McCartney Very, Very Scary in Japanese Jail

[superjoint]

By Paul Majendie
Source: Reuters

Paul McCartney, speaking for the first time in 21 years about the drug bust that sent him to jail, admitted it was "very, very scary" in
his Japanese cell. McCartney hardly slept and had terrible dreams during the nine days he spent in jail after being arrested at Tokyo
airport in 1980 when customs officers seized marijuana from his suitcase.

His arrest was a disaster for the former Beatle -- it led to the breakup of his band Wings and cost him one million pounds in
compensation to the group's Japanese tour organiser.

"I was thrown into nine days of turmoil in that Japanese jail," McCartney recalled in a new documentary about Wings, the group he formed with his
late wife Linda after the Beatles disbanded.

"It was very, very scary for the first three days. I don't think I slept very much at all. And when I did sleep I had very bad dreams," he told his
daughter Mary in the interview being screened next month.

He confessed: "I don't know what possessed me to just stick this bloody great bag of grass in my suitcase. Thinking back on it, it almost makes me
shudder."

McCartney, who was first told that he faced seven years hard labour for what he had done, passed his time in prison on "cigarette breaks" when he
was allowed to talk to fellow inmates.

They included a Marxist student and "a guy who was in for murder, a gangster guy, he had a big tattoo on his back, which is the sign of the gangsters
in Japan."

To pass the time, he started playing a game which he had played with his fellow Beatles at the Abbey Road studios in London.

"It was who can touch the highest part of the wall. Of course, because I was taller than all of the other prisoners as they were Japanese, I tended to
win the game," he said.

The two-hour film, which took three years to make, will be launched on American television on May 11 and then broadcast around the world. It
includes previously unscreened home movie footage of Paul and Linda, who died of breast cancer in 1998.

Alongside the film, a double CD featuring 40 songs by Wings will be released.

One of their greatest hits was "Mull of Kintyre" which topped the British charts for nine weeks in 1977 -- but many music critics felt the band was a
pale successor to the Beatles.

Source: Reuters
Author: Paul Majendie
Published: April 24, 2001
Copyright: 2001 Reuters Unlimited