Paul McCartney in Japan 1980: drugs, jail, deportation

Introduction

On January 16, 1980, Paul McCartney was arrested in Tokyo, Japan. It was an immediate worldwide news event. It had a definite impact on McCartney’s career and the future of Wings.

Cannabis

Paul McCartney was never a high quantity drug user. He experimented with pills, maybe other powdered substances, but never in huge amounts and, as far as we know, he has never been an addict, like so many others during his lifetime.

However, from 1964 and onwards McCartney did develop a love for cannabis. This love was shared by his partner and wife Linda McCartney. McCartney was arrested for cannabis possession for the first time in 1972 in Sweden. After paying a fine the journey could be continued. Sometime later the McCartneys were confronted about growing cannabis on their property. In both cases the McCartneys argued they acted in good faith after receiving packages/gifts by fans. It’s highly probable the authorities had their doubts with the explanation, yet didn’t want to risk detention and the public fallout that would create, like it happend in 1967 with The Rolling Stones, leaving Mick Jagger as the moral winner in the eyes of the public. The McCartneys were arrested again in 1975 (in the US) and Linda McCartney took the blame, who was let go after after paying a fine.

Paul McCartney – Cannabis in the luggage

In 1975 Wings wanted to perform in Japan as part of their then current world tour. McCartney’s application for a visa was denied, because of his prior conviction for possession of cannabis in Sweden 1972. Four yeras later McCartney applied again (for the planned Wings tour in January 1980) and this time the application was granted.

Paul McCartney, wife and children and the Wings band members arrvied at Tokyo Narita Airport, Japan, on January 16, 1980. While checking the luggage, a customs officer discovered 219 grams of cannabis in McCartney’s suitcase.

World news, also in The Netherlands: Paul McCartney – de Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper) 01/17/1980

Arrest

McCartney was arrested, cuffed, questioned and, following a consult with the authorities, transferred to jail, where he was incarcerated as inmate #22. The other travellers were checked in at a local hotel. Japanese law for drugs possession and use were extremely strict, especially when compared to the way the issue was handled in Europe, and even in the US. In Japan posession could result in a (maximum) seven year penalty, consisting of jailtime and forced labor.

The day after the arrest Wings management announced the Japan tour, scheduled to take place from January 21st to February 2nd, was canceled. On January 21 the Wings band members left Japan for other destinations (which had seemingly annoyed McCartney).

Paul McCartney – Telegram George Harrison & Letter Lee Scratch Perry – 21-01-1980

Telegram & letter

That same day the McCartneys received a telegram from George Harrision, and a letter by reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry was delivered to the Japanese Ministry of Justice.

Telegram

Thinking of you all with love. Keep your spirits high. Nice to have you back home again soon. God bless. Love, George And Olivia

Telegram George Harrison, 01/21/1980

Letter

Dear Sirs,

I LEE PIPECOCK JACKSON PERRY would LOVE to express my concern over your consideration of one quarter kilo to be an excessive amount of herbs in the case as it pertains to master PAUL McCARTNEY.

As a creator of nature’s LOVE, light, life and all things under the creation sun, positive feelings through songs, good times and no problems. I find the Herbal powers of marijuana in its widely recognized abilities to relax, calm and generate positive feeling a must.

Herbs is his Majesty’s. All singers positive directions and liberty Irrations. Please do not consider the amount of herbs involved excessive.

Master PAUL McCARTNEY’s intentions are positive.

Letter Lee “Scratch” Perry, 01/21/1980

Paul McCartney – Het Parool (Dutch newspaper) 01/26/1980

Release

On January 25, 1980, Paul McCartney was released from jail and deported out of the country. As was the case with his arrest, his release was news all over the world as well. The Japanese prosecutor stated that McCartney had taken the marijuana with him for personal use and that he had been punished enough. At 4:00 PM McCartney walked out of the police station. Around an hour later he was back at the airport. He was reunited with his family after boarding the plane.

On January 26, 1980, the plane from Japan landed at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, Holland. Even though McCartney was denied access to the country, he was interviewed by Dutch television:

What happened ?
I was in jail for 10 days, didn’t you hear it?

Yes indeed… How did you get out?
How I did get out… Walking on foot.

What did the authorities do?
They dropped the charges.

