![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Paul-McCartney-Musician-1970s-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Wed 20 August 2025 23:00, UK <\/p>\n
In my local pub quiz, there was recently a picture round on celebrity mugshots. It\u2019s where I learned that young Frank Sinatra was actually quite good-looking, and that Mick Jagger had once been behind bars. But a picture you wouldn\u2019t expect to see there is Paul McCartney<\/a>. <\/p>\n Mention the word Japan to the former Beatle and you\u2019re likely to send a shiver down his spine, as the memory<\/a> of his brush with criminality in the country will forever haunt him \u2013 mainly because it was all his own fault. I mean, who would be stupid enough to flagrantly put marijuana in your suitcase without making any attempt to hide it? <\/p>\n Macca, that\u2019s who. It was early 1980, and he was still flying high \u2013 literally and metaphorically \u2013 with Wings when the band headed from America to Japan to tour. But after years of smoking pot and getting away with it, let\u2019s just say McCartney had lost sight of the fact that the substance was actually illegal. As such, when his suitcase was pulled aside for a security check in Tokyo\u2019s Narita International Airport and a 7.7-ounce bag was found in between his T-shirts and souvenirs, the authorities weren\u2019t exactly fooled.\u00a0<\/p>\n Subsequently, the mega star was roundly bundled into a police car and sent straight to prison, where he was terrifyingly informed that he could be facing up to a decade behind bars. Talk about a career going down the pan. Naturally, McCartney was torn to shreds as the world\u2019s media went into a tailspin. But the odd thing is, the jail life allows you to escape from all of that, and for the first time in a long time, he truly had no identity. This was not a Beatle, this was inmate #22. <\/p>\n In a converse way to what was intended, McCartney rather seemed to enjoy the jailbird lifestyle \u2013 fitting in with the fellow cons and taking part in a daily routine of activities with a newfound sense of anonymity. Of course, everyone else on the outside was less than impressed. Linda was up in arms, his lawyers were fighting valiantly against the Japanese authorities who would not budge, and his bandmate turned nemesis, John Lennon, was hardly sympathetic<\/a> to the news. <\/p>\n \u201cIf he really needs weed, surely there\u2019s enough people who can carry it for him,\u201d Lennon reportedly told his housekeeper upon catching wind of the convict\u2019s antics. \u201cYou\u2019re a Beatle, boy, a Beatle. Your face is in every damn corner of the planet. How could you have been so stupid?\u201d To be fair to him, McCartney was not blind to the error of his ways, as he later responded to speculation that he had been framed by admitting, \u201cI think I was just stupid. And I paid the penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be real \u2013 Macca was never going to spend ten years in jail, not least because of the burden he would cause to the Japanese state to ensure his security. In total, his sentence amounted to nine days before his lawyers had won the case to set him free, but it did cost him the tour and possibly the future of Wings in the process. <\/p>\n But you wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the man never wanted to return to the fated country again, not least by the less than welcome reception he would inevitably receive from the airport security upon arrival. Yet undeterred, Macca did come back, first in 1990 on a solo tour, and then numerous times in the decades since. The essential difference is that on all those other occasions, his stash of weed was most definitely left at home.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Wed 20 August 2025 23:00, UK In my local pub quiz, there was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,11693,16,15,28702],"class_list":{"0":"post-360769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-paul-mccartney","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-wings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115064006729575752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}