Turn Me On, Dead Man

When thinking about a title to use, I chose the phrase "turn me on, dead man" because it's memorable and provacative, but the strange thing about this often repeated phrase is that no one actually spoke those words. The phrase "turn me on, dead man" entered popular culture in the late-1960s when people looking for clues about the death of Paul McCartney played the Beatles track "Revolution 9" backwards. When reversed, the repeated phrase "number nine... number nine... number nine..." becomes "turn me on, dead man... turn me on, dead man... turn me on, dead man..." Like other catch-phrase memes, "turn me on, dead man" has now spread beyond its original context and has been used for a variety of purposes. There's this website, of course, and the associated internet-only radio station on Live365.com. The radio station came first, actually. I set up the website and included an article about the "Paul is dead" rumor with the intention of explaining the significance of the name. Only later did I discover that Andru Reeve (now a contributor to this blog) had written a book about the "Paul is dead" rumor using the same title years earlier that went into considerable detail about this strange story. Andru has now written two editions of his book. The first edition was part of the "Rock and Roll Remembrances" series and carried the subtitle "The Complete Story of the Paul McCartney Death Hoax." The expanded second edition is subtitled "The Beatles and the 'Paul Is Dead' Hoax." Another book entitled Turn Me On, Dead Man by Jerald Ford published earlier this year is a fictional account of the "Paul is dead" story. A recent movie called Turn Me On, Dead Man (2009) is also a fictional account of "Paul is dead" but I believe the book and the movie were created independently.

A repackaging of a 1979 radio broadcast about the "Paul is dead" rumor carries the subtitle "Turn Me On, Dead Man." Other Beatles-related uses of the title "turn me on, dead man" include a blog about the Beatles, an episode of Ground Zero TV that discusses Charles Manson's bizarre interpretation of the Beatles' White Album (and adds some "out there" conspiracy theories of its own), and the Beatles bootleg album Turn Me On, Dead Man: the John Barrett Tapes. Most of the uses of the phrase "turn me on, dead man," however, have little to do with the "Paul is dead" rumor. To my knowledge the band Turn Me On Dead Man has never made reference to "Revolution 9" or the "Paul is dead" rumor (although one of their tracks is called "Beatle George"). Also, several songs with little or no connection to "Paul is dead" are entitled "Turn Me On, Dead Man":

	Artist	Album	Year
	Game Theory	Lolita Nation	1987
	Swell Maps	A Trip to Marineville [reissue with bonus tracks]	1989 (original release, 1979)
	The Tear Garden	Last Man to Fly	1992
	Exit	Disco Sucks (compilation)	1996
	23 Degrees	From Here to Tranquility Vol. 5: The Silent Channel (compilation)	1996
	Bill Lloyd	Standing on Shoulders of Giants	1999
	Swifts	Quiet Little Mouse	2004
	The Brettster	Everything But Why	2008
	Tauntaun	Tauntaun	2009
	Ceremony(NL)	Reflections of a Decade	2009
	Spirit of the Matter	Zuble Land	2010

Other variations on the title include "Turn Me On 'Mr. Deadman'" (2000) by the Union Underground, "Turn Me On Again, Dead Man" (2008) by Tape Recorder Three, and "You Turn Me On" (1992) by the Beat Happening, where the line "turn me on, dead man" is repeated several times.

I did some Googling and found several articles that have used the title "Turn Me On, Dead Man." A Scientific American article by Michael Shermer uses the "Paul is dead" rumor as an example of how we make false associations. Our brains are good at pattern recognition, but this capability sometimes leads us to make associations where none exist. According to Shermer, in the search for clues about the death of Paul McCartney, "What we have here is a signal-to-noise problem. Humans evolved brains that are pattern-recognition machines, adept at detecting signals that enhance or threaten survival amid a very noisy world." Shermer refers to this as "the Turn Me On, Dead Man Phenomenon--if you scan enough noise, you will eventually find a signal, whether it is there or not." Also, an article about video game design on the website Game Design Advance uses the "Paul is dead" rumor to put forth the argument that urban legends make for the best alternate-reality games. Once again, however, most of the articles that use this title have nothing to do with the "Paul is dead" rumor. A Screen Rant article describing a recent movie where the Beatles become zombies uses the title "Turn Me On, Dead Man" even though the movie itself has little to do with the "Paul is dead" rumor, except that "Paul is undead" in the movie. The title was also used by the Boston Phoenix for an interview with George Romero. This article put the word "Dead" in quotes, as Romero was the director of The Night of the Living Dead (I see a "turn me on, dead man"-zombie connection building here). An article lamenting the lack of new music in the 2008 Grammy awards used the title "Turn Me On, Dead Man" to make light of the practice of giving the awards to dead musicians over living artists. An article in the University of Toronto student newspaper used the same title to highlight the excessive use of death imagery in the language we use to describe sexuality. Perhaps the most tenuous use of the phrase "turn me on, dead man" is in the Hollywood Elsewhere article about the most overpaid actors in Hollywood.

Like other catch-phrase memes, "turn me on, dead man" has gone well beyond its origins. What makes this unique, however, is that it is a line that no one actually said. Perhaps there are other examples of misheard lyrics or misquoted movie lines that have taken on a life of their own, but none immediately come to mind. Examples, anyone?