

Turning me round. Blindfolded and turned round so you don’t know your direction or path. A ritual that teaches one to know their direction and point of view.

You gave me the word. The replacement terms given to the candidate in place of the lost name of God. In a Masonic initiation ceremony the pillars are the first things the candidate will pass as they enter into the lodge. In the context of Sgt. Pepper the cover is an invitation and the playing of the LP and the reading of the printed lyrics symbolises the initiation and the imparting of knowledge.

The blue sky featured on the cover represents the Masonic concept of the Canopy of Heaven or Heavenly Arch which is widely featured as part of the dĂŠcor in Masonic Lodge-rooms.

The basic concept of Christianity is that there is one God - God and Jesus being in essence the same thing - and that any belief in anything other than this one God, i.e. Satan, is intrinsically bad. The concealed Rosicrucian / Templar belief is that there is more than one God - the pagan sun and moon concept - and that there is good and bad in all things. By forcing their concept onto the masses Christianity seeks to hold sway on what is good and bad and in so doing claim control over the populace.

Far be it for me to sit in judgement on people’s religious beliefs, what I am portraying in this work is an understanding of the message that has been encoded into the Sgt. Pepper sleeve. I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of any secret society and do not claim to hold

an in-depth understanding of their aims or stated beliefs. I do use the term stated quite specifically though, for I feel that the professed beliefs of these organisations may not always match their true agendas.

What Bacon and his followers, of whom many are depicted on this cover, are trying to do is keep these ancient beliefs alive. There was one impediment to Bacon’s mission. This was his mother, Queen Elizabeth. She was the reason he wrote the Shakespeare plays in secret. Within those plays he tells his true story, including his birth, using ciphers. The Beatles are telling the same tale, using the same techniques. They just use the media of the day, and the one at their disposal, to encode their message.

It took hundreds of years before Bacon’s codes were deciphered, indeed many still remain concealed, and so it was with The Beatles.

This riddle was not intended to be easily decoded. The clues were hidden in plain sight, in true Templar fashion, so that when the time was right they could be revealed. The ‘bigger than Jesus’ furore made it plain that the world was not yet ready for the revelation and so this plan was hatched, to conceive of the greatest concept album of all time.

In a 1984 interview with Playboy Paul McCartney said of Pepper: “.... It was an idea I had, I think when I was flying from L.A. to somewhere. I thought it would be nice to lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group. We would make up all the culture around it and collect all our heroes in one place. So I thought a stupid-sounding name for a Dr. Hook’s Medicine Show and Travelling Circus kind of thing would be ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. Just a word game, really.”

McCartney is talking about the genesis of Sgt. Pepper, and, as he quite often does, is getting a bit muddled with his history. The generally quoted story is that McCartney came up with the concept when returning to London from Africa with Mal Evans, whereas the L.A. trip was in 1967 and, I believe, was when he came up with the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ concept.

But, I digress, the clues lie in the words; ‘I thought it would be nice to lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group’ and ‘Just a word game, really’. That, perhaps, sums it up best.

Lewis Carroll appears on the cover and, as we have already seen, Carroll is the key. A lot of the clues on Pepper appear to be wordgames that point to Alice in Wonderland and reflect the increasing loss of identity that the band feels. In late 1966, immediately prior to developing Pepper, The Beatles were reeling from their shock expulsion from the Philippines, the fallout from John’s ‘bigger than Jesus’ comments and the decision to stop touring.

There also appears to have been some attempts to unsettle The Beatles and their management. In 1966 Brian Epstein formed Nemperor Records with Nat Weiss and then, in early 1967, he negotiated a deal with Robert Stigwood concerning joint ownership of NEMS. Meanwhile there is some evidence that a Beatle, or two, had approached Allen Klein about representation.

The Beatles were tired of being perceived as the cute mop-tops and of being corporate cash cows and, so, were confused about their identities and futures. I believe this the reason that they sought to embed within Pepper a number of Alice in Wonderland clues that could be seen as metaphors for the journey upon which they had embarked, the knowledge and wisdom that they were absorbing and the strange, schizophrenic nature of their public and private personas.

For example, when in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, Alice encounters the Hookah-smoking Caterpillar he asks who she is and she says ‘I hardly know, Sir, just at present-at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then’.

Is that why on the Pepper cover we have both a Hookah pipe and a caterpillar next to one another?

We also have an egg-shaped trophy on the Pepper cover. Is this telling us that Sgt. Pepper’s is an egg-hunt and, as such, an obtuse Humpty Dumpty reference?

We will find a reference to the ‘egg-man’ in the lyrics of ‘I am the Walrus’, which itself links back to ‘Alice’ via the poem ‘The walrus and the Carpenter’.

We encounter Humpty Dumpty in the book ‘Through the Looking Glass’ where he provides Alice with a solution to the nonsense poem Jabberwocky.

Aleister Crowley recommended both ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, and ‘Through the Looking Glass’, as essential reading for students of the A∴A∴ when he said they were: “Valuable to those who understand the Qabalah.” He also refers to Carroll as “Ludovicus Carolus” - a Latinised version of Lewis Carroll – and recommends him as an ‘occult authority’ and an ‘illuminated man’.

It has been suggested that Carroll, when writing Humpty Dumpty, was alluding to the death of King Richard III – the hunchback King who died in battle after receiving numerous blows, hence, he couldn’t be put back together again – and this website claims that “a 16th century collection of manuscripts that once contained the Shakespeare plays, Richard II and Richard III, names Francis Bacon as their author?”

So, once again, we have this loop through Bacon, Crowley and Carroll that reappears time and again on Sgt. Pepper. King Richard III was also the last of the line of Plantagenet rulers of England from whom Jane Asher and her family are descended.

One of Jane Asher’s first acting roles was as Alice.

When talking about ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ John said this: “The images were from Alice in Wonderland. It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty-Dumpty.

The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep, and the next minute they’re rowing in a rowing boat somewhere - and I was visualising that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me – ‘a girl with kaleidoscope eyes’ who would come out of the sky. It’s not an acid song.”

My belief is that as Humpty Dumpty assists Alice to understand the nonsense poem ‘Jabberwocky’, then we should use the Alice clues on Pepper to help understand its message.

We know that it was not just John Lennon that was obsessed with all things Alice.

Paul McCartney said of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’: “John had the title and he had the first verse. It started off very Alice in Wonderland: ‘Picture yourself in a boat, on the river …’

It's very Alice. Both of us had read the Alice books and always referred to them, we were always talking about ‘Jabberwocky’ and we knew those more than any other books really. And when psychedelics came in, the heady quality of them was perfect. So we just went along with it. I sat there and wrote it with him: I offered ‘cellophane flowers’ and ‘newspaper taxis’ and John replied with ‘kaleidoscope eyes’. I remember which was which because we traded words off each other, as we always did ... And in our mind it was an Alice thing, which both of us loved.”

As mentioned earlier, McCartney was given a set of Alice statuettes which, it has been said, Paul arranged as nodes to form a tree of life structure in his garden at Cavendish Avenue.

Perhaps that is why there is a ‘tree of life’ present on the Pepper cover.

So, we have hidden allusions to Alice in Wonderland that lay within the Pepper cover, however, the biggest clue is one that is, itself, hidden from view.

Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, had noticed this clue until a cryptic post appeared on an internet forum.

Points to ponder...

So many of the supposed “clues” found on MMT seem to point back towards Sgt Pepper.

Case in point: Hidden on the Pepper cover is a WALRUS. Using your trusty mirror, place it vertically touching Diana Dors left elbow.

See him?

Yet, this “clue” pre-dates any mention in Beatle lore of a walrus. That would come on the following release, MMT….

Apollo

Do you see the walrus peering out from in-between Diana Dors?

That the clue is meant to be there was pointed out by The Beatles in the video they produced for ‘A Day in the Life’ for the Pepper twentieth anniversary in 1987. Both ends have been mirrored for no obvious reason.

But does this actually constitute a clue given that nobody discovered it, even after the twentieth anniversary video hint above?

Is the walrus even deliberate? To embed a walrus into a palm-tree that only becomes visible when a mirror is applied to a certain point of the record cover does seem, on the face of it, somewhat preposterous.

However, as we have seen, Peter Blake said: “It’s a retouched photograph. In the original photo the blue paper behind them, which represented the sky, was slightly bumpy so it was retouched. And there was an artificial palmtree on the right-hand side which was rather gloomy, so it was completely retouched and then became a rather badly painted palm-tree. It was all done by a professional re-toucher but not very sympathetically.”

I accept that the above statement does not constitute proof, but nevertheless, the mere fact it was professionally re-touched does lend some credence to the fact that it was deliberate and that the walrus was purposely embedded.

I was further struck by the resemblance of the carpenter – as portrayed above in John Tenniel’s illustration – and the mysterious Legionnaire of the Order of the Buffaloes character lurking behind Ms Dors. Their choice of headgear appears identical.

Consider also that the waxwork Diana Dors seems to have oyster shells supporting her breasts.

So, when the mirror is applied we have the Walrus, the Carpenter and the four oysters. A particular stanza from the Walrus and the Carpenter reads; But four young Oysters hurried up, All eager for the treat: Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, Their shoes were clean and neat-And this was odd, because, you know, They hadn't any feet.

If we read the four young Oysters as being The Beatles then this could possibly be a reference to their treatment since achieving fame.

In the poem the Oysters are lured from the sea by the Walrus and the Carpenter and they are eaten. The Beatles feel as though they have been consumed by the music industry. Is that why the walrus on the Pepper cover seems to be devouring the doll?

Still not convinced? Well, we have playing cards, a la ‘Alice in Wonderland’, in that we have ‘Hearts’, ‘Clubs’ and ‘Diamonds’ on Pepper, though no ‘Spades’; so maybe we have to do the digging?

‘Through the Looking Glass’ begins with a list of ‘Dramatis Personae’ lined up on either side of a chess-board and each of them plays some part in the ensuing story, similar to the cast on Pepper.

There is a chess theme that weaves its way throughout ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and that may deem this Ringo Starr comment as being very pertinent; “The biggest memory I have of Sgt. Pepper ... is I learned to play chess”. Is this a clue that Sgt. Pepper is a game?

Then we have the fact that in both ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’ Alice’s adventures are actually dreams. Is there a comparison to be made with the dream like state that LSD induces?

And what are we to make of the frequent claims that Pepper represents either Paul’s death or replacement? Well in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ Alice replaces Lily as ‘Lily’s too young to play’ and Alice herself undergoes a transformation from pawn to Queen.

Could the Alice theme within Pepper be about a symbolic replacement? Paul McCartney spoke about The Beatles losing their identity and adopting a fake persona. Rather than assuming that this should be taken literally, perhaps we should understand that, from that point on, the old mop-top McCartney was, metaphorically, dead and that the persona presented to the public was, therefore, fake. Is this why this diary entry reads?

Walrus in French translates as Morse. Should we be looking for a translated clue such as Dietrich in German meaning key?

There is rumoured to be a segment of Morse code contained within ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. It has been claimed that it spells JL, but this is widely disputed.

There may also be some mileage in the tale that McCartney frequently recants about the song ‘Yesterday’ as having come to him, fully formed, within a dream. This was during the time in which he was living with the Asher family and I believe that this may have been deliberate given Dr. Asher’s professional expertise and that the ‘Establishment’ seem to have been conducting LSD experiments at this time. We shall explore this possibility further as we go deeper into the rabbit-hole.

Finally though, let us not forget that ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ – the place where ‘nothing is real’ and the song that inspired the Pepper concept – is itself describing a dream world as, of course, are Alice’s adventures.

Let us then explore the Dramatis Personae The Beatles have selected for us to grace the cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.

Chapter 5: The Luminaries _______________________________________________________

When describing the individuals on display I shall use the numbers that were ascribed to them in the official ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ CD booklet.

Number 47: Issy Bonn

A strange choice to start with you may well think. Issy Bonn was a noted British radio and music hall star of the 1940s and 1950s and was perhaps best known for singing “My Yiddish Mama”. As such the band may well have known him; however, I believe he was included because of the position of his waving hand directly above Paul McCartney’s head.

This following tale has been widely touted by the ‘Paul is Dead’ believers as being another clue. They claim that the hand is an illustration of some sort of death symbol. Indeed, there are other examples post Sgt. Pepper and into ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ of photographs or cartoons where a hand is placed above McCartney’s head. It would appear that this is designed to display some significance however; I would dispute the claim that it is a symbol of death.

I believe it could be a representation of the hand of the mysteries; the Master Masons hand. The hand of the philosopher that is extended to those who enter into the mysteries. The hand represents an invitation to join an elite group, those who were said to guard the secret wisdom of all the ages.

