The greatest hoax in music history
- aimeeelkington153
- 13 minutes ago
- 8 min read
This album hoaxed nearly the entire music press into thinking the Beatles had either secretly reunited, or been completely ripped off. And the strangest part is… the band behind it never actually said a word.
And for the record, they weren't actually trying to be the Beatles.. but it came back to haunt them anyway.
It's 1976, and the world had been without the Beatles for six or so years. All the members were happily doing their own thing. A reunion was probably the greatest fantasy in music at the time. And with absolutely no sign of one happening, people grabbed onto the tiniest whispers as if they were gospel. And blew them completely out of proportion. It was Beatle Mania, without the fix. The fans were in severe withdrawal. Then out of nowhere, a mysterious album appeared.
It was called 3:47 EST. The cover had no band photos, no song writing credits, and no producer credits.. Nothing. Just a shining sunburst and the word Klaatu. That was it. Imagine picking up a record in the 70s and finding… nothing. Not even a hint about who made it.
I think it's a really clever marketing move. The scene was full of instantly recognisable figures. You picked up an album, and said 'oh this is so and so'. So this complete mystery was instant intrigue - confusion is a short step away from interest.
The album didn’t chart or make any waves. But it actually did receive some pretty good reviews. It seemed like it would be another one of those albums that was actually pretty good, but just didn't get noticed.
Then an American journalist heard it.
Steve Smith from the Providence Journal came across it quite by chance. In those days, the Journal would get a bunch of albums every month to be reviewed. The big names or up and comers would always get grabbed first, and the rest went into a pile. Anyone who needed something to write about was welcome to go through it.
Smith was intrigued by this strangely blank album cover - see, it did work - and sat down to have a listen.
And he immediately felt everything was just a little too familiar.
The vocals sometimes sounded eerily like that Paul and John combo. The harmonies landed just right.
Even the drum fills had a certain Ringo Starr flavour, and the way the guitars clicked in was just uncanny. At least to Smith.
Even the song writing had that kind of psychedelic feel from the Beatles’ late 60s period. Smith felt like he was listening to unheard Abbey Road sessions. He sat there listening to this unknown band, and thought... this isn't unknown. I know who this is.
And let's not forget this detail: the album came from Capitol Records… which also just happened to be the Beatles’ American label.
So like a good journalist, he did his due diligence and started digging. He got in touch with capitol records and found... nothing. Smith told Classic Rock in 2025:
“Capitol told me they didn’t know anything. I didn’t believe them. You don’t just sign a band blind. They said they’d signed these guys through Frank Davies, who’d released them on Daffodil Records in Canada.”
The most he could get out of them was from producer Frank Davies, who signed them. He said that he'd heard two or three of their songs whilst working with Daffodil records, and decided to bring them over to the big label in the states. He played their stuff to Capitol, and they agreed straight away.
Hmm. Interesting. It's not usually that easy.
The further he dug, the more evidence he found - and I'll get more into that in a sec. It seemed like all the signs were confirming his suspicions. Either this was the Beatles in disguise, some new configuration with Beatles members, or someone ripping off the Beatles completely.
And so with no one telling him otherwise, he wrote this speculative article:
'Could Klaatu be Beatles? Mystery is a magical tour.'
Now given the impact it eventually had on Klaatu's career, some people might point the finger at Smith as a bit of a pot stirrer, coming after a new band.
But I don't think that's really the case. He was a journalist, digging into a story and believing he'd found something worth writing about. Which was literally his job.
I don't think he was coming after anybody.
Anyway, the column suggested that Klaatu might actually be the Beatles working in secret. And with no evidence to the contrary, people simply believed him. It spread like wildfire.
In fact, the evidence he did have looked pretty convincing. First, there were the similarities in the vocals and the music, which Smith insisted were impossible to ignore.
But to be honest... I don't think it is. Yes, it's similar, for sure. There's no denying that. But exactly the same? I don't know. Let's take Sub-Rosa Subway, which Smith particularly fingered as Beatles-esque.
Alright, fair enough, it is. But exactly the same? I don't know. Let's listen to one of the closest Beatles release to the date, Let It Be.
Now I'll give it to Mr. Smith, the nice little drum fill in Sub-Rosa Subway before dropping into the chorus, that is very Ringo. It just is. But Ringo Starr and the Beatles didn't invent that. They were great at it, and used it a lot. But just because a band is good at something, doesn't mean the one next to them who are also good at it - almost definitely inspired by it - are them.
That's music. I mean, Oasis were massively influenced by the Beatles. They covered the Beatles, a lot. How many times have you heard their drums do that little stutter step before the chorus?
No one confused them for the Beatles. Because they had their name and faces everywhere. People did accuse them of ripping them off though.
The point I'm trying to make though is that similarity is not the same as the original. And for me, the vocals on the Klaatu song and the Beatles song are just clearly two different voices.
