A majority of the focus (but most certainly not all) of this 10th episode in the ‘Magical Mystery Talk’ podcast series with me, and fellow Beatles blogger Desiree Hall, and renowned author and public speaker on many facets of the occult and conspiratorial in the music-world, Mark Devlin, is on the background surrounding the 1973 John Lennon album ‘Mind Games’ which was re-released in 2024 as a box-set and also online, in some representative shape or form. Accompanying this bumper reissue is what’s called the ‘Lumenate app,’ which uses the flashlight on the back of one’s smartphone to generate a strobe at specific frequencies onto a person’s closed eyes as they listen to ‘Meditation’ remixes of tracks from what was the former Beatle’s fourth solo LP following the split of the band. When the use of the app is coupled with these new mixes, it is, to quote from the John Lennon official website, “mind altering.” Intrigued, I’ve looked a little bit into the background of Lumenate and also into the book that inspired him to come up with the actual title, ‘Mind Games.’ Credited to Jean Houston and Robert E. L. Masters, ‘Mind Games. The Guide to Inner Space,’ is where his inspiration came from, a guide-book of sorts that instructs the reader how to alter their state of consciousness, and to explore other realms within, without the aid of drugs. One of the exercises in the book on how to achieve this – that I highlight on Magical Mystery Talk – asks the participant to ‘transfer their identity’ to someone sitting opposite them who’s also participating in this literal ‘mind game.’ Perhaps, I ask, this book should’ve been titled ‘Mind Control Games’?  

There’s also quite a bit of focus in episode 10 of Magical Mystery Talk on ‘Paul is Dead’ (P.i.D.) because, earlier this year came the release of a new book on the subject, ‘Forbidden Fruit: Solving the Hidden Puzzle in the Beatles’ Works: from the Psychedelic Era’ by Sharon Clemons who claims that Paul McCartney was murdered by MI6 in Seattle during the Beatles’ summer tour of the US in 1966 and that clues disclosing this are featured in certain songs by the band from 1967 onwards. She believes his death made it easier to usher in a more New World Order-friendly agenda, with the assistance of a more compliant replacement. Elsewhere in 2024, Gregory Martin, narrator of the audio-version of P.i.D. book ‘The Memoirs of Billy Shears,’ had his say on this conspiracy theory which, up until very recently, he used to think was “ridiculous”… but not anymore, or so it would seem. The eldest son of Beatles producer, George Martin says he now ‘believes it.’ Also, Mark, Desiree and myself put forward our own – and quite different – views on what might be going on when it comes to McCartney and doubles.  

Another Beatles-related book released in 2024 was the memoirs of long-time friend, confidante and fixer of John and Yoko’s, Elliot Mintz. A former radio-presenter in the US, he says he moved to Laurel Canyon in the 1960s, the controversial LA neighbourhood that, during that decade, became a hotbed for some of the biggest music-bands and singers of that era, so-called ‘voices against the Establishment’ whose backgrounds, actually, were steeped in military, intelligence and so-called ‘elite’ families, causing some researchers to question their true motives and their reasons for moving to this area where, it just so happened, stood a Top Secret movie-studio that produced films for the US forces, including pro-Vietnam productions. I pick out some excerpts from the new book by Elliot, who became Yoko’s official mouthpiece following John’s death in 1980.  

Also, Episode 10 revisits the notorious Gates family. In the previous Magical Mystery Talk, I’d talked at length about Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill, who was long-rumoured to have been dating Paul McCartney’s grandson, Arthur, at the time.  

Desiree, Mark and I also talk a bit about the Casbah club, the Liverpool coffee-bar where a pre-fame John, Paul and George played together in 1959 and that was owned by the mother of their soon-to-be drummer, Pete Best. Lennon helped to decorate the venue before its opening painting some rather occultic symbols on the ceiling. The building opened earlier in 2024 as an Airbnb. Also mentioned during episode 10, the dismissive attitude of conspiracy theories and theorists by Brian Ray, McCartney’s long-time guitarist, and the passing away of Diana Asher, cousin of Paul’s former girlfriend, Jane Asher, and their connections to a certain occult religious group of some notoriousness.  

  ·         This edition of Magical Mystery Talk was recorded on December 16th 2024