If you’re a Beatles fan under 40, you may not know the story of Paul McCartney’s infamous 1980 arrest and jail time in Tokyo, Japan. But if you watch to the end of the new Paul McCartney documentary, Man on the Run—which began streaming on Prime Video today—you’ll get the full, juicy story of that time the world’s most famous rock star spent nine days in a jail cell, for carrying a bag of marijuana in his luggage.
Directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), and executive produced by McCartney and Caitrin Rogers, Man on the Run takes viewers through the years directly after the Beatles broke up in 1969, when McCartney launched his solo career, and formed a new band, Wings, with his wife Linda McCartney. The film ends in 1980, a year that started with McCartney and Wings, flying to Tokyo for a week-long tour in Japan.
“Everyone said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t take any pot into Japan. Seven years hard labor.’ But we were in New York, and we had this pot,” a present-day McCartney says in a voice over interview from the film. “Oops.”
When Paul and Linda arrived at at Tokyo International Airport on January 16, 1980, a customs officer searched their carry-on bag and pulled out a bag of marijuana, roughly the size of a softball. McCartney was detained at the airport and arrested on a smuggling charge. Less than 12 hours later, the tour was canceled and McCartney was relegated to a 4-by-8 cell in a Tokyo jail.
“There are times in your life where you just think, ‘OK, you’re an idiot.’ And that’s one of them,” McCartney says in the documentary. “I was an idiot. I was in a little cell, on my own. I was Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. First night I didn’t sleep. Third night, I had a blinding headache all night. Just not wanting to be in there. I was being told I might be in there seven years.”
McCartney was plagued by thoughts of his wife, Linda, and their four children, Heather, Mary, Stella, and James.
“We hadn’t been separated at all, since we’d been married,” McCartney says. “I had visions of her, and the kids, just growing up outside Tokyo.”
Thankfully, McCartney was released after just nine days in jail. Rather than being held for trial, McCartney was asked to leave Japan, which, as once can imagine, he was all too happy to do. Less than a week later, he got to work on recording his second solo album (without the Beatles, and without Wings), McCartney II. Though he made no formal announcement, the arrest saw the end of the Wings era.
“I used to imagine, the best possible thing I could imagine, would be sitting under my oak tree in my garden,” McCartney said of his time in jail. “That was absolutely the height of bliss. You don’t cherish all of those moments unless they are taken away from you. It was one of the point where I thought, ‘Wait a minute. If I ever get out of here, do I really want to be doing what I’m doing?'”
As the present-day McCartney reflected, “It was liberation for me. You don’t have to be that Paul McCartney fellow that we expect all the time.”