Why?
Don’t ask me, ask them.

Don’t you know?
Yeah, it was because it was not considered… (pausing)… l don’t know. They just told me today that I get out…

Any idea of the consequences on the whole thing?
How do you mean?

Financially…
Yeah, you know…it’s a bit of a drag financially and stuff.

Do you think you’ll ever go back to Japan?
I don’t know.

You want to go?
Maybe… I’m not sure.

You left disappointed fans over there.
True but I’m disappointed too, so that makes two of us.

Isn’t it usual that somebody else carries the drugs for you into the country?
No, do you do that?

No, but that’s what I heard.
You hear a lot of things in the newspapers that aren’t true….and on TV.

How was your treatment in jail?
It was okay, it was not bad but it was a drag being in there.

Last question, what are you going to do now?
Sleep….and go home.

Paul McCartney – Press moment Waterfall Estate, Woodlands Farm, Essex 01/27/1980

Home

After a short stop McCartney left for England and subsequently went on their way home. He wrote his story down in a manuscript, which he titled Japanese Jailbird. It has been claimed the manuscript contained around 20,000 words. McCartney never took the story publicly. At the time he stated he wrote it for himself and his children, who had witnessed the ordeal up-close. In 2014 it became common knowledge that McCartney’s children had each received a copy of Japanese Jailbird and that the manuscript can not be published in McCartney’s lifetime.

Look back

On February 20, 1980, Rolling Stone magazine published an article/interview, written by Caroline Dale and Paul Gambaccini.

“This sceptered isle has never looked so good. I have never appreciated so much being able to walk in the woods and breathe English air.”

The speaker was neither Wordsworth nor Keats, but Paul McCartney. Prisoner “22” was happy to be home on his eight-acre farm in Sussex after spending almost ten days in a Japanese detention cell. The ex-Beatle had been arrested on January 16th by customs officers at Tokyo International airport for carrying almost 220 grams of marijuana – worth about $2000 on the Tokyo streets.

McCartney, now the world’s most famous pot smoker, was deported by Japan and flown to England via Anchorage and Amsterdam. He had hoped to spend a day or two resting in Holland [!], but Dutch authorities considered McCartney a deportee in transit and would not let him leave the airport transfer area (although they welcomed him to return after first touching English soil). He then flew by private jet to Lydd Airport in the County of Kent, just across the English Channel and near the family farm.

Though McCartney was, in fact, a deportee, his legal team seemed glad deportation was the worst of his troubles. “We were so lucky,” McCartney’s lawyer in Japan, Tasuku Matsuo, kept repeating after Paul left that country.

Japanese law is not known for its lenient treatment of drug offenders. And although McCartney spent time in jail and Wings was forced to cancel its long-awaited tour of Japan, in the end the Tokyo district prosecutor released him and rid him of all criminal charges. Since he was deported without charge or conviction, he should be able to enter the U.S. without difficulty.

The prosecutor’s decision was reportedly based on McCartney’s inadequate information on the legal status of marijuana in Japan and the prosecutor’s judgement that the detention and concert cancellation were ample punishment. Some speculated that an indictment was simply more trouble than a deportation. Matsuo said an important factor was McCartney’s claim that the marijuana found in his suitcase was for his personal use.

But according to John Eastman, McCartney’s lawyer and brother-in-law, Paul was deported because his visa was lifted when he was arrested and he was technically an illegal alien. Eastman had flown to Japan from New York to help sort out the complex legal problems facing McCartney and Wings.

After the arrest, the district prosecutor had ordered McCartney detained at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department while he decided what legal course to take. About fifty fans, mostly high school girls, kept vigil outside the station, singing Beatles and Wings songs and calling “Poru, Poru.”

“At first I thought it was barbaric,” said McCartney, back in England, about his time in jail. “I was woken up at six in the morning, then had to sit cross-legged for a roll-call. It was like ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’. They shouted out “22” in Japanese, and I had to shout back, “Hai.”

“I became matey with a chap next door,” McCartney told the London Daily Mirror. “He could speak a bit of English. Funnily enough, he was inside for smuggling pot.”

McCartney sang with the five prisoners with whom he shared a communal bath, working up renditions of “When the Red, Red Robin,” “Take this Hammer,” and, upon his mates’ special request, “Yesterday.”

