The First Beatle To Spend Significant Time in Jail Might Surprise You, Although He'd Argue
Of the four distinct personalities that comprised The Beatles, the one largely regarded as the most clean-cut, straight-laced, and the kind of guy you’d be willing to introduce to your parents was the “cute” one, Sir Paul McCartney. Yet, in an ironic twist of events, McCartney was the first Beatle to spend a significant time in jail over drug possession. Of course, it wasn’t the charge that was remarkable—everyone but Ringo Starr had already had run-ins with the police over drugs by 1980. But Macca was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
More specifically, the musical legend behind hits like “Blackbird”, “Helter Skelter”, and “Yesterday” was at the Tokyo International Airport while on tour with his band Wings. The musicians had recently been in the States, and while there, McCartney had amassed an, er, significant collection of marijuana. Not wanting to waste his stash, McCartney quickly threw it into his carry-on luggage and went through airport security.
As McCartney described it, “When the fellow pulled it out of the suitcase, he looked more embarrassed than me,” per Performing Songwriter. “I think he just wanted to put it back in and forget the whole thing, you know. But there it was.” And indeed, there it was.
Paul McCartney Spent Just Over a Week in a Tokyo Prison
While marijuana certainly wasn’t legal in the United States in 1980, legal punishment for possession was much more lax in the U.S. than in Japan. Airport security officials arrested McCartney on the spot and escorted him to the Drug Supervisory Center for interrogation. From there, police took McCartney to the Tokyo Narcotics Detention Center, where he was given the descriptor “Inmate No. 22.” Japanese drug laws meant that McCartney was facing up to seven years of hard labor. He managed to get out in nine days on good behavior (and super-mega-rockstar status), though he was banned from Japan for years.
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