Besides its alchemical and Qabbalistic meanings, the figure symbolizes the hand of a Master Mason with which he “raises” the martyred Builder of the Divine House. So in the case of Sgt. Pepper, Issy Bonn – a Hebrew comedian – is representing the Master Mason and Paul McCartney is Hiram Abiff, the mythical builder of Solomon’s Temple, being raised from the dead.

Since writing the first version of this book I have discovered that Issy Bonn was also a freemason, he was a member of the Chelsea Lodge #3098, where a fellow brother mason was Peter Sellers. Chelsea Lodge #3098 appears to be a lodge designed specifically for actors, musicians and entertainers.

Could, alternatively, Issy Bonn’s upturned hand represent the Dead Man’s Hand, the supposed hand of cards that Wild Bill Hickok was in possession of at the time of his death? The, rumoured, unturned card was the Queen of Hearts which would serve as yet another link back to Alice in Wonderland.

Number 40: Tom Mix

As well as being one of our clique of Sgt. Pepper freemasons Tom Mix is another who departed this mortal realm via a car crash. Mix was also a resident in that conspiracy theorist paradise that is Laurel Canyon. The actor purchased what was then known as the ‘Laurel Tavern’ but would thereafter be known as the ‘Log Cabin’ which would later be purchased by Frank Zappa for use as the prototype hippie commune and, as such, would be visited by Charles Manson before he set up his own version at the Spahn Movie Ranch, where, many years previously Tom Mix had plied his trade.

I will move next to perhaps the most discussed and controversial character on the record cover;

Number 2: Aleister Crowley

Crowley was John Lennon’s choice. Crowley was a British magician who specialized in the black arts and who was once known as ‘The Great Beast’. He was once the subject of a novel by W. Somerset Maugham called ‘The Magician.’ During his life he was involved in many scandals and was referred to in the press as ‘the most evil man in Britain.’ He was a practitioner of ‘sex magic’ and wrote many books on the occult.

Crowley’s inclusion was clearly critical to the appearance of the collage as in some of the preparatory photos we can see an alternative version of his image was being prepared. Ultimately, this younger image was dropped as, it is claimed, it bore too similar a likeness to Paul McCartney.

Crowley can be tied in to a large number of the Pepper characters, as we shall see, and there are numerous references to The Beatles, that coincidentally or not, cannot be ignored.

One of Crowley’s publications was a book entitled ‘The Winged Beetle’. Given the similarity between Beetle and Beatle and the name of McCartney’s post Beatles band, Wings, we must consider that Crowley’s works heavily influenced the Beatles.

Crowley also produced a poem called ‘the ladder’. The poem quotes the Bible from Psalm 24:7 and Luke 15:18. It contains the line, “O may the Four avail me.” It contains another line that says, “Dire chaos; see! these new-fledged wings.” Apple records would later release the song ‘Jacobs Ladder’ by Doris Troy.

Furthermore, on Klaus Voormann’s Wikipedia entry it claims that: ‘After the Beatles disbanded, there were rumours of them reforming as the Ladders, with Voormann on bass as a replacement for Paul McCartney. An announcement to this effect filtered out of the Apple offices in 1971, but was ultimately withdrawn before it got very far.’

Aleister Crowley was a major influence, not just on the Beatles, but also the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.

An argument could be made that he also seems to appear twice on the cover as the character labelled No: 69, Legionnaire from the Order of the Buffaloes also seems to bear a strong resemblance to Crowley. This is itself an interesting inclusion.

As discussed previously The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes (RAOB) are an order, similar in structure to the Freemasons, who evolved as an exclusive club for stage artists. I have discovered that John Lennon’s uncle Charlie was a member of the RAOB in Liverpool, and this fact may be the catalyst for the Legionnaire’s inclusion, but it is the positioning and the word Antediluvian that belie the Masonic connection.

He is placed directly behind, and partially obscured by, the Diana Dors and Shirley Temple characters. This is Beatle word play and denotes that he has been deliberately placed behind the Temple Dors (Doors) where the secret Masonic knowledge is stored.

A further positional clue brings to mind another secret organisation with very close ties to Crowley, the OTO. Ordo Templis Orientis, their full Latin title, means Order of the Temple of the East and these characters are positioned to the East as we look at the record sleeve.

The OTO seems to play a prominent and on-going part in the narrative of this story. Aleister Crowley is perhaps its most prominent member, although another chief Sgt. Pepper protagonist, Kenneth Anger, was and still is a member.

Whether The Beatles were ever initiated into the OTO is a moot point, however, there is enough symbolism present on the album sleeve to indicate that somebody is presenting to the world knowledge of the workings of the OTO or some other related secret society.

The Stones too would embrace all things occult and interestingly, their LP ‘Goats Head Soup’ could be interpreted as a nod to the father of all secret societies, The Knights Templar, who worshipped a goats head known as Baphomet; a name Crowley would use in his membership of the OTO. The thread that links all the disparate parts of the Sgt. Pepper phenomena together is Robert Fraser. As previously mentioned, Fraser was appointed as artistic director for the sleeve and his first move was to commission Peter Blake and his then wife Jann Haworth. Haworth would later work for Kenneth Anger designing costumes for his film ‘Lucifer Rising’.

Anger has said that he means his films “to cast a spell, to be a magical invocation of his fusion of dreams, desire, myth and vision.”

Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Anger are very closely linked. Anger has been inspired by, and a devotee of Thelema, Aleister Crowley’s religion since being introduced to his work as a teenager. Anger was introduced to Robert Fraser, presumably through actor Dennis Hopper, and by dint of this opportunity entered the orbit of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Indeed, Fraser would arrange screenings of Anger’s work at his flat in Mount Street, London; the same road that Anger would also set up home in, and thus from where Fraser would introduce both bands to the films of Anger.

Anger would cement his relationship with the occult in his film ‘Lucifer Rising’. Originally due to star Bobby Beausoleil as Lucifer, the film had to be abandoned when the footage mysteriously disappeared.

When Anger accused Beausoleil of stealing the film Beausoleil would flee only to re-emerge later in the bosom of Charles Manson and his family; an acquaintance that would lead to his lifetime incarceration for murder. What did remain of the film footage was assembled alongside concert footage of Jagger and the Stones and was released under the title of ‘Invocation of my Demon Brother’.

When Anger later decamped to London he would find a willing patron for his work in the form of John Paul Getty, another of Robert Fraser’s close circle of friends. With this funding ‘Lucifer Rising’ was resurrected, phoenix like from the ashes, and filming resumed with Mick Jagger’s then girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, cast as Lilith and Donald Cammell in Beausoleil’s old role as Lucifer.

As a further aside to this remarkable chain of connections, Cammell, whose father wrote a biography of Aleister Crowley, would go on to produce the film ‘Performance’ which starred Jagger as a faded pop star, as well as Keith Richards’ then girlfriend, and serial Stones groupie, Anita Pallenberg.

Previously, in 1954, Kenneth Anger released the film ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ which starred actress Marjorie Cameron as ‘The Scarlet Woman’. The Scarlet Woman is a major feature in Crowley’s Thelema mysticism and is a mother Goddess. Interestingly a Scarlet Woman image can be found on the Sgt. Pepper cover in the form of character No: 80: Four-Armed Indian Doll of the Indian Goddess Lakshmi. Lakshmi is a Hindu mother Goddess and she is also the personification of the spiritual energy, called Kundalini, within us and the universe.

Marjorie Cameron was married to Jack Parsons who was leader of the Agape Lodge of the OTO. A fellow member of this lodge was L. Ron Hubbard who would go on to form Scientology.

Marjorie Cameron was the subject of work by the artist Wallace Berman, who features on Sgt. Pepper (No: 23). In the piece, ‘Temple’, Berman incorporates an Aubrey Beardsley style drawing by Cameron whilst on peyote. Aubrey Beardsley is another Sgt. Pepper luminary (No: 16) and was an acquaintance of Crowley’s through the business of Crowley’s father. Cameron was introduced to peyote after attending a lecture by Aldous Huxley (yet another Sgt. Pepper luminary, No: 18). Berman also used her image on the cover of his piece entitled, ‘Semina’.

The link to Berman is provided, perhaps unsurprisingly, by Robert Fraser. Fraser exhibited Berman’s work and Berman’s son Tosh, on his blog, states “in the summer of love 1967, my family stayed at Robert Fraser’s flat in Mayfair London. It was the first time I have ever been outside of California and I was just overwhelmed to be in a city that in my heart I thought The Beatles owned. Now I know that is not true. Rolling Stones were co-owners as well as the art dealer Robert Fraser. Sadly Fraser was in prison for a drug offence (he got arrested in the famous Stones bust) but he arranged for us to stay in his flat.”

Wallace Berman is one of a number of people who had at the time of Pepper, or later, as in this incidence, died or were involved in car accidents. In Berman’s case he would be run down and killed by a drunk driver – just like John Lennon’s mother Julia – in 1976.

Marjorie Cameron, who preferred to be known as Cameron, was a visual artist, an actress and a certified practicing witch. Jack Parsons believed she was an “elemental”, having learned about such creatures from Aleister Crowley’s circle of warlocks, the Ordo Templi Orientis. Parsons was a rocket scientist and the founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He was a pioneering genius whose work with solid fuel and other aspects of rocketry made the US space missions possible.

Parsons became obsessed with trying to instil a divine being, a Goddess, into a human body, and, in so doing, change the course of

history. Parsons, through his immense knowledge of Crowley, knew of a technique for just such a mission via the magickal process known as a ‘Babalon Working’. It is an extremely difficult process to master – if you believe such things are possible – and so Parsons enlisted the help of another black magick aficionado, L. Ron Hubbard.

It is coincidental; I am sure, that at the exact same time as these rituals were being performed – Janaury 1946 – the US Army Signal Corps were bombarding the moon with radar signals under the auspices of Project Diana.

The Babalon Working rituals, according to Parsons, worked and Cameron duly appeared into his world. They would marry and immerse themselves fully in Thelema .The aim of their union and their endeavours were to create what was termed a moonchild, something very similar to the plot of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’.

As a short aside, the film version of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ was directed

by Roman Polanski whose heavily pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was viciously murdered by members of Charles Manson’s Family. Manson has been heavily linked with the OTO and, whilst others have written prolifically about links between Manson and The Beatles, one link that we can be certain of is the previously mentioned tie between Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil and Kenneth Anger with whom he lived and starred in his film ‘Lucifer Rising’. Whilst in prison, he also composed the musical score for the movie.

Kenneth Anger was also instrumental in the founding of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan and LaVey was, rumoured to have been, employed as a ‘technical advisor’ on ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, though these claims appear to have been no more than self-promotion on LaVey’s part .

In 1952, Jack Parsons was killed by an explosion at the home he shared with Cameron. Whilst officially an accident there has been widespread speculation that something more sinister and premeditated took place. After her husband’s death, Cameron went to the desert to grieve and to seek a vision.

She would return to live in Malibu, and in 1954, would star in Kenneth Anger’s film, ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’.

Dennis Hopper, another friend of Robert Fraser and strangely absent from the Sgt. Pepper cast, is said to have found Cameron frightening.

They co-starred in ‘Night Tide’, a black and white film made by Curtis Harrington (Harrington was a close friend of Kenneth Anger and who also appeared in ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’).

Whilst there is no actual appearance by Kenneth Anger on the cover of Sgt. Pepper there may be several subtle allusions to his influence on The Beatles and Robert Fraser provided in the cover. The inclusion of the child actor Bobby Breen (No: 66) is, on the face of it, a strange one.

Whilst he may have been a favourite of someone on the project, Peter Blake would be my candidate if this is the case, it seems unlikely. There is an obscure connection to him and Lenny Bruce (No: 4) in the sense that Bruce name checked him, and Hitler, in a sketch he once performed.

My belief is that his inclusion is a nod to Kenneth Anger. Anger claims to have been a child star having appeared in the 1935 movie version of William Shakespeare's ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’. He is quoted as having said: “I was a child prodigy who never got smarter.” He also claims to have danced with Shirley Temple, and this may, at least partially, explain why she merits inclusion on the cover no less than three times!

Clearly, none of this is conclusive, however, it is clear that Anger was a highly influential figure at this stage of The Beatles career and he leads us neatly to our next character for consideration, Shirley Temple.

Shirley Temple (No: 58, 72 and 73) appears three times according to the official booklet. I have speculated that this may have something to do with wishing to make a subtle allusion to the OTO – Order of the Temple of the East – as she appears twice on the eastern side of the sleeve. I also feel that this could be because they are alluding to a

Masonic Temple and the hidden knowledge due to the placement of the Legionnaire behind the Temple Dors.

The image of Shirley Temple above comes from the 1934 movie ‘Bright Eyes’ in which Temple’s character has a mother called Mary who is killed in an automobile accident.