But he spent most of his time alone in a four-man cell or answering questions about his case from officials of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, Health, and Justice. At night, he slept on a Japanese-stye mattress. Although officials denied his request for a guitar, or pen and paper to use for writing songs, they did allow McCartney to follow his vegetarian diet. He was even able to buy extra fruit and vegetables from the police.

According to Matsuo, Linda McCartney was visited her husband twice, and the couple amused the guards by pretending to kiss and touch hands through the glass that separated them. While detained, McCartney made a paper-clip wedding ring, since his real one was confiscated. “It’s the sort of gesture Linda and I will look back on rather romantically,” he said. The ten-day separation was the longest McCartney and his wife had been apart since their marriage almost eleven years ago. “It was terribly hard for Linda and it was terribly hard for me.”

In Japan, Linda took the couple’s four children around Tokyo and shopped for food to make vegetarian sandwiches, which she delivered to the police station daily. (McCartney responded by sending bouquets of flowers to his wife via Matsuo.) Linda spoke to the press once with Matsuo, Eastman and British promoter Harvey Goldsmith, appearing relaxed and vowing not to leave Paul alone in Japan, even if it meant waiting for years.

Also falling victim to the bust, of course, was Wings’ tour of Japan. The band had been scheduled to play eleven concerts, and around 90,000 were sold within a few days. For Udo Artists, the Japanese tour promoters, the affair turned into what one spokesman described as a “nightmare.” Udo claimed losses of about $2.5 million from the tour’s cancellation.

“Paul paid Udo every penny they were owed,” said Eastman, once back in New York; he would not reveal just how much that was. “Everyone involved with the tour was fully compensated. No one lost any money, except, of course, Paul. And nobody had to wait for their money. It was all taken care of before Paul left Japan.” (McCartney told Eastman he would still like to tour Japan if officials allow him to return.)

As for whether the affair gave McCartney second thoughts about marijuana, he said, “Yeah, and third. The whole thing was too severe. Marijuana is not as dangerous as some people make it. A lot of people, especially younger people, know that. In America, even president Carter, when asked, said he favored decriminalization. We’re all on drugs, cigarettes, whisky. I was in jail for ten days, but I didn’t go crazy because I wasn’t able to have marijuana. I can take it or leave it.”

But McCartney told the London Sun, “I was really scared thinking I might be in prison for so long…and now I have made up my mind never to touch the stuff again. From now on, all I’m going to smoke is straightforward fags. No more pot.”

Some people thought McCartney had provided a bad example for his young fans. Bertram Parker, head of Paul’s old school, the Liverpool Institute for Boys, was quoted saying so in the English press. Asked about the criticism, McCartney said, “They’ve been saying that about me for years. I have always been accused of setting bad examples. I think a lot of people set worse examples, like governments. They set an incredibly bad example.”

McCartney’s ordeal was an immediate sideshow in Britain. The day after his arrest, he was frontpage news on every tabloid, taking up the entire lead page of the Daily Mail. PAUL IN CHAINS, the headline screamed, above a picture of the handcuffed musician. Television reports from Japan were broadcast nightly.

In Japan, the national press reacted to the case with varying degrees of ridicule. McCartney was generally portrayed as either too ignorant to know the severity of Japanese drug laws or too arrogant to care about them. But if the Japanese dailies showed little sympathy, the weekly gossip magazines seemed downright anti-Paul. “Our Hero Betrayed Us,” read one headline.

Eastman, however, had nothing but kind words for the Japanese. “They’re very decent and civilized people. They wanted everyone to save face.”

Despite the mass interest in both countries, however, there was little public action in either. The Wings fan club in Japan collected a thousand signatures demanding McCartney’s release. A few pro-Paul fans turned up at the deserted Budokan on the night of the scheduled concert and annonced to reporters they were refusing a refund and keeping their tickets as a symbolic gesture. Although English fans were less demonstrative, McCartney’s release sent a wave of relief through the country. The London Sunday Times ran a front-page cartoon of a smiling politician saying, “Thank goodness something went right this week.”

The last word, though, must be McCartney’s. “All I want to do now is get home,” he reportedly said on the plane from Japan, “and hear the grass grow.”

