Klaatu / Hope

1976 and 1977 albums from Klaatu, originally released on Capitol Records; both made the US charts (to No.32 and No.83 respectively) The story goes that The Beatles had recorded an album in 1966 which was to be the follow up to Revolver, but the master tapes had been lost. This was also when Paul McCartney had supposedly died in a car crash, so the remaining trio recruited McCartney-lookalike Billy Shears, and with him recorded the Sergeant Pepper album. In 1975, the lost tapes were rediscovered and Lennon, Harrison, Starr and Shears decided to release the album as a tribute to their dead bass player. And if you believe that The thing was that the whole Klaatu project was anonymous, so there were many theories about who it could be. The fact that it was all a record company hype, designed to produce maximum publicity for an unknown act, only became clear later. Klaatus single Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft was a huge worldwide hit for the Carpenters, whose version reached the UK Top 10 and the US Top 40