One of these images, the one to the extreme east is seated upon what is listed as ‘cloth grandmother figure’ (No: 72). We are told that this figure is illustrative of Shirley Temple via the official booklet, because, in reality, all we see is an anonymous child’s doll.

It is interesting to note that by the time Pepper was re-visited for the twentieth anniversary the cloth grandmother figure has been replaced. In her place we find Albert Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer was an internationally renowned humanitarian and physician who had been influenced by Rudolf Steiner who was a Rosicrucian mason.

Schweitzer was not a freemason, but was greatly honoured by them; in 1960 he received the Matthias Claudius medal, the first non-mason

to receive it. He had devoted a large part of his life to the study of the historical Jesus.

However, returning to Shirley Temple. She is clearly highly significant, but what of the third, largely obscured image of her hidden by the waxwork Beatles. If I am correct about the positioning being important and about her being chosen more for the word play of her surname, then what of this westward placement?

We shall explore this theme further, but I believe it represents the spread of Freemasonry and it’s principles across the Atlantic to the United States of America.

Chapter 6: The Brotherhood _______________________________________________________

The appearance of Aleister Crowley on the album cover is immensely significant and his shadow will continue to loom large over proceedings.

As we have seen, the Sgt. Pepper album sleeve is full of Masonic symbolism. There are twelve freemasons and of these, three are 33° master Masons, Karl Marx (No: 31), H. G. Wells (No: 32) and Aleister Crowley (No: 2).

Of these three, Marx and Wells are placed next to each other and if you overlay a compass on top of the album sleeve then you will see that Marx and Wells are placed at exactly 33°.

Once again, this surely cannot be coincidental and implies that the number 33 may be significant.

Sir Francis Bacons’ cipher number is 33, that being the numerical value of his surname in a simple cipher.

33 is also an important number in Masonic symbolism. It is the number of the highest grade of the Scottish Rite and is the degree gained by our master masons. It is also the number of years Christ walked on the earth.

In 1988, some 21 years after the release of Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles released Past Masters, Volumes One and Two, on compact disc.

Past Master is a Masonic term used to describe the former Worshipful Master of a Masonic Lodge. If you should have any remaining doubt as to the Masonic implications of Beatles recordings, the album Past Masters contains exactly 33 recordings.

Another 33° mason was Walt Disney. Disney does not appear on the record cover; however, there are subtle references, primarily in the use of the Snow White statue (No: 85). I have read claims that the stone figure on the cover (No: 78) is Disney, though I personally doubt this. My personal belief is that this represents a headstone and is designed to amplify the funereal aspect of Pepper.

We should not forget though that in the Disney fairy-tale the Queen attempts to kill Snow White through the use of a poisoned apple. Or that The Beatles song, ‘Do you want to know a secret?’ was inspired by the song ‘I’m wishing’ from the Disney Snow White movie.

There are, as already stated, twelve (known) freemasons on the cover. Other than the aforementioned H.G. Wells, Karl Marx and Aleister Crowley we can add; W. C. Fields (No: 6), Sir Robert Peel (17), Stan Laurel (28), Oliver Hardy (30), Tom Mix (40), Oscar Wilde (41), T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)(53), Aldous Huxley (18) and Issy Bonn (47).

To that assemblage we can supply additional knowledge on Tyrone Power (42) whose father was a Mason, as was the father of English actress Diana Dors (70). This Masonic upbringing clearly rubbed off on her because on her death it was discovered that her final will and testament was full of Masonic symbolism and was written using a cipher code.

She is also somewhat of a curious choice for the cover. The blonde bombshell that always set Beatle hearts racing was Brigitte Bardot and yet on the finished article we have Marilyn Monroe and Diana Dors.

Dors was well known within showbiz circles for the extremely risqué sex parties she would host, with her husband, at her house. These soirees would attract the cream of the entertainment industry and would often lead to photographs being taken of stars in compromising situations through a two-way mirror.

Aside from the Masonic connotations already ascribed to her inclusion perhaps we should add the possibility that she also represents the Scarlet Woman. For the complete Pepper word-play concept to work, she, rather than Bardot, has to be included.

Lewis Carroll (52) was not, to the best of my knowledge a freemason, however, he was rumoured to have been a Rosicrucian – like Sir Francis Bacon – and, curiously, the son of a Mason is in England called a Lewis. Neither was Dr. David Livingstone (44) a Mason however; a Masonic lodge in Scotland is named after him.

Edgar Allan Poe (8) is also not a known Mason, but his works contain references to Freemasonry and he was clearly an interested observer. At least four of his books contain references and it is possible he was murdered because he was revealing details of Masonry or was deemed to be critical of the practice.

We shall explore in far greater detail the writers depicted on the album shortly however, we should consider first Carl Gustav Jung (7) and down another avenue that Sgt. Pepper takes us. Jung’s grandfather was a Mason and his ancestors may have been Rosicrucian founders. Jung did a lot of research in symbolism, including Masonic symbolism and was the first psychologist to study weird coincidences and to name them synchronicities. ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is full of synchronicities.

He is another with links to the OTO – like the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who some claim appears on the cover though this is actually James Joyce – and the Tavistock Institute, and this website states: -

After the 1917 Russian revolution, Soviet influence infiltrated into Theosophical and OrdoTempli Orientis lodges in Europe, including the Viennese Blue Lodge of Theosophy, with which both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were associated. The Carl Jung Foundation has allegedly been linked to mind-control cultic activities.

Carl Jung was a major figure in the on-going struggle by the Illuminati social engineers to control the minds of humankind.

He devoted much time to developing ways to change the belief structure of the masses “which gave us the Renaissance.” Jung lectured at the Children of the Sun centre, at Ascona, Italy, a learning centre for Illuminati offspring. He provided a safe house for Lenin and Trotsky there. Jung lectured to Mary Mellon, who later founded the Bollingen Centre in America; this centre spawned several cults.

Jung was not only an influential advisor to Nazi sympathizer and CIA director Allen Dulles, he also instructed Alice Bailey and her 33rd degree Masonic husband. She founded the Lucifer Publishing Company which later changed its name to the Lucis Trust. Her book Education in The New Age outlined a social engineering program which later was adopted by the Club of Rome. In it she wrote “...the science of eugenics will grow”.

The Lucis Trust is a major New Age command centre on behalf of the Illuminati, as evidenced by its sponsors, who have included John D. Rockefeller; former U.S. Defence Secretary Robert MacNamara; former World Bank President and Masonic Grand Commander Henry Clausen; Thomas Watson, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and IBM president; and the late Canon West, Dean of New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine and protocol officer to Queen Elizabeth II. There is a statue of Jung in Mathew Street in Liverpool, which is most famous for being the home of the Cavern Club where The Beatles so famously played.

The Rosicrucian links are extremely interesting as according to material available, the supreme council of the Fraternity of R.C. (Rosie Cross) was composed of a certain number of individuals who had died what is known as the “philosophic death.” When the time came for an initiate to enter upon his labours for the Order, he conveniently “died” under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

In reality the initiate changed his name and place of residence, and a box of rocks or a body secured for the purpose was buried in his stead. It is believed that this happened in the case of Sir Francis Bacon who, like all servants of the Mysteries, renounced all personal credit and permitted others to be considered as the authors of the documents which he wrote or inspired.

This also has very obvious parallels with the stories touched on in this book’s introduction about Jesus faking his death on the cross by use of a substitute.

Aleister Crowley has described human religious development as: “Within the memory of man we have had the Pagan period, the worship of Nature, of Isis, of the Mother, of the Past; the Christian period, the worship of Man, of Osiris, of the Present.

The first period is simple, quiet, easy, and pleasant; the material ignores the spiritual; the second is of suffering and death: the spiritual strives to ignore the material.... The new Aeon is the worship of the spiritual made one with the material, of Horus, of the Child, of the Future.”

Before we leave this thread I would like to make a brief connection with two of the original list of characters that did not ultimately make it onto the cover. Firstly, the Marquis de Sade, who along with many other things, was a Rosicrucian initiate within the very inner sanctum of the organisation and Friedrich Nietzsche, who was an influence on Crowley and who also advocated the theory that Francis Bacon was the author of the Shakespeare plays.

Chapter 7: The Writers _______________________________________________________

The inclusion of certain writers on the album sleeve, particularly Edgar Allan Poe, is relevant because they help to establish the premise that Sgt. Pepper is a code, or has a code buried within.

In the story ‘The Gold-Bug’, written by Edgar Allan Poe, the character William Legrand becomes obsessed with searching for treasure after being bitten by a beetle-like bug thought to be made of pure gold.

He notifies his closest friend, the stories narrator, and tells him to immediately come and visit him at his home on Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina. Upon the narrator’s arrival, Legrand informs him that they are embarking upon a search for lost treasure along with his African-American servant Jupiter. The narrator has intense doubt and questions if Legrand, who has recently lost his fortune, has gone insane.

Legrand captured the golden bug but had let someone else borrow it, so he draws a picture of the bug instead. The narrator says that the image looks like a skull. Legrand is insulted and inspects his own drawing before stuffing it into a drawer which he locks, to the narrator’s confusion. Uncomfortable, the narrator leaves Legrand and returns home to Charleston.

A month later, Jupiter visits the narrator and asks him to return to Sullivan’s Island on behalf of his master. Legrand, he says, has been acting strangely. When he arrives, Legrand tells the narrator they must go on an expedition along with the gold bug tied to a string.

Deep in the wilderness of the island, they find a tree, which Legrand orders Jupiter to climb with the gold bug in tow. There, he finds a skull and Legrand tells him to drop the bug through one of the skull’s eye sockets. Based on the point at which it lands Legrand determines the spot where they should dig. In so doing they find treasure buried by the infamous pirate “Captain Kidd”, estimated by the narrator to be worth $1.5 million. Once the treasure is safely secured, the man goes

into an elaborate explanation of how he knew about the treasure’s location, based on a set of occurrences that happened after the discovery of the gold bug.

The story involves cryptography and provides a detailed description of a method for solving a simple substitution cipher using letter frequencies. This idea of hidden messages and codes to be cracked is intriguing because many proponents of the Francis Bacon as Shakespeare conspiracy contend that Bacon hid codes and ciphers in the works of Shakespeare.

These substitution ciphers are often referred to as Caesar ciphers. As mentioned earlier, in the Pepper song ‘With a Little Help from my Friends’ we get the line “Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song and I’ll try not to sing out of key.” This line comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; could this be a reference to a Caesar cipher in Pepper? If so, I have yet to find it.

Could it explain why on the Pepper cover Marlene Dietrich has her hand at the ear of the Legionnaire of the Order of the Buffaloes (RAOB) character?

RAOB is boar reversed and boar could be an allusion to Bacon (he used a boar as one of his logos), so, if Bacon wrote Shakespeare could that be why the RAOB is lending Dietrich her ear?

Captain Kidd’s treasure is often claimed to be buried on Oak Island in Canada which is also rumoured to the resting place for a treasure trove of Bacon’s original manuscripts.

An old, but not seemingly true, theory ran that John Jacob Astor (of the extremely wealthy, and connected, Astor family) reportedly

‘discovered’ the treasure of Captain Kidd, thus founding the family’s great fortune. Astor’s mother was named Mary Magdalena Vorster (Worster) whilst Marlene Dietrich’s real name was Marie Magdalene “Marlene” Dietrich. Could there be a connection?

It would be a stretch, I admit, but we should consider firstly that Bacon’s work ‘New Atlantis’ was essentially a blueprint for the creation of a Masonic utopia in North America. Secondly, obscured behind the waxwork Beatles on the western side of the Pepper cover is a ‘hidden’ Shirley TEMPLE. Could this be a reference to a hidden temple of knowledge in the western hemisphere?

Poe is also one of a number of the people featured on the cover that died under mysterious circumstances. On October 3, 1849, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, “in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance”, according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning. Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in this dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name “Reynolds” on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Some sources say Poe’s final words were “Lord, help my poor soul.” All medical records, including his death certificate, have been lost.

Newspapers at the time reported Poe’s death as “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation”, common euphemisms for deaths from disreputable causes such as alcoholism. The actual cause of death remains a mystery; from as early as 1872, cooping was commonly believed to have been the cause.

Cooping was a practice by which unwilling participants were forced to vote, often several times over, for a particular candidate in an election. Generally these innocent bystanders would be grabbed off the street by so-called ‘cooping gangs’ or ‘election gangs’ working on the payroll of a political candidate, and they would be kept in a room, called the “coop”, and given alcohol or drugs in order for them to comply. If they refused to cooperate, they might be beaten or even killed. Often their clothing would be changed to allow them to vote

multiple times. Sometimes the victims would be forced to wear disguises such as wigs, fake beards or moustaches to prevent them from being recognised by voting officials at polling stations.

