Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion Read online

  Which begs the question, if their climaxes are mediocre at best, why are the handful of male zombies who are interested in intercourse so obsessed with the act? Simple: power. Even though Liverpool Processers are a strong bunch, they suffer from the same downfall as all zombies: they are, for all practical purposes, dead. A living being has far more spiritual power than a dead one. And as the living are aware, spirituality generally plays a large role in sex. So one could argue that it is the zombie’s lack of spirituality—its missing soul—that explains why male Processors insist on creating minions of sex slaves.

  Creating a female slave is simple enough: at the exact moment of penile insertion, the zombie looks directly into the female’s eyes and yells the four-word phrase ! ! (We are not at liberty to divulge the pronunciation, because as far as we know, no living being has ever said the phrase aloud, and the results could be disastrous.) The indoctrination is said to be pleasurable and comfortable, but the enslavement itself, although mostly enjoyable, is apparently oftentimes frustrating, as the woman’s sexual desire is sharp and constant. When she is within two hundred kilometers of her master, all thought leaves her mind, and the only thing that matters is how soon and how often she can have intercourse.

  The enslavement spell is easily reversed. The male zombie looks in the female’s eyes after ejaculation, sprinkles her lips with dustmen, and recites the aforementioned four-word phrase backward. Like most English zombies, male Liverpool Processers are relatively polite and very rarely enslave a female for more than several months.

  Impregnation is, of course, impossible.

  PETE BEST: Yeah, I knew that Liverpool zombies could make sex slaves, but I have no clue if my bandmates were doing any of that. I should point out that we always had a goodly number of female unmentionables piled up in our van—bras, panties, and the like. Take that as you will.

  NEIL ASPINALL: I never saw them enslave a single girl, but I made a point of staying out of that particular arena. I did, however, notice that they never pursued women, which to my mind means they were either totally uninterested or totally satisfied.

  BRIAN EPSTEIN: The only thing I ever told them about their offstage cavorting was to imagine that every move they made was being filmed. I’m not sure whether that encouraged or deterred them from creating slaves. But regardless of what they were doing, no ladies ever complained, so I let it be.

  In Under the Canal, Cosgrove and Worthson contend that mortal women remember nothing of their enslavement, and when it comes to the UK undead, Cosgrove and Worthson know of what they speak, and I trust their word implicitly. So when notorious zombie groupie Janette Wallace tracked me down and told me about her encounter with a nameless Brit rocker, I took it with a grain of salt. She might not have been telling the truth, but she delivered one helluva story, and even if it was a tad on the Harlequinish side, it’s worth recounting here.

  JANETTE WALLACE: When a boy zombie decides he wants to wrap you around his finger—and around his brain, and around his cock—the first time with him is dreamy. The, ehm, subject we’re talking about in this particular instance broke my zombie cherry, and it couldn’t have been sweeter. He touched me in ways I’ve never been touched, either before or since. I didn’t care that his finger detached and plunked in between my breasts or that he smelled like dirt or that two of his teeth snapped off in my mouth during our first encounter—and that he stopped to put them back in right before I was about to orgasm. None of that mattered, because my first experience with zombie love was so fun, so fun, so very, very fun.

  The enslavement itself is magical. When I was under his spell, every time he looked me in the eyes, I quivered all over and nothing else mattered. My being at his beck and call made things difficult at work, especially when his band went on tour and I couldn’t get my dustmen fix, but it was worth it … even when my boss told me to take a leave of absence until I, quote, got my shite together, unquote. What a heartless, soulless bastard he was. He didn’t understand zombie love. Poor him.

  I followed my undead lover all over Europe: Hamburg, Liverpool, Elgin, Dingwall, Aberdeen, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland, Croydon, everywhere. I ran out of money, and I got arrested twice, and after he released me from the spell, I was so out of sorts that I got thrown out of my apartment and had to move back in with my parents for a couple of months. But it was worth it.

