Beatles drummer Ringo Starr changed his tune about drugs in the '70s when he adopted Hoyt Axton's "The No-No Song" as his official 12-step anthem. "No, no, no, no, I don't smoke it no more," he sang about marijuana. "I'm tired of waking up on the floor."
But the goofy Beatle has done an about-face. In the latest issue of The Big Issue magazine, Starr stated, "Why don't they just make it all legal? I don't think the campaigns of the government in this country or America are doing anything. I think it's an absolute waste of resources, the way they're going about it. You go to clubs, everybody's taking stuff, that's how it is. Most lawyers have inhaled, they've had a joint, they've had a snort, they've had a drink. Then they carry on with their lives.
"The downside of all that, like Jimi Hendrix, is we have lost a lot of musicians," Starr added. "But any law wouldn't have stopped him taking it."
Starr has gone through several rehabs, the last of which was in 1988 after a drug and drink-fueled fight with his ex-wife. "I'm glad I'm still vertical," he said. "A lot of people don't make it. It's easy for me to sit with you and reminisce, but it's a very chancy life you take when you take drugs and alcohol."
Starr's comments come at a time of soul-searching in England about the viability of drug prohibition. A year ago, the new legalization campaign there won support from, among others, Virgin Records president Richard Branson, musician/producer Brian Eno, film directors Mike Leigh and Peter Greenaway, and Sir Paul McCartney.
Starr's fellow Beatle, who has been arrested numerous times for marijuana, told New Statesman magazine: "I support decriminalization. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminals is wrong. When I was jailed in Japan for having pot [in 1980], there was no attempt at rehabilitation. They just stuck me in a box for nine days. Decriminalization would take the sting out of the issue."
In 1990, McCartney told HIGH TIMES: "I favor the decriminalization of it. I think you've got too many people who get into it innocently and become criminals. The minute you're caught and the minute you go in the slammer you learn worse tricks. Scotch and stuff is legal and pot isn't. I think at that point there probably is a good argument for decriminalization."
In Many Years from Now, the McCartney biography written by Barry Miles and published by Henry Holt last year, McCartney traced the origins of his longtime affection for marijuana:
"We'd met Dylan and we got into pot, like a lot of people from our generation. And I suppose in our way we thought this was a little more grown up than perhaps the Scotch and Coke we'd been into before then.... Once pot was established as part of the curriculum you started to get a bit more surreal material coming from us, a bit more abstract stuff. It was just the first time I'd been exposed to all these new influences and had the time and inclination to bother with them all. I always have to give marijuana credit for that."
While Beatles songs like "A Little Help from My Friends" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" have long been considered pro-drug classics, McCartney told Miles that "Got to Get You into My Life" was "entirely about pot.
"I'd been a rather straight working-class lad but when we started to get into pot it seemed to me to be quite uplifting. It didn't seem to have too many side effects like alcohol or some other stuff, like pills, which I pretty much kept off. I kind of liked marijuana. I didn't have a hard time with it and to me it was mind-expanding, literally mind-expanding. So 'Got to Get You into My Life' is really a song about that, it's not to a person, it's actually about pot. It's saying, 'I'm going to do this. This is not a bad idea.' So it's actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret.
"It wouldn't be the first time in history someone's done it, but in my case it was the first flush of pot. I haven't really changed my opinion too much except, if anyone asks me for real advice, it would be stay straight. That is actually the best way. But in a stressful world I still would say that pot was one of the best tranquilizing drugs; I have drunk and smoked pot and of the two I think pot is less harmful. People tend to fall asleep on it rather than go and commit murder, so it's always seemed to me a benign one. In my own mind, I've always likened it to the peace pipe of the Indians. Westerners used to call it 'native tobacco.' In the '60s, we all thought this was what they were smoking."
Perhaps Paul and Ringo can pass the pipe again now, just like old times.