Edgar Allan Poe appears on the cover of Sgt. Pepper as well as featuring in the lyrics to ‘I am the Walrus’, John Lennon’s famous nonsense song. This does provide a link with another writer featured on the Pepper cover, Lewis Carroll (No: 52). Carroll’s books ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there’ were massive influences on John Lennon and his writing.

The idea for the walrus came from the poem ‘The Walrus and The Carpenter’, which is from the sequel to ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Through the Looking-Glass’. In his 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon said: “It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with The Beatles’ work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, ‘I am the carpenter.’

But that wouldn’t have been the same, would it?”

The song’s opening line, “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” is yet another tantalising link to Aleister Crowley.

Crowley in his book ‘Magick in theory and practise’ talks about the art of speaking backwards and uses the illustration, “Let him practise speaking backwards; thus for “I am He” let him say, “Eh ma I.” Given The Beatles penchant for using backwards masking and subliminal messages in their songs, I think this is highly significant.

Also, from the end of ‘I am the Walrus’, we find a mysterious piece of dialogue, recorded from a BBC radio broadcast of the Shakespeare play King Lear. The section of King Lear used came from Act Four, Scene 6, with Oswald saying: “Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse.” After Oswald dies, we hear this dialogue: Edgar: “I know thee well: a serviceable villain, as duteous to the vices of thy mistress as badness would desire.”

Gloucester: “What, is he dead?”

Edgar: “Sit you down, father. Rest you.”

Finally on the walrus trail, it has often been quoted that Lennon got the line “Goo Goo Ga Joob” from the book Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce. No such line appears, however, James Joyce does appear on the cover. Interestingly, he is not listed amongst the cast list of luminaries. Is this an oversight or an intentional omission?

James Joyce

Joyce is one of three Irish writers that appear on the cover, the other two are George Bernard Shaw (No: 48) and Oscar Wilde (No: 41).

Wilde was famously jailed for his homosexuality although, presumably in an attempt to conform to Victorian standards, he was married with children. His wife, Constance, along with another Pepper grandee, the artist Aubrey Beardsley, and the ubiquitous Aleister Crowley were members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was an magical society formed in 1888. George Bernard Shaw’s one time mistress, Florence Farr, was also a member of the order. Another interesting connection with ‘Alice in Wonderland’ stems from the fact that Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (who cofounded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and who was a long-time associate of Aleister Crowley) was related to Alice Liddell, the girl upon whom the Alice adventures were based.

The links to Crowley, secret societies and occult organisations just keep on coming.

Another interesting author featured on the cover is Stephen Crane (No: 46). Crane is another who died young when he was just 28 years old, and is perhaps most famous for his short story called ‘The Open Boat’. It concerns four men who struggle to survive in a lifeboat.

The one most determined to keep the group together dies in the ordeal; the other three then act as interpreters of the event.

This has been proposed as being a metaphor for Paul McCartney and the Paul is Dead theories.

Continuing the theme of those who appear on the cover and who died young is the poet Dylan Thomas (No: 19). Thomas died not long after his 39th birthday in New York, his death exacerbated by his chronic alcoholism.

It is worth noting the work of another writer, one who does not actually appear on the cover, but who is featured if you apply The Beatles word play clues. On the Sgt. Pepper cover we have Johnny Weismuller as Tarzan. The Tarzan series was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs who, as I say, does not appear, but Edgar Allan Poe and William Burroughs do. Edgar Rice Burroughs is another whose father was a mason.

In the Tarzan series, Tarzan goes looking for a lost American, John Blake, who is quoted as saying “my father is a thirty second degree Mason and a Knight Templar.”

In the stories Tarzan also encounters a high priestess who worships the ‘flaming God’. This appears to be clearly designed to represent the mother Goddess and sun worship. In a set of Tarot cards it is the High Priestess card that bears an image of the twin Masonic pillars of Boaz and Jachin. Sgt. Pepper represents these with the use of the Sonny Liston and Diana Dors mannequins.

Tarzan, far from being the feral ape-man that he is depicted as, is actually John Clayton, Earl Greystoke, and is the son of a British Lord and Lady who were marooned on the Atlantic coast of Africa by mutineers. Burroughs’s other famous character is John Carter, a supposedly immortal human from Earth who is marooned on Mars.

That both lead characters have the initials JC and share almost supernatural abilities allows us to detect a clear Jesus Christ analogy? In fact according to Wikipedia, Burroughs’s narrator in Tarzan of the Apes describes both Clayton and Greystoke as

fictitious names – implying that, within the fictional world that Tarzan inhabits, he may have a different real name. Here we have another nod to hidden identities and secret authorships, and Burroughs often wrote about characters with split or double personalities. This is yet another clue that leads back to Sir Francis Bacon.

Burroughs’s tales about the adventures of John Carter, a confederate soldier, who is transported to Mars, was turned into a film by Disney in 2012.

Incidentally, Johnny Weismuller (No: 45) is believed to have assumed the identity of his brother in order that he could qualify to compete for America as a swimmer.

The final writers that appear on the cover reveal yet more links with Crowley and the intertwining nature of some of the relationships of the characters involved. Take for example Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells and our friend Aleister Crowley.

I will use a quote from Huxley that may get to the very heart of what Sgt. Pepper pertains too: “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961.

Huxley was an initiate of a group called ‘the children of the sun’ which incorporated the offspring of Britain’s greatest minds, and would go on to run the CIA MK-ULTRA drug programme, possibly in collaboration with the Tavistock Institute. Huxley would meet Crowley through H. G. Wells and be initiated into the OTO.

Could it be that through another Crowley devotee, Kenneth Anger, The Beatles were being used as tools, either willingly or not, for the MK-ULTRA plot? Dr. R. D. Laing was the Tavistock resident psychoanalyst and by 1967 - the year of Sgt. Pepper and McCartney’s LSD confessions - was hosting a conference at the Roundhouse in London called the ‘dialectics of liberation’ promoting the use of drugs. The Roundhouse, at this time, was being run by Barry Miles and the ‘International Times’ crowd.

Indeed, in his Barry Miles penned biography, Paul McCartney, when talking about his house in Cavendish Avenue says “I used to get a lot of R. D. Laing’s people; he must have sent ‘em round. I used to talk to ‘em, you know”.

The Beatles at this time were in the full midst of their psychedelic, LSD period and Paul McCartney, who conversely had consumed the least amount of the drug, had appeared in a televised interview in which he espoused the virtues of LSD. The OTO, references to whom seem to crop up throughout the Pepper sleeve, are a sex magick cult and it may be that The Beatles are espousing the benefits of these forms of religious beliefs over the more conventional Christian virtues.

Aldous Huxley’s grandfather, Thomas, was an anatomist who coined the term agnostic and taught H. G. Wells. Thomas Huxley was a member of the Royal Society of London which was founded in 1660

by Freemasons and was hugely influenced by Sir Francis Bacon and his book ‘New Atlantis’. H. G. Wells would later tutor Aldous Huxley at Oxford. Wells would introduce Aldous Huxley to Aleister Crowley in Berlin in 1930 where Crowley may have introduced him to peyote.

Huxley wrote ‘Brave New World’ as a parody to H.G. Wells ‘Men Like Gods’, and both have parallels with Bacon’s ‘New Atlantis’ and its vision of a Rosicrucian paradise. Add to this Wells’s ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ that I spoke about in the introduction and we can see the promotion of this Masonic utopian one-world-government agenda being conveyed via Pepper.

Could it be that The Beatles were being manipulated by the powers that be, MI5/CIA etc., into propelling a myth about the benefits of drug

use as some sort of generational mind control? Or could it be that The Beatles were aware that they were the victims of this clumsy attempt, and so started to reveal it to the world.

Lennon was clearly aware of the CIA LSD links, as he specifically mentions them in his 1980, final ever, interview for Playboy magazine.

Dr. Richard Asher was regarded as “one of the foremost medical thinkers of our times” and was the senior physician responsible for the mental observation ward at the Central Middlesex Hospital before opening private consulting rooms at the Asher family home of 57 Wimpole Street, London. This is, famously, where Paul McCartney lived from 1964-1966 during his relationship with Dr. Asher’s daughter, Jane.

Curiously, in 1964, Dr. Asher suddenly gave up his hospital post and, possibly, all medical activities, just as the famous Beatle moved in.

Could it be that he had a full-time patient to tend too?

One story of the time, according to The Beatles bible website, relates that: “Dr. Asher loved to shock his family. Once, when Paul had a bad cold, Dr. Asher wrote him a prescription for a nasal inhaler and showed him how to use it. “You take off the top and place it on your little finger, like so.” He demonstrated. “Then you take a sniff with each nostril as per normal; then, after you've finished with it, you can unscrew the bottom and eat the Benzedrine.”

Peter shuffled his feet nervously and Paul grinned, not knowing how much he could confide in the good doctor”.

When we consider this and the fact that Dr. Asher was a member of the Dunlop committee on the safety of drugs the possibility arises that he may have been involved in some sort of ‘Establishment’ drug experiments.

I have received testimony, via my blog, that Dr. Asher was involved in experiments, utilising LSD, on injured and stricken soldiers who, due to wartime injuries, were no longer capable of having sexual

intercourse. The purpose of this experimentation appears to have been to induce the mental aspects of an orgasm in patients who are no longer physically equipped to produce one.

I am not in any way suggesting McCartney was involved with these experiments but, when you consider that Margaret Asher (Dr. Asher’s wife and Jane’s mother) was a music teacher and musician who was a professor of oboe at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where her best known student was Beatle producer, George Martin and that McCartney famously claims that the tune to ‘Yesterday’ came to him in a dream, fully formed and that he just wrote it down when he awoke. Is it then possible that the tune was somehow placed in his mind as an experiment?

It is perhaps too easy to suggest that The Beatles were part of a Tavistock / MK-ULTRA style plot to corrupt the world and supress the masses. However, on Pepper, they are certainly paying homage to, or at least, are aware of the work and philosophies of a lot of people who are connected with these New World Order theories.

Huxley is a key link in establishing this theory and in providing a link between the Masonic New World Order characters and the number of writers who appear on the record cover.

I shall include one final tale to this collection. This one concerns, Isaac Asimov, a writer who did not make it on to Pepper. According to Wikipedia: “In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney’s group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a “treatment” or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of

McCartney’s brief scrap of dialogue, and probably as a consequence, McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.”

Which is curious, why would Paul McCartney wish to commission a movie about a rock band being replaced?

The plot to the un-commissioned work “Five and Five and One” is the story of six extra-terrestrial, parasitic, energy beings that crash land their space ship on Earth and are forced to take drastic measures to survive: copying the identity of a rock band, with the goal of brainwashing the entire world.

Where might he have got the idea?

One of the recurring themes on the Pepper cover are the many literary references. Whilst conventional Beatle lore likes to depict McCartney’s influence as being the primary driver behind the Sgt. Pepper concept – that of the band replacing themselves with anonymous personas, it is via Lennon’s suggestions that the Pepper cover back-story comes to light.

When presenting the Beatle-approved version of the Pepper history, the media like to focus on Lennon’s contributions as being highly controversial; Hitler, Jesus and Gandhi etc. However, it is through his inclusion of many of the authors that inspired him as a child that we can gain a real insight as to the purpose of the Sgt. Pepper code.

Richmal Crompton, dropped from the original list, makes a ‘ghost’ appearance via the, ultimately discarded, ‘Just William’ homage.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, likewise, makes a ghost appearance via the inclusion of the Johnny Weismuller / Tarzan character and via the portmanteau names Edgar Allan Poe and William Burroughs. The hidden Elizabeth I / Bette Davis character is an allusion to Sir Francis Bacon; the proposed author of the works of Shakespeare.

Ultimately, it is in understanding that Pepper contains allusions to unseen and un-credited writers that will allow us to solve the Sgt. Pepper code.

Maybe Lennon is tipping a hat to these fondly remembered childhood authors and is saying that without them there would be no Sgt. Pepper?

Chapter 8: The Y code _______________________________________________________

I spoke in the very first paragraph of chapter 1, of how The Beatles were using their groundbreaking optimization of the printed lyrics on the album cover to conceal clues and codes.

The host of questions without question marks serve firstly to tell us that there is some form of word play in use within the lyrics. An epic game of twenty questions, perhaps, that beg of the listener to explore, and question, what is right in front of them.

The Beatles, all dressed up in their faux military gear, are expounding the virtues of the Knights Templar - master exploiters of the use of codes and ciphers – to hide clues in plain sight.

Hence the significance of the positioning of the one question in the lyrics that does use a question mark. Take a copy of the original vinyl version of Sgt. Pepper and you will see that the question appears within the lyrics of ‘Within You, Without You’. The very first line of the song says: “We were talking - about the space between us all”.