  So for all you girls out there, if you ever have the opportunity to fook a zombie, fook him, and fook him good.

  PETE BEST: The writing had been on the wall since Paul gave me his “all for zombies, and zombies for all” talk right after I’d been hired. If I’d have let them zombify me, they might’ve kept me around. But I didn’t. So they didn’t.

  Brian sacked me in August. He was polite about it—Eppy was polite about everything—but I almost would’ve rather had John and Paul do the do. Yeah, I might’ve reacted angrily, and yeah, an angry reaction on my part might’ve led to my death or undeath, but at least there would’ve been closure. As it was, for the next eight years, I watched their shenanigans from the audience, just like everybody else in the fookin’ world.

  I suppose there’s really nothing else to say, is there?

  RINGO STARR: I honestly don’t remember who officially asked me to join the band. But I remember exactly what happened the day after the invite.

  GEORGE HARRISON: We’d all known Ringo for a good long while, and we all liked him, and he was one helluva drummer, so of course none of us wanted to hurt him. But we had to make sure that he was one of us.

  PAUL MCCARTNEY: It wasn’t like we were hazing him, y’know. The Beatles weren’t a fraternity. The Beatles were a rock band. Still, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

  JOHN LENNON: Ringo was a good bloke, but with a new guy, you never know. What if we were playing in, say, Scotland somewhere, and some marksman plugged George with a diamond bullet? Paul and me aren’t gonna want to immediately go after the guy—we’ve gotta save our own hides, and we’re talking about a marksman, after all—so we needed to find out whether Ringo had the skills necessary to defend both himself and the rest of the band, should the need arise.

  RINGO STARR: They took me down to the Cavern for a celebratory pint, and for, I dunno, three or four hours, we talked music, because music is what we all loved the most: Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, the Shadows, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Motown, and, of course, Elvis. John was saying how we were gonna take over the world and kept talking about Poppermost, whatever the hell that meant. Eventually, as always seems to be the case when someone’s first getting to know me, the conversation turned to Ninja.

  John was especially inquisitive, and he asked me in ten different ways what skills I possessed. I explained to him that I’d just become a Seventh Level Ninja Lord, and, as an example, I told him that one of the skills all Seventh Levels have to develop is virtual invisibility.

  George said, “Virtual invisibility? What level do you have to reach to be really invisible?”

  I said, “Fifty-second.”

  He said, “I was kidding, mate. People can’t become really invisible.”

  I said, “I wasn’t kidding. And yes, they can.”

  GEORGE HARRISON: And then the little fellow disappeared. Hell if I know how. One second, he’s sucking down some Guinness, then the next, his mug is empty … and so is his chair. Then, before any of us could say anything about anything, boom, he’s back.

  I said, “Bloody hell. If that’s virtual invisibility, what does the real thing look like?”

  He said, “Believe me, mate, you don’t want to be in a situation where that would be an issue.”

  RINGO STARR: I could tell John was impressed. He asked me what else I could do.

  I told him, “Well, there’s the obvious Ninja stuff, like the ability to move in utter silence without displacing air; or to hit a target with a shuriken from fifty meters; or to climb walls like a spider, then hang on to the ceiling with your fingertips; or to know thirty-six diffe
rent ways to kill a human being in under thirty seconds without leaving a single mark. You know, that sort of thing.”

  John said, “What about physical confrontation? How do you fight?”

  I said, “Anticipation is the key. That’s a big deal for me right now, anticipation, because if I want to become Eighth Level, I’ll have to pass a number of anticipation tests.”

  Paul said, “What the bloody hell are you talking about, Richie?” He looked to be three sheets, which surprised me, because I didn’t know zombies could get pissed.

  I said, “In a battle, I know what you’re gonna do three steps before you do it. I know where you’re gonna move before you do.”

  George said, “How do you take a test for that?”

  I said, “Dunno, really. You just do.”

  Then John guzzled half a pint in one swallow and said, “How’d you like to test us, Ringo, m’lad?”

