IStella McCartney was just a young girl when, in 1980, her father, Paul, was famously busted with nearly half a pound of marijuana in Japan \u2014 but she wasn\u2019t surprised.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember [the guard] opening up that suitcase, and I remember him picking up a pillowcase worth of skunk weed,\u201d the fashion designer recalls in her dad\u2019s new oral history, \u201cWings: The Story of a Band on the Run,\u201d (Liveright, out now). \u201cEven a nine-year-old could have hidden skunk weed better than my parents. But they were like, \u2018It was too good to leave behind.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul McCartney was busted with nearly half a pound of marijuana in his suitcase in Japan in 1980. AP<\/p>\n
The book portrays Paul\u2019s chaotic decade following the Beatles break up in 1970 as he struggled to figure out who he was beyond the Fab Four. Macca was often stoned \u2014\u00a0so much so that at one point, he was too far gone to meet Bob Marley. He and wife Linda formed Wings and took the band, and the kids on the road, sometimes not even bothering to book tour dates. Instead, one of the most famous musicians in the world would show up at colleges and ask if his new band could play.<\/p>\n
At their first gig, in Nottingham in 1972, one attendee, Brian Pearson, recalls \u201cLinda playing keyboards and singing surrounded by an entourage of babies and young children.\u201d<\/p>\n
The band had 11 original songs at that point for a set of about 33 minutes, remembers McCartney, who refused to play any Beatles songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey wanted longer, so we repeated things,\u201d he writes in the book, which was edited by Ted Widmer. <\/p>\n
Amazingly, not every college they approached worked out, even for an ex-Beatle.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter Nottingham, we decided to ring Leeds ahead, but it never came off because the fellow wanted a contract, proof of who we were, assurances. So, sod it!\u201d McCartney recalls. \u201cWe carried on to York. They couldn\u2019t give us the big hall, so we took the dining hall.\u201d<\/p>\n
His daughter, Stella McCartney, recounts the story in a new oral history. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Attempting a show in Cardiff, they were refused because the hall there was being used for a badminton match.<\/p>\n
In the city of Hull, McCartney got the full extent of just how deeply they were roughing it.<\/p>\n
Staying at what Linda called \u201ca third-rate hotel,\u201d the entourage was approached by the night manager.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis little bald fellow came up to us and said, \u2018Does one of you people own that black and white dog?\u2019\u201d Wings\u2019 drummer Denny Seiwell recalls in the book.<\/p>\n
\u201cWings: The Story of a Band on the Run,\u201d is out now. <\/p>\n
\u201cPaul goes, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s my dog, Lucky. Why?\u2019 [And the manager says], \u2018Well, he shat in the hall. You\u2019re gonna have to clean this up.\u2019 So Paul went and cleaned it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another huge difference between being a Beatle and being in Wings was the critical reception. <\/p>\n
Nineteen seventy-one\u2019s \u201cRAM,\u201d the only album credited to Paul and Linda McCartney, was torn apart by critics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jon Landau, writing in Rolling Stone, dubbed it \u201cthe nadir in the decomposition of sixties rock thus far.\u201d And England\u2019s New Musical Express called it, \u201can excursion into almost unrelieved tedium\u201d with \u201cnot one worthwhile or lasting piece of music.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul and Linda McCartney hit the road with their band, sometimes not even bothering with tour dates. Getty Images<\/p>\n
McCartney seemed to mostly disregard the pans, claiming, \u201cI\u2019ve learned not to care what they say,\u201d sometimes he couldn\u2019t ignore them.<\/p>\n
After an English journalist wrote a horrible review of a Wings show he hadn\u2019t actually seen, he and Linda took nasty revenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cStella was a baby at the time,\u201d Seiwell says in the book. \u201cSo Paul and Linda took one of those little plastic soap dishes from the hotel we were in and they got one of Stella\u2019s turds, put it in the soap dish, wrapped it up and sent it to him.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Paul\u2019s infamous arrest came at the start of what was to be a tour around Japan for Wings. Instead, the musician got to know the inside of a cellblock. <\/p>\n
Critics tore apart Wings, but McCartney did his best to ignore them. Getty Images<\/p>\n
He spent nine days in a Tokyo prison. Until the very last day, he was facing the possibility of spending seven years there doing manual labor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the maddest thing in my life,\u201d McCartney writes.<\/p>\n
Inside, the legendary Beatle was treated like any other prisoner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d be woken up at six in the morning and I\u2019d have to roll up my thin mattress which I\u2019d been sleeping on, on this cold floor in an unheated cell,\u201d McCartney writes. \u201cI had to clean the cell with a wet cloth and wash myself in the water from the cistern at the back of the flush toilet \u2014 they let us have one bath a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
The band had limited material to fill out a set in the early days, but McCartney refused to play Beatles songs. Robert Ellis\/ MPL Communications Ltd<\/p>\n
He had to share a bath with a convicted murderer, keeping his clothes on for fear of being sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n
His fellow inmates tried teaching him a few Japanese words, but the communication attempts devolved to them gleefully shouting brand names at each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say, \u2018Toyota!\u2019 They would go, \u2018Toyota! Toyota!\u2019 And then I\u2019d hear them laughing,\u201d McCartney writes. \u201cThen they\u2019d go, \u2018Rolls Royce!\u2019 I go, \u2018Rolls Royce!\u2019 I\u2019d hear them all applaud. You had to do something, or [you would] go mad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life on the road with Wings was far less fab than being a Beatle. Clive Arrowsmith\/ MPL Communications Ltd<\/p>\n
Paul was eventually released after more than a week thanks to the efforts of Linda\u2019s lawyer brother, John Eastman.<\/p>\n
Aside from creative struggles and a prison stint, Paul\u2019s post-Beatles life also involved fraught relationships with his former bandmates. <\/p>\n
In February 1971, he had to sue them in order to dissolve their legal partnership.<\/p>\n
Linda and Paul packed the weed that got Paul busted because \u201cit was too good to leave behind.\u201d Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cTo this day, it\u2019s one of the most difficult decisions I\u2019ve ever had to make: Could I really sue The Beatles? These were my childhood friends,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n
After the lawsuit \u2014 a successful attempt to separate the band from its final manager, Allen Klein, who, McCartney alleges, inflated his commissions \u2014 there was the question of how to reconcile with his estranged best friend, John Lennon.<\/p>\n
The two had been publicly sniping at each other for years. McCartney finally lowered the temperature with 1971\u2019s \u201cDear Friend,\u201d a song from Wings that included the line, \u201cI\u2019m in love with a friend of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of 1971, they reunited in New York. Their awkwardness quickly melted away, and the songwriting pair remembered why they had been so close.<\/p>\n
McCartney and John Lennon (pictured with Yoko Ono) reunited at the end of 1971 after years of sparring publicly. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get to talking and the vibe is right, and it\u2019s great,\u201d McCartney remembers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
John and Yoko present him with a gift: a bootleg record of The Beatles\u2019 original Decca audition in 1962. The UK label had infamously passed on the band.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of those moments where you remember why you were such great friends in the first place,\u201d he remembers. \u201c[John] wrote on there: \u2018They were a good group. Fancy turning THIS down!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IStella McCartney was just a young girl when, in 1980, her father, Paul, was famously busted with nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,15763,6149,216,13501,118900,13979],"class_list":{"0":"post-283950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-john-lennon","11":"tag-marijuana","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-paul-mccartney","14":"tag-stella-mccartney","15":"tag-the-beatles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}