Gimme Some Truth - the Rutles rumor "Dirk is deaf"

During the aforementioned time that I was at Reed College, my future roommate Bill Ansell had a radio show (before I did, actually). One day he spent a good deal of one of his shows playing Rutles tracks. We threw things at the radio station.

Despite this expression of opinion, I actually like the Rutles and its complete send-up of the Beatles, Beatlemania, and Beatlemaniamania. (Of course, George Harrison liked it too.) But I recently discovered that the jokes didn't end when Lorne Michaels and Eric Idle left the scene.

It turns out that the "Archaelogy" section of the Rutles' website includes the page New Rutles Rumor: Dirk Is Deaf. Inasmuch as Eric Idle - I mean Dirk McQuickly - didn't participate in Archaelogy, the issue had to be addressed. And it was, in a brilliant parody of all of the rumors that circulated about Paul McCartney in late 1969. An excerpt:

And, on the cover of the Shabby Road album, Dirk is crossing the road barefooted. He would obviously had not done this had he been able to hear people warning him that the asphalt would be hot and it would burn his feet.

See the rest here.