  JOHN LENNON: I guess you could call it an initiation. The thought of an initiation was ridiculous, but it had to be done.

  Back when I wanted to kill and reanimate Stuart Sutcliffe, Paul would tell me time and again, “We need somebody in our group who has blood coursing through his veins.” I didn’t agree with him at the time, but I’d come around to his way of thinking. He convinced me that not everybody in the world could get behind an all-shuffler band.

  Also, we couldn’t have somebody in the drum chair who couldn’t handle himself, so we had to make sure.

  PAUL MCCARTNEY: That night, around three in the morning, we all met up at Calderstones Park. It was empty, which was just how we wanted it.

  GEORGE HARRISON: John and Paul wouldn’t let me participate. John’s reason was the same as it always was: “You’re too young.” So I watched.

  RINGO STARR: There’s no such thing as a Ninja uniform. Everybody thinks it’s that all-black deal with the hood and the mask, but the truth is, that comes from Kabuki. Modern Ninjas will wear anything from a white karate suit to a pair of blue jeans. Just for the fun of it, my first teacher, , sometimes wore a double-breasted suit to class. But that night, just for the fun of it, I wore my all-black deal.

  JOHN LENNON: Ringo is the least scary-looking person you’ll ever meet. He’s always smiling and cheerful and utterly nonthreatening. That is, until he puts on that Ninja suit. All of a sudden, Mr. Starkey transforms into a cat you don’t want to mess with.

  PAUL MCCARTNEY: I’d seen John have hundreds of punch-ups—hell, I’d fought him at least two dozen times myself—but I’d never seen him as nervous as he was when Ringo appeared out of nowhere.

  GEORGE HARRISON: I wish I could’ve videotaped the battle. The whole thing took about three minutes, and it happened so fast that I missed all of the details. It’d be nice to go back and watch it frame by frame.

  JOHN LENNON: It was two against one, but it may as well have been two against fifty, because Ringo used the trees as his defenders. He’d hide behind one, then when we’d spot him, he’d be behind another before we even had a chance to touch him. And then when he jumped up into the branches of this big oak tree and started leaping from one tree to another like Tarzan without a vine, forget it. We’d never seen that sort of skill, and we had no fookin’ chance.

  PAUL MCCARTNEY: While Ringo was whizzing about from tree to tree, I said to John, “We have to separate, y’know. We have to spread out. And we have to anticipate. Forget this zombie shite—it’s time to start thinking like a Ninja.”

  John said, “What do you mean, ‘think like a Ninja’? How in Jesus’ name do you think like a Ninja?”

  I said, “No clue. Let’s just get this little cunt. I haven’t stayed up this late since our last gig at the Kaiserkeller, and I’m knackered.”

  RINGO STARR: They never laid a finger on me, and I never laid a finger on them. made his philosophy very clear to me: never hurt a being—zombie or otherwise—in anger or jest, only in defense.

  Nonetheless, before we called it a night, while I was hiding at the top of the tallest tree in Calderstones, I zipped a shuriken at each of them and cut off their pants at the waist.

  GEORGE HARRISON: That was—and still is—the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. There’s Lennon and McCartney, in full attack mode, going nuts trying to find this little Ninja, and then zzzzzip, there’s Lennon and McCartney, standing in the middle of the park with their trousers and briefs around their ankles and their plonkers flapping about for the world to see.

  At that point, I yelled out, “Oi, Johnny, who’s too young to fight now?”

  JOHN LENNON: So I’m standing there with my pants on the ground, with my member shriveling up in the cold morning air. I looked over at Paul and said, “Well, I guess we’ve got ourselves a new drummer.”

  Rod Argent may not be a Ninja, but he is nonetheless a true warrior, a gent who’s been making music professionally since 1959, and when I spoke with him in August 2002, he showed no sign of slowing down.

