The Untold Truth Of Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney has always seemed like the most innocent Beatle — he doesn't even eat meat, and he's still spry enough to regularly perform even as he gets older. It's a little surprising, then, that McCartney was the first Beatle to enjoy drugs.

In an August 1964 meeting of minds, Bob Dylan hung out with the Beatles in a New York hotel and casually offered the Fab Four some marijuana. He thought it was no big deal, as John Lennon sang, "I get high" in their hit "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The lyric is actually "I can't hide," but hey, it would be rude to refuse, so each Beatle tried Dylan's joint. Only McCartney was blown away, remarking that pot got him "thinking for the first time, really thinking." As the Beatles' music got more druggy and experimental as the '60s wore on, marijuana explicitly influenced McCartney's songwriting. He's called "Got to Get You into My Life" an "ode to pot," for example.

Okay, so a lot of Baby Boomers smoked herb back in the groovy, far-out '60s, many moved on and stopped partaking of the illegal drug as they got older and evolved into yuppies. Not McCartney, who remained a loyal consumer of the sticky icky for decades. Sometime in the past few years, however, the "Let Me Roll It" singer hung up his rolling papers. "I don't do it anymore," he told the Mirror in 2015. "Why? The truth is I don't really want to set an example to my kids and grandkids. It's now a parent thing." He added that he now unwinds with "a glass of red wine or a nice margarita" like he was Jimmy Buffett or something.

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