But did you also know that Eric Clapton was so overcome with euphoria after stealing his first kiss from Pattie Boyd (who at the time was married to his best friend, George Harrison) that he took a corner too fast one dark evening in the Surrey countryside and was killed instantly when his Ferrari careened off the road and into a tree?
Did you also know that after a night of heavy drinking with members of the Band in Woodstock, New York, Van Morrison caught a ride home with Richard Manuel, but as Morrison was getting out of Manuel’s vehicle, he slipped on a patch of black ice, hit his head on the pavement, and lost consciousness, which would explain why he did not cry for help as an unsuspecting Manuel backed his car over him?
Did you also know that Stevie Wonder was sitting in the passenger seat of a Mercury Cruiser, riding to a show in North Carolina and listening to the recently released Innervisions on a pair of bulky headphones when a flatbed lumber truck just ahead on the highway braked suddenly, causing a log to shake loose from the truck’s mooring chain and tumble free, and by the time it burst through the Cruiser’s windshield and crushed Stevie Wonder’s skull as the final notes of “He’s Misstra Know It All” played in his otherwise oblivious ears, this blunt rod of timber had gained the speed, lethality, and fatal certainty of a missile?
Did you also know that when Joni Mitchell played Court and Spark for Bob Dylan for the first time, he fell asleep and never woke up again?
Did you know that every single one of them was replaced by a body double? That these doddering pop legends are actually impostors in disguise who sometimes veer wildly off their carefully prepared scripts? Wouldn’t this explain why Eric Clapton sometimes goes off on half-cocked rants about immigrants or vaccines and why Van Morrison periodically smashes his own band members’ instruments or chases journalists through the streets of Belfast? Why Stevie Wonder occasionally forgets that he’s supposed to be blind, like the time at the White House when he reflexively reached out and grabbed a teetering microphone stand that Paul McCartney’s body double bumped during a performance of “Hey Jude”? Why Bob Dylan often performs in masks or heavy makeup, or why his vocal inflections and singing style change so often? And why Joni Mitchell, in recent interviews, has taken to calling Dylan a “fraud” and a “plagiarist”—because she understands better than anyone that the person and persona we have all been calling “Bob Dylan” is a lie?
But shouldn’t we cut these body doubles a little slack? Would you allow yourself to be ripped away from your family, your friends, and your safe humdrum existence just because your file in some multinational entertainment conglomerate’s secret database (developed with the cooperation and support of the FBI, the CIA, and the Freemasons) had been flagged as bearing a more-than-passing resemblance to a no-longer-living legend? Could you handle all those hours in the makeup chair, all those guitar and piano and vocal lessons, and all the ducking into and out of limousines without constantly hitting your head on the door frame? Would you feel famous, or would you feel guilty, like you’d cheated your way to the top, ascended to global fame on a technicality? Would you get paranoid when the online fever swamps spread rumors that you were a body double—here’s the proof, look at the jawline in these photos, then note the way the beauty mark moves around the right cheek?—or would you be self-possessed (to the extent that an impostor can be self-possessed) enough to breathe a sigh of relief, because you knew full well that all the hothouse whispers just added padding to your mystique? And what about your love life? Do you think you’d chase groupies, or would you be a serial monogamist? Would you ever miss your old life? Do you think they’d let you visit your loved ones, and how do you think these clandestine meetings would go? Would they take place in deserted parking lots, dark loading docks, or nondescript industrial parks? Would you embrace clumsily, under the watchful eye of your security detail, and make small, inconsequential chit-chat with the people who eased you, as best they could, into the world? Would your dad make awkward statements like you know, I used to have sideburns like that in the 70s? Would your mother, wet-eyed but not crying, not exactly, mutter observations like you’ve put on weight, without it ever being clear whether she considered that a good or a bad thing? As you talked, would you notice your parents looking at you in a certain way, as if they were trying to peer into you, trying to see past your tinted contact lenses, the lifts in your snakeskin boots, the hidden Spanx straightening your spine and smoothing out your problem areas? Would you wonder whether they were trying to figure out if you, or some essence of you, was still in there somewhere? Would they succeed in locating the elemental and molecular you beneath the layers of fictions? Would you find yourself growing uncomfortable, and fall back on the comfort of your old bad habits, like tugging at your facial hair, popping your knuckles, or scratching at non-existent itches? Would a gust of wind kick up, reminding you of just how cold it could get here, and would you begin shivering because your existence had narrowed to leather-covered back seats, opulent hotel rooms, and cavernous performance venues, and thus you never wore a coat because you hardly ventured outdoors anymore? Would you start checking your Patek Phillipe watch, and would your mom and dad get the hint and lean in for awkward hugs, clammy handshakes, and surprisingly painful pats on the back?
And after you parted ways, you to your idling tour bus, your parents to the hood of their family station wagon to scrawl their signatures on the latest sheaf of non-disclosure agreements, what unasked questions would still linger in the air between you, the way that ancient regrets linger like trapped smoke in empty dive bars? Questions like, Do you buy your own groceries? How many assistants do you have, and are you treating them politely? Was that stint in rehab real, or was it focus-grouped? Was that you providing rambling answers to all those interview questions in Rolling Stone, or was it your public relations firm? Did you see the edits we made to your Wikipedia page? When you’re up there singing, are you lip-syncing? Do you ever trick yourself into thinking that the audience is cheering for you, the real you? Do you—the real you—lurk just beneath the surface of this unwieldy bodily form, or do you perhaps perceive the real you more of a tiny pilot guiding a lurching craft? Do you consider your costume armor, or a hair shirt? Do you believe, in your heart of hearts, that this is what you were born to do? Have you prepared a living will, or do you feel ever-so-slightly immortal? When you attend our funerals, will you be in disguise? What if—God forbid—you die first? Do you still believe in an afterlife, and if not, when did you stop? Do you ever think back to the times your dad used to play his Sgt. Pepper cassette tape on long car trips? Do you remember how Mom would fast forward through “Within You Without You” because the sitars made her nervous? Do you remember how, for literal years, you thought that “Billy Shears” was a real person, a real member of the Beatles? Do you remember how disappointed you were when Dad finally told you that “Billy Shears” didn’t exist, that he was just plain old Ringo? Do you remember Dad also telling you that a sizable faction of Beatles fans had convinced themselves that Paul had been replaced by a body double named “Billy Shears” and the band invented this character as a cheeky swipe at the conspiracists? Are you now going to tell us that Billy Shears is, in fact, a real person, a former nightclub singer from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, who looked enough like a long-lost twin brother of the late Paul McCartney that all he had to do was let his mustache grow out, and that he admitted as much to you after two and a half shared pitchers of “Macca-ritas” during a Grammy Awards afterparty at the Beverly Hilton some years back? Would you say that Billy is viewed as something of a legend in your particular and peculiar line of work, and were you a little bit in awe of him the entire evening? Do you consider Billy a peer, or is it more of a mentor-mentee type of relationship? Would you describe Billy as a laid-back, lovely chap, particularly once you get to know him? If so, the next time you cross paths with Billy, would you mind telling him that he’s welcome to stop by our house whenever he comes through town? That he can hog our hot tub for as long as he wants? That he and your dad can grill burgers out on the back porch on the new Traeger? That he can shoot baskets on the goal above the garage until it gets dark and the mosquitoes start to come out? Would you do that for us? Would you tell Billy that he has a standing invitation? And would it be okay with you if we let him sleep in your old bedroom?
