Video: 'Popjournaal - Paul McCartney Arrest in Japan - 1980'

(Saturday, January 26, 1980) — Former Beatle Paul McCartney, deported from Japan for alleged possession of marijuana, arrived in Amsterdam today en route home to Britain.

“I did not realize drug laws were so severe over there,” said McCartney, who appeared none the worse for his 10 days in a Japanese jail cell. “I thought it was more like America.”

Asked why he was released, McCartney told reporters: “Don’t ask me. Ask them. They just told me I could get out.”

The singer told reporters he just wanted to “sleep and go home ” But Dutch immigration officials refused to let him enter the country and McCartney abandoned plans to get some sleep at a hotel near Schiphol Airport.

“McCartney was a deportee and the end of his trip is London,” an immigration official said. “It’s not Dutch policy to allow deportees in transit into the country.”

In London, McCartney’s spokesman said arrangements were being made for a private plane to pick up McCartney and his family in Amsterdam and fly them straight to their home in Peasmarsh in Sussex.

Spokesman Phil Fymes said McCartney’s wife was “shattered” by the trans-polar flight from Tokyo.

The 37-year-old superstar boarded a jetliner in Tokyo Friday after Japanese prosecutors decided to deport him instead of charging him with marijuana possession a charge that could have led to a seven-year prison sentence.

McCartney spoke briefly to a swarm of fans, reporters and photographers who saw him off on a Paris-bound Japan Air Lines plane that was to take him as far as Amsterdam.