Similar, yes - because the Beatles were THE BEATLES. Anyone with half a lick of sense who wrote music in that genre would sound at least a little bit like them. Especially if the Beatles themselves weren't doing it.
But this is the power of the media, and a hungry audience. It's SO easy to influence people. And again, I don't think Smith was doing this out of any sort of malice. He believed it, so he wrote it.
And as I said, he felt like he had compelling evidence. This one is actually pretty believable, if you squint a bit. And it was the 70's. People were... squinting a lot.
In 1974, Ringo Star released a solo album called Goodnight Vienna. It had the drummer standing in the doorway of the spaceship from the 1951 film The Day The Earth Stood Still, next to the giant robot and dressed in the outfit that Michael Rennie wore as his character in the film... Klaatu.
Yeah, okay. If I was digging around for evidence that the Beatles were secretly releasing music under an alias, I would run with that too.
And to be honest, Frank Davies had a bit of a role to play here too.. because when Smith asked him about this evidence point blank, Davies didn't discourage him. He told Smith he was 'pretty accurate'.
Why? He told Classic Rock:
“I was definitely playing coy! By this time the album had been out six months. We did have some great press on it, but it had only sold seven or eight thousand copies in the US. We’d reached a point where we thought the first album was over, and the band had already started working on the second, which was shaping up beautifully. Then Steve’s story was published and all hell broke loose sales-wise.”
So basically, he was very cheekily helping Smith stir that pot, to generate some interest around the album. He probably didn't envision how far it would run.
Radio stations started playing the album non-stop, particularly the track Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, which in fairness is very Beatles-esque.
Some DJs openly introduced the songs as being by the Beatles using an alias. Others said it might be a reunion between some of the members. A few even wondered if it could be leftover Beatles recordings from the late 60s that Capitol had quietly polished and released.
The rumour grew so fast that many listeners didn’t even question it.
And in fairness, why would they? The idea that the Beatles might be experimenting, or seeing if their music could still make waves without their name attached, was appealing enough that people convinced themselves it was true. And this is my take on it - people hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see. It's called confirmation bias, and it’s a powerful thing.
The world was hungry for more Beatles. Klaatu sounded like them, were an unknown mystery, and people had ‘convincing’ evidence, or a lack of evidence to the contrary. The story writes itself.
Capitol didn’t deny it either. And you can probably understand why. The album began selling like crazy. They had already told Smith Klaatu weren’t the Beatles. Why should they stop the train?
Meanwhile, the real members of Klaatu were back home in Canada, quietly watching this madness unfold.
They were three musicians from Toronto: John Woloschuk, Terry Draper, and Dee Long. All talented multi-instrumentalists, and fans of experimental pop and the classic Beatles sound. They had taken inspiration from the Beatles, certainly, but not in a derivative way. More like enthusiastic students.
And they never once claimed to be the Beatles. They never dropped cryptic messages or references. The whole rumour machine existed entirely outside of them.
The band’s manager even said later that they deliberately kept their identities hidden simply because they liked the idea of anonymity, and wanted the songs judged on musical merit rather than personality.
The band have since backed this up. Woloschuk told Classic Rock:
“We were three unknown guys from Toronto and didn’t want the focus to be on us as individuals. We really wanted the music to be the focal point.”
In fact, some fans recall the first pressings of the album didn’t even feature the name Klaatu - that this came after the mix-up. The strangest twist in all this is that Klaatu’s second album suffered because of the first rumour. Expectations were impossibly high. People expected the new Beatles, or the Beatles reborn. And when they discovered it was simply a solid but normal album by a band from Toronto, the fascination faded almost overnight.
The rumour had made them famous, but it also boxed them in. How could three unknowns compete with the belief that they were secretly the greatest band in the world?Some people sneered at them for even trying - even though they never set out to.
But by the late 70s, the bubble had burst. The third and fourth albums couldn’t recapture the spark caused by the mysterious debut.
They were no longer a mysterious nameless collective. They were just Klaatu. And sadly, the industry moved on. Draper revealed to Classic Rock in 2018:
“When people found out we weren’t The Beatles, they thought we’d perpetrated the rumour and duped them. And that came back to haunt us.”
It’s a reminder of the power of suggestion and imagination in music. One anonymous record sleeve was enough to make the world believe in something that never was. All people needed was the slightest possibility, a hint of familiarity, and complete silence from the people who could have ended the speculation immediately. It was the perfect storm.
The band made music they believed in. A journalist listened to it and got swept up in the excitement. And millions of listeners allowed themselves to believe that their favourite band might have secretly returned. It’s such a shame that it had a negative impact on Klaatu’s career. They were a solid band, and still loved by their fanbase. But the shadow of being ‘not the Beatles' hung over them.
But for a brief moment, a mysterious Canadian band created the most convincing musical illusion in history, simply by saying nothing at all.
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