Sid Vicious was charged with the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen in 1978, after waking from a drug-induced stupor to find her dead from a stab wound to the abdomen. He had bought the murder weapon himself, and is quoted as having been hysterical as he told the police that he "stabbed her, but never meant to kill her". The evidence is overwhelming, right? Yes, he later retracted that statement and claimed that she had fallen on the knife, but it seems pretty clear that he was guilty. However, some claim that the whole thing is false. A film named Who Killed Nancy? claimed in 2009 that she was in fact killed by a guy called Michael, also staying at the hotel and hanging out with the couple. According to The Daily Mail:
"Details of the alleged killer are sketchy, but he was described by witnesses as a young, slim, blond man with a penchant for alligator shoes. He spoke with a British accent and had moved into the hotel recently, befriending Vicious and Miss Spungen. Several of the couple's friends remember seeing him with them in the days before Nancy's death, and one, musician Neon Leon, who had been with the couple on the night of the killing, says he rang Nancy shortly before the time that she is estimated to have been stabbed. He says he could hear the man he knew as Michael talking in the background. Another , Victor Colicchio, also stopped at the couple's door shortly before the stabbing and says Michael was inside. But none of the witnesses knew Michael well, and his last name remains a mystery. Only one han Wikipedia[/caption] This one is probably just wishful thinking given the majority of his post-Beatles output (sorry Wings fans, but if Hey Jude gets wheeled out for one global event there will be trouble), but one of music's biggest conspiracies centres on the apparent death and subsequent replacement of Paul McCartney in 1966. The reasons for this are not wholly convincing, but they're pretty interesting nonetheless. Aside from the utterly bizarre leap of logic that claims that because the "McCartney" on the cover of Abbey Road is barefoot it means the original one must be dead (...), the rest are intriguing. It basically revolves around the fact that McCartney apparently changed physically between 1965 and 1966. He got less attractive, supposedly, when the band replaced him with a look-a-like after his rumoured suicide. Clues include the bass guitar wreath on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Cub Band (the band claim that this is actually a tribute to former bassist Stu Sutcliffe). There's John Lennon's apparent "I buried Paul" quote from Strawberry Fields (the band has claimed that this is a completely different phrase). There's the fact that "Billy Shears" is quoted as being on Sgt. Pepper's instead of McCartney. Oh, and there's the theory that several Beatles songs, when played backwards, contain veiled tributes to the bassist. It couldn't be true, could it? Especially given that McCartney continues to haunt every major international event with his karaoke versions of classic songs. However, it's worth concluding with a genuine recent quote from (if the rumours are to be believed) the only living Beatle, Ringo Starr:
"When Paul died, we all panicked! We didn't know what to do, and Brian Epstein, our manager, suggested that we hire Billy Shears as a temporary solution. It was supposed to last only a week or two, but time went by and nobody seemed to notice, so we kept playing along. Billy turned out to be a pretty good musician and he was able to perform almost better than Paul. The only problem was that he couldn't get along with John, at all."