Now notice how, looking at The Beatles, there is no space between them, they are all bunched together. To further reinforce this clue look at the song ‘Lovely Rita Meter Maid’ and we will find the line “nothing can come between us.”

There is, on closer inspection however, a tiny gap in between Paul and John. Within this small space we can find a word. This one word is ‘they’.

Continuing this line of thought, let us add a space within the word ‘they’ so that it then becomes ‘the-y’. Here things become more than a little bit spooky.

To reveal the code we must examine the lyrics to the song ‘She’s Leaving Home’.

Firstly, take a pencil and paper and, starting at the beginning of the song lyrics, search for the letter Y. If you then go back three letters from each Y, and jot down the letter, you will reveal a hidden code.

Example: Wedne[s]daY morning at five o’clock as th[e] daY begins Sile[n]tlY closing her bedroom door Leaving the note that she hoped woul[d] saY more She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief Qui[e]tlY turning the backdoor[r] keY

SENDER. Ok, that doesn’t mean too much, so let us carry on with this experiment, ignoring any lyrics in brackets.

She (We gave her most of our lives) Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives) Home (We gave her everything money could buy) She’s leaving home after living alone For so [m][a]nY Yea[r]s, b[Y]e bYe

MARY. SENDER MARY. The code seems to end at this point, but not before having spat out the cryptic message above. Now, I am not a statistician, however, I would imagine the odds on that message appearing randomly would be pretty large?

With codes, you must have a ‘sender’ and a ‘receiver’. If Mary, via The Beatles, is the sender, then are we, the listening public, the receiver?

So, who is Mary? Could it be Mary Magdalene? We have already discovered that Marlene Dietrich’s (key in German) real name was Marie Magdalene Dietrich, so we have a Mary Magdalene on the cover.

The Templars origins are long believed to have contained a bloodline that can be traced back, via Jesus, to King David. This same bloodline would then have continued into the future if Mary Magdalene had conceived Jesus’s child. A bloodline that, it is said, may have ascended to the throne of Britain through King James I. King James VI of Scotland became King James I of Britain after his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth I died without issue.

As previously discussed Sir Francis Bacon is believed to be the illegitimate offspring of Elizabeth. When King James ascended to the English crown he ordered that an English language version of the Bible be produced, what we know now as the King James Version.

Bacon was heavily involved in this task including having possession of the original manuscript for over a year for editing purposes. It is widely rumoured that this expert in inserting codes into scripts did precisely that with the King James Bible.

Could The Beatles be alluding to this secret royal bloodline?

Paul McCartney’s ex-fiancée Jane Asher, like the Duchess of York and Camilla Parker-Bowles, is of the same lineage as England’s King Richard III. This lineage she inherits from her mother Margaret and it instils in her a Plantagenet bloodline. This is significant because the Plantagenet’s claim ancestry, via Eleanor of Aquitaine, from the Merovingian dynasty; the once and future kings, who, legend has it are the descendants of Jesus and who continue his bloodline.

Indeed, the Plantagenet dynasty sprang from a union between the aforementioned Eleanor and Henry (later King Henry I of England) from the House of Anjou.

Legend clung to the House of Anjou; one such ran that they were descended from no less a person than Satan himself. It was told that Melusine, the daughter of Satan, was the demon ancestress of the Angevins. Her husband, the Count of Anjou, was perplexed when

Melusine always left church prior to the hearing of the mass. After pondering the matter he decided to have her forcibly restrained by his knights while the service took place. Thus restrained, Melusine reportedly tore herself from their grasp and flew, birdlike, through the roof, taking two of the couple’s children with her and was never seen again.

So, it would appear that, the Asher’s are descendants of a metaphorical union between the son of God and the daughter of Satan!

Alternatively, could Mary be Mother Mary? The virgin Mother of Christ and, incidentally, also the name of the mother of Paul McCartney.

It has been held by many that the Templars were followers of the female Goddess figure, or, at very least in re-establishing the feminine aspect of divinity that had been excised by the church. It should be noted that their patron, St. Bernard of Clairvaux had an absolute obsession with Mary and was responsible for her being named the queen of Heaven and the Mother of God. It is interesting to note that Mrs. McCartney had some intriguing relatives; one of whom, her uncle, invented the gas meter – the original meter maid? – whilst another, Paul’s cousin, Bert Danher was a famous creator of crosswords.

It appears that a Beatle had a code maker in the family. According to Danher’s obituary in the Daily Telegraph he was the “greatest inventor of anagrams” and “he particularly enjoyed linking two clues together so that the solutions created a homophone; thus the clues “fairy-like” and “ghost” made “elfin” and “spectre”, or “botanical gardens” and “beast” made “Kew” and “brute”.

Perhaps the most telling tribute is “Danher also liked to signal his authorship in cryptic puzzles by beginning 1 Across with a musical clue”.

Ultimately, I guess we will never know to which Mary the code refers?

Maybe it is a reference to both, but that the code exists within the lyrics surely cannot be an accident.

To further establish the Marian clues we should take a brief sojourn to the area of London that has spawned The Beatles recordings including, of course, Sgt. Pepper and consider what’s in a name?

Everyone knows of the world famous Abbey Road studios in St. Johns Wood in London, the recording and spiritual home of The Beatles and numerous other bands from the sixties and beyond.

The focus here though is on the history of the area and how this may have influenced, subliminally or not, The Beatles and their work. The area of St. Johns Wood is known to have once belonged to the Knights Templar, until 1323, when it was handed over to the Augustinian order known as the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, from whence the area gets its name.

The studios at No: 3 Abbey Road were built in 1830 as a lavish private residence, with nine bedrooms, servants’ quarters and a wine cellar within a Georgian townhouse on what was once a track-way leading to Kilburn Abbey, from whence the road acquired its name.

The history of the Abbey is sketchy to say the least. It was owned by a hermit named Godwyn who allowed it to be used by a small band of Augustinian nuns who founded the Abbey circa 1134. These nuns would later acquire lands in London in Bishopsgate, in Middlesex in Wembley and Harrow, as well as in Buckinghamshire, Kent, Surrey and Essex – quite some portfolio given that they were only meant to number but a handful of nuns?

Though no trace of the old Abbey still exists, its influence, particularly in the local street names lives on; Abbey Road, Priory Road, Kilburn Priory, Priory Park Road and Hermit Place pay homage to this former institution. Interestingly, the exact location of the old building itself is something of a mystery, though one blog I have read claims that some remains from the building can be found in Coventry Close.

Interestingly, Coventry Close leads into Cathedral Walk and onwards to Canterbury Road and Chichester Road.

This may be pure coincidence but Canterbury, Coventry and Chichester are well known cathedral cities and this, and the number of references to the Abbey in the locale, leads me to speculate as to the possibility that this was once in fact a much larger religious site.

As an aside, it is curious that the Paul McCartney pseudonym, Percy Thrillington, was supposedly born in Coventry Cathedral and, should you travel down these far from salubrious, north-west London roads, you will come to a pub called the Sir Robert Peel. Peel (No: 17), of course, was one of those who appeared on the cover of Sgt. Pepper.

Just coincidences, though, I am sure.

There is an ancient well near the site and this is believed to form part of ancient pagan pilgrim’s procession route towards St. Albans and it is believed that there was a Roman fort here at one time. The most likely explanation for the lack of the Abbey remains is the fact that the site is now pierced by the Bakerloo and Overground railways and sidings and these would have destroyed any archaeology.

Another local sacred site is that of the church of St. Mary’s that sits on the crossing between Abbey Road and Priory Road. Some of the relics from the old Abbey are now in residence in this church.

I have often wondered if there is not some ancient pagan significance to the Kilburn Abbey site. It lies on the old Watling Street, the ancient Roman road to the north along which travelled Boudicca when she journeyed down to sack London and battle the Romans. It may have begun life as an ancient track but it had a pivotal role as a route linking the important centres of Canterbury and St Albans.

In Anglo-Saxon times it became known as Watling Street and it became an important resting place on the pilgrimage route from London to St Albans, where Lord Verulam, Sir Francis Bacon became 1st Viscount St. Alban(s).

I wonder if the old Abbey does not hold ancient significance, or possibly was once the home of some ancient relic of the Knights Templar. The old nuns of Kilburn did, it once seems, have a seal inscribed as the secret seal of Kilburn and worked to the legend Ecce Agnus Dei – loosely translated as, I believe, Behold the Lamb of God. I am extremely grateful to the author of the book ‘London’s Ley Lines’, Chris Street, for the following information. The site of Abbey Road, the church of St. Marys and the old priory all lie along an

ancient ley line, known as the Mary line, that connects a series of churches – all with the name St. Mary's – and that ends at an ancient site of Dianic worship.

The starting point for this startling alignment is St. Mary-le-Strand, an ancient church that also has a holy well nearby. The next St. Mary’s is St. Mary-le-Bone where a church is known to have stood since at least 1200 and is where Sir Francis Bacon, yes him, again, was married in 1606.

We then pass through the site of Kilburn Priory and its holy well and on to St. Mary’s in Willesden Green, where again we find an ancient well – indeed the name Willesden is believed to be a corruption of Welles Dun, the hill of wells, and where there is a statue of a Black Madonna.

Unusually, St Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, came to St. Mary’s Willesden every time he was in London to pray at the site of the shrine. On the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1958, Escrivá held his annual rededication Mass for Opus Dei in this Anglican parish church of Willesden. Because of this, Opus Dei members and many other Catholics make the pilgrimage to Willesden.

Finally, after travelling through Wembley, we arrive at Harrow-on-theHill and the church of St. Mary the Virgin. The first recorded church at this site dates back to 1094, however, the church sits next to a wooded area known as the grove and it is long held that this marks the spot of an extremely ancient pagan ceremonial site where Dianic worship took place.

Yet again, there is an ancient well and, even more remarkably, the hilltop marks the centre point of an enormous pentagram that is marked out by the surrounding five hills, all at the pentagonal angle of 72°.

According to the Zohar, the degrees of Jacob’s ladder were to the number of 72.

The name of God, lost with the death of Hiram Abif, is composed of 72 letters according to the cabalistic tradition.

This sacred geometry gives the area a remarkable symmetry with Rennes-le-Chateau in France with its five hills and amazing tales of buried Templar treasure. Not to mention the painting of ‘The Shepherds of Arcadia’ by Poussin with its encoded clues and symbolism that is believed to depict the Rennes-le-Chateau area.

For an alignment to pass through the point of so many St. Mary’s seems remarkable and when you add to that the fact that so many of the sites are of great antiquity it points to something else.

The fact that the churches share the same name, and a female one at that, would point to the sites being chosen for their antiquity. It is well known that Christian churches are placed on the sites of old pagan places of worship, and it would appear that these may share an historic allegiance to the mother Goddess.

To strengthen this, Paul McCartney built a hexagonal meditation chamber in his garden in Cavendish Avenue, St. Johns Wood, back in the sixties. Could it be that he was aware of this alignment and tried to tap into its power?

As another short aside, the author A.A. Milne, he of Winnie the Pooh fame was born very near to the site of Kilburn Priory. Rolling Stone Brian Jones would live and die in Milne’s old house in Surrey, Cotchford Farm, where the author created his famous Winnie the Pooh works which featured the Christopher Robin character with whom Jones so clearly related.

That we can decode and claim so many clues that can be traced back to the Templars and Sir Francis Bacon is nothing short of extraordinary.

Further clues can be extrapolated too, the Templars are again long associated with the quest for the Holy Grail, and if we look at a line from the ‘dream’ sequence in ‘A Day in the Life’ we find ‘Found my way downstairs and drank a cup’. Found a Cup. Found a Grail.

Pushing it a bit? Well, possibly, but consider the Baconian clues contained in ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’.

Bishopsgate is mentioned as the location in the lyrics though this was not part of the original poster feature that Lennon used for inspiration.

That particular show was to be held in Rochdale in Lancashire; so why mention Bishopsgate?

True, it probably scans a lot better than Rochdale, and it clearly rhymes with late, but could there be another reason? I believe so, possibly two. Firstly, Bishopgate was home to both Anthony Bacon brother of the aforementioned Sir Francis, and possible co-author of some of the works of Shakespeare – as well as Shakespeare himself.

Could it be that the two lived together? If so, what was the nature of their relationship? Was Anthony one of Bacon’s good pens, one of his team of secret writers?

As we have already seen the Pepper cover is loaded with Baconian references; could this be another?

This assertion can be strengthened by the line in the lyrics that talks about a ‘Hogshead of real fire’. This comes from a line in the original poster but does serve as yet another Baconian clue as Bacon would often use references to hogs, sows, pigs, boars or swine as a clue to the true authorship of a work he published under a pseudonym.