  Back during the British Invasion’s halcyon years, Argent tasted a small dose of international success—not nearly as healthy a dose as fellow Invasioneers like the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Who, but he did okay for himself and his quintet. Some would say his band was just as interesting as any of the aforementioned units, and some might question why they never reached such dizzying heights, but as all rock fans know, it’s a crapshoot. Bad bands sometimes go platinum, and great bands sometimes never even get a record deal.

  Rod isn’t bitter—as noted, he’s a warrior, content to fight the good fight and take life one gig at a time—but there’s one topic that gets his dander up big-time, that topic being the zombification of the Beatles.

  You see, Rod Argent is the cofounder of the Zombies.

  ROD ARGENT: Everybody thinks we called ourselves the Zombies so we could ride the Beatles’ coattails, but for your information, we were the Zombies well before we ever heard of the Beatles. We’d been around since ’59, and since we were from St. Albans, those Liverpool brats wanted bugger-all to do with us, and that was fine. They had their thing, and we had ours. Still, there probably wouldn’t have been any problems between us if it wasn’t for that sodding article by sodding Bill Harry in sodding Mersey Beat.

  Bill Harry was one of Lennon’s school chums from that pretentious art school, and he started up an entire paper to follow the English music scene … such as it was. It was all very pro-Beatles, and he all but ignored every other up-and-coming band outside of Liverpool.

  I remember that sodding article word for word.

  The article of which Argent speaks was published in a September 1962 issue of Mersey Beat. Harry printed a limited number, so limited I couldn’t find a copy or find anybody who had a copy or find anybody who knew anybody who had a copy. So we’ll have to take Argent’s word for it. Rod’s recount of the article reflects MB’s typically breathless writing style, so Rod’s memory is probably solid.

  FAKE ZOMBIES VS. REAL ZOMBIES!!!

  The Beatles Go to Battle

  The Beatles, our beloved boys from Liverpool, are in the midst of the biggest controversy of their young career. It just so happens that a band from St. Albans has named themselves the Zombies, and, as anybody who has ever heard or seen them will tell you, they are not zombies!!! They are regular blokes who do not sound like the Beatles or look like the Beatles, and it is our belief that the Zombies christened themselves the Zombies to capitalize on the inevitable success of Liverpool’s favorite rockers.

  Not a single Zombie would comment. However, John Lennon told Mersey Beat, “If I ever run into one of those fake Zombies, I’m going to hurt him, and hurt him bad. Believe me, they’ll know what it’s like to deal with a real Zombie!”

  JOHN LENNON: I never said that. I didn’t want to hurt Argent. Besides, if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have announced it in the press … and you can thank Ringo for that. From the minute he joined the band, Ringo spent a lot of time preaching to us about the element of surprise.

  ROD ARGENT: That entire article was patently bullsh
it. The worst part of it was that Bill sodding Harry never tried to reach any of us; I’ll wager he didn’t even know any of our names.

  We were still struggling along when the Beatles started playing regularly at the Cavern Club. My bandmate Colin Blunstone and I would check them out every once in a while. The guys played the hell out of their instruments, and their vocal harmonies were mind-blowing, so we couldn’t deny their greatness, but from our perspective, it looked like they were using their zombie powers to build a base. In other words, they were either scaring people into liking them or hypnotizing people into liking them. That being the case, we felt they were giving zombies a bad name, thus they were giving the Zombies a bad name.

  We’d go play venues like the Playhouse in Manchester or the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton or the Palais Ballroom in Alder-shot, places that the Beatles had wreaked havoc upon at some point in the past couple of years, and the cats at these clubs would be frightened of us, because they thought we were honest-to-sod-ding-God zombies. Can you blame them? Imagine you’re working at a place where one of the guys in the zombie band that’d played there the week before gets mad at the soundman, but then murders the doorman. (That never made much sense to me, by the way; if you’re pissed at the soundman, kill the sodding soundman.) From then on, whenever you heard the word zombies, you’d probably want to pack it in. Until we proved to the world that we didn’t have the ability or desire to mangle our audience, getting work was a bitch.