PERFORMER DID HIS BIT FOR BEATLE LORE.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - Paul is dead.

Of course it's not true, but back in 1969 rumors were flying that Paul McCartney was "goners" and that the Beatles had been using an impostor who looked and sounded just like him.

Today, at Island Park, you can see and listen to a man who had quite a bit to do with that 36-year-old rumor, which is perhaps the greatest hoax in the history of rock 'n' roll.

His name is Fred LaBour, aka "Too Slim," a member of Riders in the Sky, a cowboy vaudeville act appearing at the Light of Liberty celebration. He is described on the Grammy-winning band's Web site as, among other things, a "rumor-monger."

Although the story is well known, LaBour's name and connection to it hasn't been as well publicized.

"The idea appears in many books, but I don't remember who was responsible for it," said Carl Woideck, a University of Oregon music professor who specializes in jazz, blues and rock, especially the music of the Beatles.

Although LaBour was on the road over the weekend, playing shows in Vienna, Va., and Cary, N.C., with the Riders and unavailable for comment, this is how the tale goes:

In fall 1969, LaBour was a junior at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he wrote music reviews for the campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily. On Oct. 14, 1969, he was listening to Russ Gibb's radio show on WKNR-FM in Detroit when a caller asked Gibb what he thought of the rumor that McCartney was dead and that the Beatles had planted clues in many of their albums and songs. The alleged clues included John, George and Ringo looking forward on the "Revolver" album cover, and the words "I buried Paul" coming out of the speakers when "Strawberry Fields Forever" was played at 45 rpm.

LaBour was supposed to be writing a review of the Beatles' "Abbey Road" album when he heard the rumor, and he told a friend: "I'm just going to kill him. I'm just going to make the whole thing up," according to an article last year by Bill DeYoung, an entertainment editor with the Scripps Howard News Service.

So that's what LaBour did. He wrote satirically that McCartney had been killed in a 1966 automobile accident in which he was "pinned under his car in a culvert with the top of his head sheared off." George buried him. Ringo did the services. And John went into seclusion for three days, LaBour's article says.

Then the three remaining Beatles searched for a new Paul and found one William Campbell, who looked and sounded exactly like Paul and, in fact, had been playing Paul for the past three years, wrote LaBour.

Woideck was a saxophone and harmonica player in Berkeley, Calif., in 1969 and says, "I didn't know anyone who took it seriously."

Especially not McCartney, who had escaped the public eye for much of that year and was in seclusion on a Scottish farm with his wife, Linda, and their two children when a Life magazine writer finally found them and wrote an article that squelched the rumors.

On Nov. 7, 1969, Paul and Linda McCartney appeared on the magazine's cover with their two children, photographed on the farm. This is what Paul had to say about the whole thing:

"It's all bloody stupid."

CAPTION(S):

Paul McCartney and Fred LaBour are forever linked by a '69 rumor that the then-Beatle was dead. LaBour (right), now a member of Riders in the Sky, did his part to perpetuate that rumor.