Secondly, the area of Bishopsgate in London, now home to numerous banking organisations, has traditionally been split into two areas known as ‘within’ and ‘without’; references to their location as either being part of the City of London or falling just outside the city boundaries.

Well, what song should appear on the album immediately after ‘Being for the benefit of Mr Kite’? Answer: ‘Within You, Without You’ – coincidence? Happenstance? Or something else?

In 1984 Paul McCartney would make further reference to the area in his film, ‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’, Broad Street station, now demolished, being in the Bishopsgate area. The film, whilst not a critical success, is interesting in that McCartney makes reference to the Paul is Dead phenomena.

At one point, Paul enters the BBC building and is introduced by an old man to another with the question, “Do you know William?” which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the myth that Paul McCartney actually died in 1966 and was replaced in The Beatles by a look-alike named William Campbell.

Just to add further meat to the bone, one of the families referred to in the lyrics of ‘Being for the benefit of Mr Kite’ are the Hendersons. An anagram of Hendersons is Her Sons End. A reference, possibly, to the illegitimate sons of Queen Elizabeth - Bacon and Essex - being the end of the Tudor line of royal descent?

Let us next consider the very end of the album and a phenomenon for which The Beatles have become synonymous; backwards messages: The Beatles have long been fascinated by including backwards recordings into their work. This began in 1965 with the inclusion of some backwards guitar in their track ‘Rain’. By the time of Sgt. Pepper the band had experimented considerably with these procedures and a backwards message was included at the very end of the LP. Immediately after the song ‘A Day in the Life’ comes a curious little repeated vocal segment which says “It really can’t be any other way”.

When played backwards, this message becomes “I’ll fuck you like Superman.”

Paul McCartney told his biographer Barry Miles that in the summer of 1967 a group of kids came up to him complaining about the lewd message hidden in it when played backwards. He told them:

“You’re wrong, it’s actually just ‘It really couldn't be any other’.”

He took them to his house to play the record backwards to them, and it turned out that the passage sounded to him very much like “We'll fuck you like Superman.” McCartney recounted to Miles that “we had certainly not intended to do that but probably when you turn anything backwards it sounds like something ... if you look hard enough you can make something out of anything.”

An alternative suggestion for the wording of this cryptic backward phrase is ‘We’ll all be Magick Supermen’.

Whatever the circumstances concerning the origins, or intentions, of the message a little research into Superman makes for very interesting reading given the Sgt. Pepper code.

Superman originates from a planet called Krypton where his Kryptonite name was Kal-El. It has been suggested that the Superman character has certain parallels with Jesus and Kal-El in Hebrew means the ‘voice of God’.

Furthermore, there has also been speculation linking Superman with Friedrich Nietzsche and his concept of the Ubermensch. As you read earlier, the writings of Nietzsche highly influenced John Lennon and he was originally considered to be included amongst the cast for the Sgt. Pepper sleeve.

The backwards element is also highly relevant in the comic adventures of Superman, particularly the goings-on on the Bizarro world of htrae – earth backwards – and Superman’s foe Mister Mxyzptlk who can be defeated if he can be tricked into saying his name backwards.

Maybe this is why McCartney stands on the back cover with his back facing us. Paul standing backwards in the photo could simply mean ‘One Part Backwards’.

In the printed lyrics to ‘She’s Leaving Home’ on both the original vinyl and in the CD booklet we will find the use of brackets to denote the

parts that are being sung by the parents of the missing girl. For example: She (We gave her most of our lives) is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives) home (We gave her everything money could buy)

Curiously, by the third refrain the brackets have mysteriously disappeared and we are left with: She - What did we do that was wrong - is having We didn’t know it was wrong - fun.

Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy.

As stated before this occurs on both the vinyl and the CD version which was released some twenty years later. Plenty of time to spot and correct the error, if, of course, it is an error? Let’s look at it again; The Beatles twice tell us something is wrong, but what?

“Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy”, well according to The Beatles, the one thing money can’t buy you is love. It has been claimed that in the picture of The Beatles on the Pepper back cover George Harrison positioned his hand in a certain way, not to point to the printed lyrics, but to make the letter “L”, the first letter in the word “LOVE”, as The Beatles appear to be spelling out the word “LOVE” with their hands. In addition to George pointing his fingers in the shape of an “L”, John’s hands are arranged in a “V” shape, and Ringo’s clasped hands form an “E”.

The reality is that this picture has been reversed, as can be seen by the position of George’s medal on his tunic. So, if this claim were true then The Beatles would actually be spelling the word “EVIL” with McCartney’s back making the letter I. However in the year 2006 The Beatles, through George Martin and his son Giles, released a remix album called ‘Love’ in which George Martin also promised a prize to those who could crack a “code” found in the album. Maybe love is the code? After all Iamaphoney discovered that when you put a mirror to the word LOVE on the LP cover it became CODE.

Chapter 9: A little help from my friends _______________________________________________________

In this chapter we shall explore the links between, and the connections to, the various ‘people we like’ on the Sgt. Pepper cover.

There seems to be a lot of pairings; we have two child actors, Bobby Breen (No: 66) and Shirley Temple (No: 58, 71 and 73), two sportsmen, Sonny Liston (No: 54) and Albert Stubbins (No: 50), two Dead End Kids, Leo Gorcey (No: 12) and Huntz Hall (No: 13) – ultimately Gorcey got greedy and demanded a fee and so was airbrushed out – and two members of the Socialist organisation the Fabian Society, H. G. Wells (No: 32) and George Bernard Shaw (No: 48).

There remains the possibility that Aleister Crowley appears twice, once as himself and also, possibly, as the Legionnaire of the Order of the Buffaloes. If this is not Crowley then it is a very good replica!

Oliver Hardy (No: 30) and Stan Laurel (No: 28) were partners in comedy but early in his career Stan Laurel would double for Charlie Chaplin in Fred Karno’s troupe.

Tony Curtis (No: 22) and Marilyn Monroe (No: 25) both starred in the film ‘Some like it Hot’. In 1967 Curtis appeared in the movie ‘Don’t make Waves’ which also starred Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s illfated wife. Curtis also provided the voice of Donald Baumgart in Polanski’s tale of a Satanic Babalon Working, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’.

Whilst on the subject of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’; its author, Ira Levin, was once a student at Drake University in Iowa which is where the initial ‘Paul is Dead’ rumour first surfaced.

Incidentally the art director on the film ‘Some like it Hot’ was Sgt. Pepper artist Jann Haworth’s father Ted. Ted Haworth also worked with Marlon Brando on the film ‘Sayonara’ and Brando starred with a hidden Pepper luminary, Sophia Loren on the 1967 film ‘A Countess from Hong Kong’. Brando famously appeared in the movie ‘The Wild

One’ in which there is a gang called ‘The Beetles’. Timothy Carey who appears on the Sgt. Pepper cover although he is obscured by George Harrison - also stars as a member of ‘The Beetles’ as does Jann Haworth’s uncle Joe, brother of Ted. Marlon Brando starred in ‘Candy’ based on a Terry Southern novel and which also featured both Ringo Starr and Anita Pallenberg.

Terry Southern (No: 20) was a friend of Sgt. Pepper photographer Michael Cooper and was a Robert Fraser selection for the cover.

Southern produced the film ‘The Magic Christian’ which starred Ringo Starr (again) and featured Roman Polanski, Southern also worked on ‘tightening and brightening’ the film ‘Eye of the Devil’ which starred Polanski’s wife and future Manson family victim Sharon Tate.

Southern also worked with Stanley Kubrick on the screenplay of the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’. Kubrick, although not on the cover, gets a partial reference via the use of the Timothy Carey character from the Kubrick movie ‘The Killing’. Carey’s visage is obscured by George Harrison in the finished piece. Kubrick, around this time, was being wooed by The Beatles to direct a version of ‘Lord of the Rings’ that they were interested in making. For me, it is Kubrick and not Carey that is at the heart of this reference. All of Kubrick’s films were filled with symbolism and strange, coded, references. Kubrick was, like The Beatles, illuminated.

The Beatles would also salvage unused footage from another Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove, for the ‘Flying’ segment on the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ movie. In the book/movie for ‘Dr. Strangelove’, the dis-arm code used to diffuse the “bomb” was “P.O.E.”, short for “Peace on Earth” and is another link to Edgar Allan Poe (No: 8). The ‘Dr. Strangelove’ character was based on the ex-Nazi and Operation Paperclip scientist Werner Von Braun who came to the US to help develop the rocket-programme that Jack Parsons had done so much to initiate.

Not only does Edgar Allen Poe appear on the Pepper cover, but he is also mentioned in the song ‘I am the Walrus’. There is even speculation that the inspiration for the song ‘Blackbird’ came from his epic poem titled ‘The Raven’, and the inclusion of the word ‘Eldorado’, heard on ‘Revolution #9’, may stem from his poem of the same name.

In the poem ‘Eldorado’, Poe writes about an elderly knight in search of this idyllic land. There are definite parallels to Francis Bacon and the search for his ‘Atlantis’.

Meanwhile, returning to Terry Southern, he is partially responsible for the fame of William Burroughs, (No: 26). It was Southern who helped convince Maurice Girodias to publish, the then unknown, Burroughs work, ‘Naked Lunch’.

William Burroughs, who was a friend and collaborator of Paul McCartney, was famous for his cut-up technique of writing where he would chop up passages of text and randomly re-arrange them. This was a technique that McCartney would also borrow.

Indeed, Burroughs’s 1965 LP ‘Call Me Burroughs’ was a huge influence at the time. Barry Miles, in his liner notes for the 1995 Rhino re-release, says: “The Beatles may have been the soundtrack to 1965 for the beautiful people of swinging London, but to the cognoscenti there was something even cooler to listen to.

‘It’s in all the best homes, my dear,’ said Brion Gysin, and he was right. At the height of the ‘60s, Call Me Burroughs was an essential record. The Beatles all had copies (Paul McCartney included Bill on the sleeve of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band). Art dealer Robert Fraser bought ten copies to give to friends such as Brian Jones and Mick Jagger. Marianne Faithfull and Keith Richards’ dealer had copies, as did numerous painters and writers.”

McCartney, in particular was a fan, he was so impressed by the album that he hired the producer, Ian Sommerville, to set-up a studio and act as tape operator for him in an apartment Ringo Starr owned, but was not using, at 34 Montagu Place. Sommerville ended up living in the apartment, and subsequent tape experiments were conducted there by Burroughs. McCartney was said to have found all of this very interesting and relevant to his own recordings

Burroughs also discovered the ‘23 Enigma’ linking all manner of events, dates and incidents that involved the number 23. In The Beatles film ‘Yellow Submarine’, The Butterfly Stomper, who destroys all things of beauty, wears a shirt with the number 23.

Shakespeare was both born and died on April 23 and his wife Anne later died in 1623, the same year his First Folio was published. Two 23’s equals 46 and, that's how old Shakespeare was when the King James Version was published. Grab a copy of the King James Version of the Bible and turn to Psalm 46. Count 46 words and you arrive at the word ‘shake’. Turn to the end of the chapter and count 46 words backwards and the word you end on is ‘spear’. This is another clue as to the real author of Shakespeare.

Stretching the 23 clue to breaking point is No: 21, Dion DiMucci who was, reportedly, Peter Blake’s choice. An American teen singing idol, his hits included ‘Runaround Sue’ and ‘The Wanderer’. He originally fronted the Belmonts, who had a major international hit with ‘Teenager in Love’.

On February 3, 1959 (2nd month, 3rd day – told you I was stretching it!) he refused to board the plane which, subsequently, crashed killing musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson.

However, according to Dion himself, the story of his inclusion is a little different. When asked how he landed up being one of just two singers on the cover – the other being Bob Dylan – he replied: “Well, I met John Lennon and George Harrison in a restaurant on 57th Street and I found out that John loved the song ‘Ruby Baby’…I think he used to sing it in Germany. They used the picture of me from the cover of ‘Ruby Baby’, although I didn’t know I was one of two musicians on the cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper’.

I always say that’s why the thing sold so much. Actually it was the Stones who did it for me…The Beatles were always too cute and complicated for me.”

Yet another example of Beatles disinformation? Who knows?

According to the official key of Sgt. Pepper characters the No: 23 is the artist Wallace Berman. Berman, as we have already seen, can be

linked to Robert Fraser, Kenneth Anger and OTO key man Jack Parsons’ wife Marjorie Cameron.

No: 24, Tommy Handley was a Liverpool comedian who died in 1949.

He became famous for his long-running radio series ‘I.T.M.A. (It’s That Man Again)’ in which he replaced Adolf Hitler as “That Man”.

Mae West, No: 3, who famously, when first approached for permission to use her image turned down The Beatles, stating, ‘What would I be doing in a Lonely Hearts Club?’; also starred with Ringo Starr and Tony Curtis in the film ‘The Sextette’.

