Their drummer, Terry Draper, talks to me from his lake-side home a few miles outside of Toronto; a property he was able to buy, in part, thanks to a spurious piece of journalism by an employee at The Providence Journal.

The story goes that in August of that year Klaatu released their debut album, ‘3.47 EST’. The record’s artwork contained no pictures of the band and no writing credits. It was a completely anonymous work, which quickly became synonymous with the most famous band in the world.

“Our mandate was to let the music speak for itself,” Draper tells me. “It’s not about who plays the drums or who does the vocals, it’s all about the finished product and the records were made with that in mind.”

In this case the finished product, an album that had already met with positive reviews for its Beatles-cum-Beach Boys style arrangements, ended up in the offices of the Rhode Island newspaper, where an employee named Steve Smith took it home. Smith attempted to find out who was responsible for the music, but found that Capitol Records were unwilling to release the names. With his curiosity spiked he conducted some research, put one and one together, and came up with four — a very famous four. He went on to publish an article suggesting that Klaatu was in fact The Beatles.

“At the time we were in England recording the London Philharmonic Orchestra on our second album,” Draper recalls. “We just thought, ‘well, that’s kind of interesting. Let’s get back to work now.’ It was just an aside.”

What started as an aside didn't stay that way for long, however. “That headline went around the world and we started selling around 20,000 records a day in the U.S. It was quite outrageous. We got back to Toronto in early March and I knew that there was going to be some fallout.”

Looking back over Smith’s article it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how the story gained traction. It contains the kind of wild speculation that can be found in any other piece of conspiratorial literature on The Beatles. He mentions that the word ‘Klaatu’ can mean ‘been here before’, discusses uses of ‘secrecy’, ‘underground’, ‘renewal’, and ‘revival’ in the album’s lyrics, and even makes claim that the record contains thematic elements related to ‘magic’, ‘mystery’, and ‘touring’. Later articles released by factions of the media would allow this speculation to snowball, with increasingly bizarre theories being put forward by those desperate to believe.

“You have to understand that everybody, including me, wanted The Beatles to get back together in the early 70s,” continues Draper. “It was part of the public consciousness. And so when somebody suggested it was possible…I mean, I watched Ed Sullivan that night in 1964 along with the rest of the world when I was a twelve year old boy, and I decided then and there to learn to play the drums. Their power cannot be overstated.

“There’s other songs on our first album that sound more like Pink Floyd to me, and other songs that sound nothing like the Beatles. But, the public believes what it wants to believe, and there’s no getting around it.”

Years later the band members would discover that Steve Smith wasn't even a journalist. This, it happens, was the only article he ever published.