Paul McCartney’s arrival at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport on January 16, 1980, marked his first visit to Japan since the Beatles tour of 1966. The occasion was a planned 11-city concert tour by his band Wings. Instead, Paul’s visit was limited to a nine-day stint in the Tokyo Narcotics Detention Center, which ended on January 25, 1980.
McCartney was found to be carrying nearly half a pound of marijuana in his baggage upon arrival at Narita—an amount that Paul would later assure Japanese authorities was intended solely for his personal use. The amount was large enough, however, to warrant a smuggling charge and a potential seven-year prison sentence. Given Japan’s reputation for rigorous enforcement of its strict anti-drug laws, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that McCartney would escape trial and possible imprisonment, yet he was released and quickly deported from Japan on January 25, 1980, prior to making any appearance in court.
That a celebrity of McCartney’s stature would avoid the consequences that a less-famous drug smuggler might have faced was hardly surprising. After all, who could blame Japanese authorities for applying a double-standard to a prisoner whose sing-alongs inside the jailhouse and screaming fans outside threatened to create a significant distraction from the normal workings of the justice system? The question that troubled the minds of observers at the time was, “What was Paul thinking?” Half a pound of marijuana was a prodigious amount for one man to carry around for personal use—particularly a man who had had reason to expect especially close examination of his person and his baggage by Japanese customs officials. After all, Paul had been denied a Japanese entry visa just five years earlier due to his numerous earlier drug arrests in Europe.
Twenty years after his 1980 arrest, Paul would opine that his psychological motivation may have been to find an excuse to disband Wings, which he in fact did immediately following his return to England. In another interview, however, Sir Paul offered an explanation that may be the more compelling for its simplicity: “We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything to smoke over there,” McCartney said in 2004. “This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I’d take it with me.”
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Billy Shears liked his weed.
Yup…
Hey y’all, that’s not Paul McCartney, but it on sure does look (kinda) like him.
Two of the three remaining Beatles have been (((helped along))) in shuffling off this mortal coil because they wanted to expose Paul’s death.
And Ringo will joke about it, but You better believe he will keep quiet, unless it’s a death bed confession about what happened….
Stranger things have happened!!!
Just look at the last two years!!!
He appears none the worse for wear despite the incarceration or the weed. What a wonderful world we live in where pot heads can be Knighted by the Queen of England !
Chaos is the greatest tool in Deep Shekel’s toolbox.
Given that Zappa was, by numerous accounts, a rigidly authoritarian control-freak and a supporter of U.S. military actions in Southeast Asia, it is perhaps not surprising that he would not feel a kinship with the youth movement that he helped nurture. And it is probably safe to say that Frank’s dad also had little regard for the youth culture of the 1960s, given that Francis Zappa was, in case you were wondering, a chemical warfare specialist assigned to – where else? – the Edgewood Arsenal. Edgewood is, of course, the longtime home of America’s chemical warfare program, as well as a facility frequently cited as being deeply enmeshed in MK-ULTRA operations. Curiously enough, Frank Zappa literally grew up at the Edgewood Arsenal, having lived the first seven years of his life in military housing on the grounds of the facility. The family later moved to Lancaster, California, near Edwards Air Force Base, where Francis Zappa continued to busy himself with doing classified work for the military/intelligence complex. His son, meanwhile, prepped himself to become an icon of the peace & love crowd. Again, nothing unusual about that, I suppose.
Zappa’s manager, by the way, is a shadowy character by the name of Herb Cohen, who had come out to L.A. from the Bronx with his brother Mutt just before the music and club scene began heating up. Cohen, a former U.S. Marine, had spent a few years traveling the world before his arrival on the Laurel Canyon scene. Those travels, curiously, had taken him to the Congo in 1961, at the very time that leftist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was being tortured and killed by our very own CIA. Not to worry though; according to one of Zappa’s biographers, Cohen wasn’t in the Congo on some kind of nefarious intelligence mission. No, he was there, believe it or not, to supply arms to Lumumba “in defiance of the CIA.” Because, you know, that is the kind of thing that globetrotting ex-Marines did in those days (as we’ll see soon enough when we take a look at another Laurel Canyonluminary).
Who cleaned this massive flop house…the mommas and poppas ?
I always thought a personality such as Zappa would require some “experimental” LSD usage. The sunshine state certainly provided that and having grown up around MK-ULTRA lunatics, there you have it, Zappa a different kind of kook.
Moving to Montana soon
Gonna be a dental floss tycoon
A half a pound for a road trip! That was either some low grade shit (highly doubtful), or Paul had passed out of the realm of “experimentation” and into full blown field research !
At least we now know the long term effects of heavy use…you’ll get rich, laid, stoned and knighted by the Lizard King. Dude…pass the bong. Don’t be Bogarting my success!
Free Willie.
That girl he married that beat him over the head with her wooden leg, now she did not put up with any crap.
Paul McCartney Steals Ex- Wife Heather Mills Fake Leg
I don’t even recall the woman with the fake leg. I was never into the hype surrounding celebrities, just listened to the music and the Beatles were not that marvelous IMO. Cream, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, many others I had rather listened to back then.
–Paul offered an explanation that may be the more compelling for its simplicity: “We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything to smoke over there,” McCartney said in 2004.–
Wasn’t it the suicide Yapanese Zero pilots that would load up smoking opium before flying to their death? Different deal but I’m betting within “culture” Paul could have landed some opium in Yapan. Maybe not.
Every day.
Who has a shit to give about this?