No: 5 is Karl Heinz Stockhausen. Aside from sharing a first name with Karl Marx there are not too many links, however, he was McCartney’s choice and as a contemporary German composer he was noted for his use of electronic sounds.

It is known that several frantic telegrams were sent to Stockhausen to ensure his participation. This implies that he was integral to the overall look and feel of the project. There have been rumoured links with his music and experiments and the use of sound or music as triggers in mind-control programming.

Stockhausen claimed he came from a planet orbiting Sirius, and that he was put on Earth to give voice to a cosmic music that will change the world.

There are numerous mannequins on display on the record cover – two hairdressing dummies, Beatles waxworks, Sonny Liston and Diana Dors to list but some – but even The Beatles waxworks come complete with an interesting back-story.

If we peruse the above image of the mop-topped mannequins, kindly loaned to Peter Blake for the photo-shoot by Madame Tussaud’s, we see a smiling John and George and a sad Paul and Ringo; and, this, presents a problem.

In this shot we see the cross-legged fabs and their original wax replicas back in 1964.

As befitted their status at that time of being the undisputed champions of teenage idolatry we see not only smiley John and George, but also smiley Paul and Ringo.

Fast forward three years to the Pepper shoot and two are smiling and two are not. At the risk of starting a whole new conspiracy, not only has Paul been replaced but so has RINGO!!

Via the website of the auctioneers Cooper Owen I discovered that the dismembered heads of the waxy marionettes had sold for £70,000 back in 2005. Furthermore, the blurb revealed that: The waxworks were borrowed from Madame Tussauds who are credited on the back of the album for the shoot that took place at photographer Michael Cooper’s studio on 30th March 1967.

Except, I then discovered that, the accompanying photograph revealed a further anomaly.

We can see smiley John, smiley George, sad Ringo and…something vaguely approximating Paul, but who, frankly, could be just about anyone. To be honest none of the latex doubles would pass the very good replica’s test, George looks more like Keef Richards to me, however, Paul’s severed cranium has been replaced…again!

The sales spiel says: the original wax heads of John, George and Ringo with cut-off shirts and ties, supplied by Madame Tussaud’s to be used on what has to be the most iconic cover shot of all time the Sgt. Pepper album sleeve. Together with an original Paul head from the 1960s, which was not used on the cover but completes the fabfoursome.

This is not true. The original Paul head came with the obligatory McCartney arched eyebrow, as seen modelled here by the original James Paul himself and his replica.

This next image, taken behind the scenes of the album photo-shoot, shows us the headless corpses of our Pepper dummies, well three of them anyway.

Why did they not use the original dummies complete with the collarless Pierre Cardin suits?

Remember, according to Blake: ‘Paul and John said I should imagine that the band had just finished the concert, perhaps in a park. I then thought that we should have a crowd standing behind them, and this developed into the collage idea… I wanted to have the waxworks of The Beatles because I thought they might be looking at Sgt. Pepper’s band too.’ The Tussaud’s figures were a key part of Blake’s interpretation of the concept: ‘It was a comment on the fact that the record wasn’t really by The Beatles but by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, so The Beatles themselves were in the audience watching Sgt. Pepper’s band…’

If that were truly the case surely you would use the most stereotypical image of the band going?

Why would you use two previously unknown versions of Paul and Ringo’s heads?

Perhaps, the answer harks back to an earlier incarnation of The Beatles called Long John Silver and the Beetles?

One member of Long John and the Silver Beetles was Stuart Sutcliffe. Stuart died and was replaced by Paul. Also, Pete Best was in Long John and the Silver Beatles before he was replaced by Ringo.

So, is that why the Paul and Ringo waxwork mannequins on the Sgt. Pepper cover are replacements?

The use of the mannequins may also imply a link to Project Mannequin. Project Mannequin is rumoured to be a Tavistock Institute funded programme that seeks to use mind-control techniques to manipulate people into committing acts beyond their control. Similar in many ways to the film ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ Project Mannequin is also rumoured to have access to alien technology that allows a viewer to see into the future using ‘Looking Glass’ technology. There are many and numerous ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and Lewis Carroll references in The Beatles canon; could these be looking glass ties?

Indeed, there is a connection with Lewis Carroll that goes from Sgt. Pepper and beyond in McCartney’s songs, ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Getting Better’.

In the “Through the Looking Glass” books, it seems that the White Queen has a habit that when she says the word “better”, she repeats it over and over again, each time getting more high pitched and louder until it ends in a squeal. At which time she completely transforms herself into a “new creature” or a new location. McCartney repeats this lyrical trick within these songs.

Aubrey Beardsley (No: 16), produced illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s (No: 41), play, ‘Salome’.

No: 19, Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet who died in New York in 1953.

Thomas wrote a poem entitled ‘My World Is Pyramid’, which some translate as having illuminati connotations.

Dylan Thomas wrote the radio and stage play ‘Under Milkwood’. The film version of ‘Under Milkwood’ starred Peter O’Toole (who also played T. E. Lawrence, No: 53, in the film Lawrence of Arabia) and Victor Spinetti (Sgt. Spinetti from ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and who also appeared in ‘A Hard Days Night‘ and ‘HELP!’ as well as coauthoring Lennon’s ‘In His Own Write’).

Thomas was friends with Victor Neuburg and upon his death said: “Vicky encouraged me as no one else has done ... He possessed many kinds of genius, and not the least was his genius for drawing to himself, by his wisdom, graveness, great humour and innocence, a feeling of trust and love that won’t ever be forgotten.”

Neuburg was an acolyte of Aleister Crowley and was initiated into his magical Order the A A . In 1909 Crowley took Neuburg to Algiers, and they set off into the desert, where they performed a series of occult sex-magick rituals in an attempt to summon Choronzon.

Richard Lindner (No: 29): In 1941 he went to the United States and worked in New York City as an illustrator of books and magazines and made contact with German emigrants Albert Einstein (No: 61) and Marlene Dietrich (No: 67). His artwork would be an inspiration for ‘Yellow Submarine’.

He would later teach at Yale University, home of Skull and Bones the notorious undergraduate senior secret society. New members of Skull and Bones are assigned secret names, by which fellow Bonesmen will forever know them.

The skull and bones symbol relates to the skull ceremonies of the Knights Templar who were believed to have worshipped the severed head of St. John the Baptist known as the Baphomet. Often mistaken for Satan, it represents the duality of male and female, as well as Heaven and Hell, or night and day, and is signified by the raising of

one arm and the downward gesture of the other, similar to the semaphore signal being given by Ringo on the cover of the ‘Help’ LP and the Magician card in the Tarot deck.

Bob Dylan (No: 15): In July of 1966, Dylan was involved in a very serious motorcycle accident and spent many months in seclusion and shares with McCartney the distinction of being the subject of speculation that he actually died in an accident and was replaced.

Interestingly, Dylan in his 2012 album ‘Tempest’ makes some Pepper references in his tribute to John Lennon, ‘Roll on John’. In the song the lyrics contain “I heard the news today, oh boy,” and “Another day in your life” both referring to ‘A Day in the Life’.

It is interesting to note that the song appears on an album entitled ‘Tempest’. The Tempest is a Shakespeare play, believed to be his last. ‘Roll on John’ is the last song on the album.

The song preceding ‘Roll on John’ on the album is the title track ‘Tempest’ and is a 14 minute account of the sinking of the Titanic.

Shakespeare’s The Tempest is believed to have been a story based on the real-life shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609 on the island of Bermuda while sailing towards the British settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. The lyrics to ‘Roll on John’ contain numerous references to a sea voyage, presumably from England to America, just like the journey of the Titanic.

Could it be that Bob Dylan, who also appeared on the cover of Pepper is acknowledging this and could it be that Dylan sees himself as a song writing contemporary of Lennon’s and, as such, an equivalent of one of Bacon’s good pens; his band of fellow writers and Knights of the Helmet?

It is interesting that whilst Francis Bacon employs the use of cipher keys to hide, or obscure, information, The Beatles often refer to doors and keys in the Sgt. Pepper lyrics. Keys open doors and by understanding the word-play and allusions employed by The Beatles we can crack the Sgt. Pepper code.

Bacon often used substitution ciphers to encode information. Is it possible that The Beatles employed substitution characters to obscure their message?

We have already discussed the employment of the Billy Shears Shakespearean clue in ‘With a little help from my friends’ and the line: “Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song, and I’ll try not to sing out of key”. The line, ‘lend me your ears’, is borrowed from the Shakespearean play ‘Julius Caesar’ and is immediately followed by “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” On the Pepper cover The Beatles, and the attendant assemblage, have all come to bury someone.

Remember this song comes immediately after we have been introduced to the primary character – Billy Shears – who is essentially Bacon. What they are telling us is to look for the hidden clues.

As an example; the line “…and I’ll try not to sing out of key” is sung

by Ringo, aka Richard Starkey. A star key is the key of Solomon. In this case does the key open the doors to the temple of Solomon? The place where Jacob had his dream about a ladder to heaven and where Hiram Abif was slaughtered.

In ‘Fixing a hole’ we find numerous references to doors such as “And wonder why they don’t get in my door”. Incidentally, here we have another question with no question mark. Also if you listen to this song through headphones you will discover another anomaly. The printed lyric states that the line reads: “See the people standing there who disagree and never win, and wonder why they won’t get in my door”, however, if you listen carefully you will hear that McCartney actually sings “See the BEATLES standing there…” This is repeated later with the line “Silly BEATLES run around they worry me and never ask me why they don’t get past my door”. Again the printed lyrics suggest the line is “people”, not Beatles. Maybe this is implying that only McCartney knows the true meaning of the Sgt. Pepper code?

Moving on, ‘She’s leaving home’ contains the line “Quietly turning the backdoor key”. ‘When I’m sixty-four’ provides “If I’d been out till quarter to three would you lock the door”. Yet again, no question mark is employed. Finally we arrive at the ‘A Day in the Life’ and the

dream sequence where we find three references to ‘Found’ in quick succession. “Found my way downstairs…”, “Found my coat…” and “Found my way upstairs…” These are clues that the individual has been led, blindfolded and helpless, through the Masonic initiation ceremony, provided the correct passwords and has been taken through the doors into the light of the Masonic temple. Add to this the lyrics from ‘Getting Better’; “You’re holding me down (Oh Oh)”, “Turning me round (Oh Oh)” and, of course, “You gave me the word, I finally heard” and the journey is complete. That all these songs are Paul McCartney compositions is, I am sure, no more than coincidence!

Could any of this be true, and equally, could evidence of these secrets be contained within the cover, lyrics and music of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper LP? I contend that it can be true and that is exactly what is taking place. I leave all of the above to stand in perpetuity as evidence for this claim.

Of course, I still hear your doubts and your accusations that these are little more than the fevered imaginings of an underemployed mind. As such as I shall leave it up to you to form your own opinion, what cannot be disputed is that these clues exist and that far more than meets the eye is going on with this record.

Who instigated this code is unclear. Was it The Beatles themselves or Peter Blake, Barry Miles and the Indica brigade, or is it a joint initiative? We shall probably never know. For what it is worth my money is on Robert Fraser being the leader of this particular pack, but I cannot prove it.

The themes contained within Sgt. Pepper would be returned too by The Beatles in future works such as ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’. The clues contained therein would all point back to Pepper.

In time it would lead to the whole ‘Paul is Dead’ fanfare. That this was a Beatle created myth seems assured, however, what is absolutely certain is that in 1968, Detroit DJ and musician Terry Knight was invited to watch The Beatles record at their Apple HQ. He further claims that he witnessed Ringo Starr walk out of the band during the

recording of ‘Back in the USSR’ before, on his aeroplane ride home, Knight penned his own record ‘Saint Paul’.

It is a source of debate as to whether, or not, the song is about the alleged death of Paul McCartney or is simply an ode to the break-up of The Beatles. What is certain though is that upon the records release in May 1969 it would appear on The Beatles’ US label, Capitol records. Initially it was credited to Storybook Music however, that was quickly changed to MacLen Music. MacLen Music was a vehicle by which John Lennon and Paul McCartney published their songs in the US. ‘Saint Paul’ has the unique distinction of being the sole non-Beatle song to have been credited to MacLen. Later that same year the ‘Paul is Dead’ mystery really sprang into life when students began calling in to a radio DJ claiming that not only was Paul dead but that if you played certain tracks from the ‘White Album’ backwards clues would be revealed.

The DJ discovered that what was formerly indecipherable mumbling from John Lennon at the end of ‘I'm So Tired’ could now clearly be made out as the literary Beatle moaning “Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him.” Also, the oft-intoned words “number nine, number nine” from Lennon’s musique concrete opus, ‘Revolution #9,’ miraculously transformed into the eerie phrase “turn me on dead man” when spun counter clockwise.