Caroline Dale & Paul Gambaccini, Rolling Stone, 28-02-1980

The final remark is kind of funny, as cannabis is often referred to as “grass”. It’s not sure whether or not McCartney used the remark as a double entendre. What is sure though, is that his cannabis days were far from over. According to several sources McCartney stopped using cannabis after the birth of his fourth child, in 2003.

Paul McCartney – Japanese press 1980

Why?

Given the problems he had had with gaining access to the country in 1975 and the strict laws in place, why on earth would McCartney bring along the cannabis in the first place, let alone that amount? He has iterated on numerous occasions that he wasn’t aware of the strict laws, which isn’t a believable statement at all.

Maybe McCartney felt he was above the law, because of his Beatles past? Or is it that Yoko Ono tipped of the Japanese authorities, a complete bogus story that had some momentum? Or was McCartney subconsciously sabotaging Wings, the group he had doubts on and didn’t give him energy anymore? This presented him with the perfect excuse to speed up the process of disbanding Wings.

The closing words are McCartney’s:

Well, to this day I have no idea what made me do it. I don’t know if it was just arrogance or what. Maybe I thought that they wouldn’t open my suitcase… I can’t put myself back into that mindset now.

I could almost persuade myself I was framed. I don’t think I was, but when you see the news footage – the guy opens the suitcase and there, right on top… It’s like a pop-up book – here, check this!

It was the maddest thing in my life – to go into Japan, which has a seven-year hard labour penalty for pot, and be so free and easy. I put a bloody great bag of the stuff right on the top of my suitcase. Why didn’t I even hide it in a pullover? I look at the footage now, and I just think, ‘That couldn’t have been me’

Paul McCartney, Wingspan, 2002

Paul McCartney – Arrival/transfer Schiphol Amsterdam 01/26/1980

Throughout my life, I’ve had a few of those “Oh dear, Oh God!” moments when I’ve gone too far and paid the price. I’m like some bloody Liverpool sailor that’s been to all these ports and brought back all these parrots. I’ve seen and done a lot of things and I feel good about most of it. I feel a bit stupid about some of it. Getting busted in Japan was right up there in terms of stupidity.

I was out in New York and I had all this really good grass. Excellent stuff. We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything to smoke over there. This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet. So I thought I’d take it with me. I was so warned against doing it. But I thought, “What the hell!” I was incredibly cavalier about the whole thing. In America, President Carter had come out and said he thought cannabis should be decriminalised. Maybe I was thinking, “Hey, it’s no big deal.” In my mind, I was only doing what everyone else was doing. It was like everyone was nicking sweets from the school tuck shop and I happened to be the one who got my collar felt.

Looking back, it’s not too wonderful being banged up in a Japanese jail. When I first arrived I was thinking, “This is a storm in a teacup, I’ll be out in no time.” Then the British Vice-Consul told me I could get seven years of hard labour. That’s when it got extremely worrying. I couldn’t sleep for the first three days. It was five days before Linda was allowed to visit me and I’d never spent a night apart from her since we’d married. It was pretty rough. Just a thin mattress on the floor. I had to wash using water from the toilet cistern. I had to share a bath with a bloke who was in for murder. I was afraid to take my suit off in case I got raped. But I’d seen all those prisoner-of-war movies and I knew you had to keep your spirits up. So I’d organise sing-songs with the other prisoners.

I had no idea at the time what the reaction around the world was. Some of it was obviously disapproving. But there was also a bit of, “Hello, Paul’s been a naughty boy, good for him.” For me, the most stupid thing about it all was that I put other people at risk. I’m the Liverpool sailor, right? It’s OK if I get nobbled in Morocco – I can handle that. But I’m married with kids and getting nobbled in Morocco – that just won’t do. Without doubt, it was the daftest thing I’ve done in my entire life.

Of course, it’s now one of the things I’m remembered for. Just the other day, I went for a walk on my own in the Hollywood Hills. This bunch of teenagers passed by me. One t of them turned to me and said, “Hey, Macca, you’re the man! Fancy joining us for a smoke?” To me, it’s a huge compliment that a bunch of kids think I might be up to smoke a bit of dope with them.

Paul McCartney, UNCUT magazine interview, juli 2004

For those who just can’t get enough, here’s a compilation video of 1980 reports.