Terry Melcher & Paul McCartney


The story has as as many turns and twists as the canyon roads of LA. The rabbit trail runs into some very deep and dark places.
.....

California, 1965.
"Beatles spend several days tripping on LSD with Terry Melcher at his house. McCartney does not partake. The boys give him a bit of a hard time about it. Paul is, however, smoking prodigious amounts of cannabis, a habit the Beatles and he particularly have taken to since being introduced to the herb by Bob Dylan a year before.

Melcher drops a bomb on the boys in the midst of these days of drugbonding. Some heavy information. His mother, Doris Day, isn't Doris Day at all! Day hasn't been around [she died/was put away in an institution] for eight or nine years! His stepfather and some shady characters he's involved with have been produced a double who has been starring in films successfully for years. The studios are getting tons of money from this number-one box office draw. Her leading men have all been compromised (homo)sexually or otherwise. All were all rewarded handsomely -- "To appear with Doris Day could make your career."

And out of all this, Terry gets this sweet pad, a guaranteed "in" in show business, and all the drugs he wants with no real hassle from LAPD. Attendant with this set-up are women too, of course.

Their contract with EMI was up; they could do anything they wanted to creatively. Sign with a record label in the States and Paul could work with the boys in the studio and send a double out to do a movie. (Maybe even an American tour -- no passports or customs to deal with.) Then, the big revelation. Or maybe hold off a little longer, find a double for one of the other Beatles. There are different options. Tomorrow never knows.

It would not be an impossible task to find such a double; the group had some ready to divert the attention of the media and crazed fans while on tour. One who seemed particulary amenable to this idea they had met while playing in the Toronto and Detroit area, a member of the Canadian military who also had an affintiy for musicianship.

It was a rather brilliant plan. The band negotiated two one-album deals with EMI while they ran around the globe trying to get a new record deal from which to build on Paul's concept. Some songs on those albums telegraphed some of their intentions: "Paperback Writer," "Think For Yourself," "You Won't See Me," "Tomorrow Never Knows."

And in a pointed message to Lennon et al., the murders took place at Terry Melcher's residence (leased by manipulator Melcher to Tate and her husband Roman Polanski), the very spot Paul came up with the plan to reveal to the world what Harrison would later characterize as "the space between ourselves and the people who hide behind the walls of illusion.".

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