The name of this DJ was Russ Gibb and when he asked the student whistle-blower how he came to know all of this he revealed that he had heard of the clues from some passing ‘musicians’. Now where was Russ Gibb based? No less than Detroit, Michigan, the home of musician and DJ, Terry Knight!

Coincidence, or birthplace of a Beatle conspiracy, you decide, but ultimately all roads lead back to Pepper. I began chapter two with a quote from Peter Blake and I shall return to a part of it now: “We set up a couple of myths to find in the puzzle, but most of them are dead ends. What’s intriguing is how the mythology never stops.”

He is, of course, right. The mythology never stops and maybe this merely adds to that, however, whilst some of my clues may well be dead ends, I do believe that the Sgt. Pepper code does exist, and that the record sleeve is a treasure map waiting to be decoded.

Chapter 10: Voyage to Treasure Island _______________________________________________________ “..It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then”, said Alice to the Mock Turtle in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Which is interesting; not least because Ringo Starr would play the role of the Mock Turtle in a 1985 made-for-TV film version, or because Jane Asher, the former partner of Paul McCartney, had played the role of Alice in 1958, or indeed, because the aforementioned McCartney had written his opus ‘Yesterday’ whilst residing with the Asher’s – most likely whilst under the hypnotic suggestion of Dr Richard Asher - and who would become the subject of a long running death and replacement theory, but largely because Sgt. Pepper is loaded with Alice in Wonderland symbolism.

In the second Alice book, ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’, Alice journeys into an alternate reality by travelling through the looking glass. By utilising a looking glass (a mirror) the Sgt. Pepper cover allows us to do the exact same thing.

The author of the Alice books; ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’, Lewis Carroll (No: 52), appears on the album cover amongst the pantheon of the great and the good of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

You can see him next to the palm-tree, in front of Lawrence of Arabia and behind Marlene Dietrich.

Now T. E. Lawrence (of the aforementioned Arabia was also the author of a book entitled the Seven Pillars of Wisdom) had once worked for British intelligence producing maps and that is a huge clue that what we are looking at with the Pepper cover is indeed a map. It is also a clue that we need to study the individuals that make up the Pepper assemblage – the Pepperati, if you will - and decode the clues that they inevitably reveal.

Fortunately, this is a journey that we have already travelled.

Indeed, as we have already discovered, the word dietrich in German translates as skeleton key, and this can enable us to produce a rebus utilising the characters of Carroll, Dietrich, Shirley Temple and Diana Dors (who all appear together on the album cover) that states; Carroll [is the] Key [to the] Temple Door.

It is in understanding, I believe, the subtle word-play and hidden meanings contained within Sgt. Pepper that allows us to crack the Sgt. Pepper code.

On the LP cover Lewis Carroll is stood next to a palm-tree, as is Diana Dors. This is telling us where to look. To paraphrase the rebus Carroll is the Key to the Door and, I believe, the door lock is represented by Miss Dor’s elbow. So, Lewis Carroll wrote ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and a looking glass is a mirror. If we were to look through a looking glass we would expect to see a reflected image, therefore, if we put a mirror to the elbow of Miss Dors it should come

as no surprise to find something reflected and, indeed we do, we discover the image of a walrus.

Why a walrus? Well the Walrus and the Carpenter is a poem that appears in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and whilst the walrus on the Pepper cover is something of a magic-eye type image which not everybody can see, it is confirmation that we are on the right track.

Interestingly, Beatles producer, George Martin’s father was a carpenter and via the cover we can discover a curious coincidence.

To produce the walrus we must put a mirror to the elbow of the golddressed Diana Dors who stands next to the palm-tree. D’or in French means gold and in 1987, twenty years after Pepper’s release, George Martin produced a documentary about the album that was called ‘It was Twenty years ago today’ for which he would win a coveted Palme D’or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes film festival.

Either by accident or design, The Beatles have concocted a clue for the future from the past.

But what is the relevance of the walrus? Well apart from numerous Beatle references; I am the walrus, the walrus was Paul etc. the ‘Walrus’ was also the name of Capt. Flint’s pirate ship in the book ‘Treasure Island’. A book John had read as a child and which clearly influenced him.

“I never see myself as not an artist,” he said to me that morning. “I never let myself believe that an artist can ‘run dry.’

I’ve always had this vision of bein’ 60 and writing children’s books. I don’t know why. It’d be a strange thing for a person

who doesn’t really have much to do with children. I’ve always had that feeling of giving what Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island gave to me at age seven and eight. Those books opened my whole being.”

John Lennon

Long John Silver, the infamous pirate from the Treasure Island book served upon the Walrus as did his colleague, Billy Bones. As we have already noted, a previous incarnation of The Beatles was called Long John Silver and the Beetles.

From Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles by Tony Bramwell

Therefore we can claim to have discovered both silver (silver beetles) and gold (Diana Dors = gold) hidden upon the cover indicating that we are embarking upon a metaphorical quest for treasure and that the record cover is the map. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a parody of a non-existent group being portrayed by The Beatles, therefore, the band are in character. Clearly John is Long John Silver and so, presumably, Paul is Billy Bones.

John Lennon once said of The Beatles on the Sgt. Pepper cover that “…two are flying, two are not.” This was assumed to be an inside joke but I believe it is a clue that, in order to crack The Sgt. Pepper Code, we need only concern ourselves with John and Paul.

Palm-trees regularly appear on pirate treasure maps and this may therefore explain the presence of the palm-tree on the Pepper cover.

In this case the palm is a symbolic X marking the spot where we need to dig.

Not convinced? Okay, let me give you more.

There exists in nature a bug entitled a Dor Beetle, ergo Diana Dors is the Golden Beetle (as opposed to the Silver Beetle) or the Gold Bug which allows us to form a link between Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island author), and Pepper alumni Edgar Allan Poe; he who takes such a kicking on ‘I am the Walrus’. Interestingly, Poe wrote a poem entitled The Literati of New York City which includes a line about ‘golden doors’ and ‘wonderland’.

The story of ‘The Gold-Bug’, like Treasure Island, is also a treasure trail, specifically, in this case, for the treasure of Captain Kidd. Wiki says: “The Gold-Bug” inspired Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel about treasure-hunting, Treasure Island. Indeed Stevenson publically acknowledged this influence: “I broke into the gallery of Mr Poe... No doubt the skeleton [in my novel] is conveyed from Poe.” Stevenson also admits that he took the idea of Captain Flint’s skeleton point from Poe’s ‘The Gold-Bug’.

The skeleton reference derives from the fact that in ‘Treasure Island’ they search for the hidden loot upon Skeleton Island, so named because to find the treasure you must first find the dead pirate’s skeleton which points to the correct path.

Billy’s bones - Skeleton point? ‘The skeleton points in the direction we need to go’. Back (to Pepper).

On the Pepper cover, Billy Bones represents the dead pirate and it is he who will lead us to the treasure.

Of course, up to now, I have avoided getting too heavily immersed into the topic of PID (Paul is Dead). The Pepper cover does indeed show a funeral scene and, in the ‘Treasure Island’ book, Paul’s character Billy Bones does die. Upon this event the protagonists discover that the key to the dead man’s chest hangs around the neck of Billy Bones. It is in this chest that they discover a book and the map to Capt. Flint’s treasure. The book contains the strange legend “Off Palm Key he got itt (sic)”.

We have already deduced that Lewis Carroll is the key, and, as confirmation, he is standing next to the palm-tree. If we seek further

confirmation perhaps we can find it in the personage of Issy Bonn who stands directly behind Paul/Billy.

I have already postulated that Issy Bonn’s curious pose may represent the Dead Man’s Hand, the supposed hand of cards that Wild Bill Hickok was in possession of at the time of his death, and that contained the unturned card of the Queen of Hearts with its inevitable Alice in Wonderland connection.

Of course we should not forget that Sgt. Pepper is a parody of a band that never existed (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) and that, therefore, the album cover is a parody of a writer who does not appear upon the cover, a la Edgar Rice Burroughs and Shakespeare/Francis Bacon.

So, what would be contained within a dead man’s chest? In the Treasure Island book they discover a map in the chest which leads them to Skeleton Island, the place where Capt. Flint stowed his stash.

As this is a parody we need to search for a metaphorical clue that leads us to treasure and it could be argued that a dead man’s chest may contain a lonely heart.

This leads nicely, of course, to the mirrored drum clue on the Sgt. Pepper cover that was the catalyst for the entire Paul is Dead phenomena.

The legend – widely interpreted as I ONE IX HE ◊ DIE (1 1 9 HE DIE) – is created by holding a mirror (a looking glass clue again) to the words ‘lonely hearts’ on the Sgt. Pepper cover bass drum.

This, in turn, has been taken to represent a date, (either 11 September 1966 or 9 November 1966 depending upon which side of the pond you live) on which Paul McCartney, reputedly, departed this mortal coil. This claim is supported by the fact that the ◊ symbol points up toward McCartney.

A point not previously considered, I believe, is that the ◊ symbol also points down toward the ‘grave’ with Beatles spelt out in red hyacinths.

If one should be so minded as to Google the meaning of the maxim ‘As above, so below’ we would find this Wikipedia image to which I have supplemented a ‘Help’ era Ringo;

The Beatles have again concocted a clue for the future from the past.

Therefore, above we have Paul, as Billy Bones who does die, and below a grave for the dead Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe.

Of course nobody truly knows if the mirrored message was deliberate or if it is merely a bizarre fluke of nature. With that caveat in mind, I would like to posit an alternative suggestion.

Perhaps there is a double meaning here and that HE DIE is an anagram of I HEED, therefore it reads; 1 1 9 I HEED. It is on page 119 of ‘Treasure Island’ that we first meet an actual lonely heart: Ben Gunn.

Ben Gunn is a pirate who has been marooned on Skeleton Island for many years and it is he who has already discovered, and recovered, Capt. Flint’s treasure.

So, The Beatles, having killed of their mop-top personas, are presenting us with alternate identities and, in so doing, are illustrating a memorial to their former selves and to their fallen comrade, Stuart Sutcliffe.

Sutcliffe, of course, does appear amongst the Pepperati in tribute to his own tragic and premature death. Sutcliffe, of course, was in a proto version of The Beatles – indeed he was a member of Long John Silver and the Beetles. After Stuart’s departure Paul would, of course, replace Stuart on bass guitar.

The main strains of the Paul is Dead/Paul was Replaced myth originated from the fact that what we see on the Pepper cover is a grave also adorned with a floral tribute in the shape of a bass guitar that, according to some, spells the word PAUL.

I repeat; Paul replaced Stuart on bass. Add to that the fact that Stuart Sutcliffe died on a Tuesday and the significance of the line ‘Stupid Bloody Tuesday’ takes on greater meaning. So, what is the song that this line comes from? ‘I am the Walrus’, of course.

STU – PID Bloody Tuesday.

Could it really be as simple as that?

Ultimately, I believe so.

The Beatles devised a system whereby through gaining an understanding of the assembled cast one could travel, metaphorically, on a magical mystery tour through a golden door to a temple on a mystery land – let us call it Pepperland – where there exists treasure; knowledge.

Hidden knowledge, available only to those who have been initiated, and through gaining this knowledge one is returned to a world of child-like excitement and awe as encapsulated in books such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Treasure Island’.

Why else would John Lennon tell us: “Picture yourself in a boat on a river”, if not to travel this epic journey of understanding.

On the cover of this book is a legend: In time the hidden knowledge will be revealed.

That time is now.

Of course when the Sgt. Pepper code was devised I don’t expect anybody envisaged that it would take fifty years to solve, but, it is

fitting, I believe that as Sgt. Pepper’s golden anniversary looms its gilded treasures should finally be shared with us all.

However, proof that the Sgt. Pepper code should be revealed gradually, drip-fed if you like, can be found in a post Pepper Beatle project, Magical Mystery Tour.

For it is here that we are first introduced to the walrus, our master of disguise, in the November 1967 track ‘I am the Walrus’. This song comes replete with lyrical messages about ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, and its attendant Alice references, and Edgar Allan Poe, he of ‘The Gold-Bug’ fame.

It is only when we merge these Alice themes and their associated word play clues with the treasure seeking aspects of Poe’s ‘The GoldBug’ that we can discover ‘Treasure Island’ and the walrus that was there in front of us all along.

After all, it was John in a scene from Magical Mystery Tour who wore a hat with a HEART on it in a scene that took place in a CLUB where he was watching a BAND. John is telling us that everything leads back to Pepper!

Addendum: It is fitting, therefore, that on the very same day that a special fiftieth anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper is released - May 26, 2017 – in the UK that Billy Bones himself, Paul McCartney, should make a cameo appearance in the latest installment of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise.