"No. 10. Klaatu Was Really the Beatles "
What was the name of the character on the right in this shot?
Posted on 11/22/2025 6:21:37 PM PST by DoodleBob
Impossible sounding, and often untrue, stories about the famous have been around for as long as there have been celebrities. Still, as you'll see in the following countdown of Rock Music's 25 Craziest Conspiracy Theories, this particular kind of superstar buzz exploded once we took off on the information superhighway.
One of the older examples predates the internet, as fans openly wondered whether Paul McCartney had been replaced by a lookalike prior to 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But fast forward a couple of decades, and it gets really weird: A conspiracy theorist later emerged who actually thought the Beatles never existed in the first place.
More confusingly, a few of these nutty notions have turned out to be totally true. Yes, Rolling Stones stalwart Keith Richards did once snort his father's ashes – but that doesn't make it any less crazy.
Have These Conspiracy Theories Been Debunked?
Teams of web-based sleuths have worked to validate or debunk these claims. Most follow a similarly outlandish line of inquiry until they are found to be untrue, but that hasn't stopped the rumor mill from spinning.
Message boards and chat rooms eventually gave way to social media, and now pop-culture paranoia simply abounds. Many worked very, very hard to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes – and this was before AI made that increasingly difficult.
Ever wondered which of these stories is true – or, more crucially, which of them aren't? Here a ranked look back at Rock Music's 25 Craziest Conspiracy Theories:
(Excerpt) Read more at ultimateclassicrock.com ...
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No. 24. Iron Butterfly's Bassist Was Kidnapped and Murdered
No. 23. Depeche Mode's Singer Is a Vampire
No. 22. David Bowie Predicted the Rise of Kanye West
No. 21. Prince's Death Was Foretold by 'The Simpsons'
No. 20. The CIA Killed Bob Marley
No. 19. 'Hotel California' Was About Devil Worship
No. 18. Michael Hutchence Died of Erotic Asphyxiation
No. 17. Debbie Harry Was Abducted by a Serial Killer
No. 16. The Grateful Dead Paid for a Final-Show Rainbow
No. 15. Kiss' Blood Ended Up in 'Sports Illustrated'
No. 14. Stevie Wonder Isn't Blind
No. 13. Mama Cass Choked on a Sandwich
No. 12. Supertramp Predicted 9/11
No. 11. Jimi Hendrix Was Murdered
No. 10. Klaatu Was Really the Beatles
No. 9. Phil Collins Let a Man Drown
No. 8. Courtney Love Was Involved With Kurt Cobain's Death
No. 7. Bob Dylan Stole a Signature Song From a Student
No. 6. Jim Morrison Didn't Die in That Bathtub
No. 5. Stephen King Killed John Lennon
No. 4. Bon Scott Posthumously Wrote AC/DC's Next Album
No. 3. The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones Was Murdered
No. 2. Paul McCartney Has Been Dead For Years
No. 1. Elvis Presley Is Alive
Paul is the Walrus.
If only Mama Cass had given Karen Carpenter that sandwich...
1) If you play “Stairway to Heaven” backwards you will hear satanic messages....
Jim Morrison died in the other bathtub.
So how many of those are really true?
Courtney Love involved in Cobain’s death?
Beat me to it.
There is this crazy theory that Ozzie Osbourne did drugs, and was even fired from Black Sabbath because of it. I know……crazy.
Brian Jones was likely murdered.
I used to work with a commie that said the government killed Frank Zappa with an isotope.
LOL- Jimmy Page was asked about this a decade ago- he had the perfect response which went something like this, “Songs are tough enough to write going forwards, never mind trying to hide messages in them going backwards”...
I remember during the whole "backwards masking" fright of the early 1980s going to my church and some dude had rigged is record player to play records backwards and was basically telling us what to listen for.
"Listen carefully!" He says, "I sing for Satan."
And, all garbled, it kinda sounded like he did says this.
In retrospect, we now know that if Jimmy Page was going to insert backwards masking into records, it would probably be, "I love having sex with 14 year old groupies!"
I would say none of them. :-)
What was the name of the character on the right in this shot?
I doubt this.
He had already been fired from the Stones. Fired because his drug conviction denied him a U.S. visa to tour (how Keith Richards escaped the same fate, I'm unsure).
Being unable to tour in the United States was a death sentence for British rock bands. It's often said that The Kinks were never able to achieve the level of success they should have for this very reason.
Kinda quaint now that we've opened up the U.S. to every Third World troglodyte that we used to deny work visas to British rock stars.
The new band formed by a former Beatle released this the year before Klaatu's first album:
See the theme?
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