Sir Paul McCartney said he and then-Beatles drummer Pete Best were arrested and deported from Germany in the early 1960s after setting fire to a condom nailed to a wall in their Hamburg lodgings, per unilad.com.
He was speaking on Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg on Friday, May 29.
McCartney, 82, recounted the incident during the interview while discussing his new album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, his first in over five years.
The event occurred in the early 1960s when McCartney and Best were living in poor conditions at the Bambi Kino, a run-down cinema in Hamburg. The band were performing at the Kaiserkeller club at the time.
Describing the accommodation as “dingy, cement walls… terrible”, McCartney said the pair set fire to a condom as “an act of defiance” while leaving the lodgings. Best produced the condom, nailed it to the wall, and they lit it.
Both the Bambi Kino and the Kaiserkeller were owned by promoter Bruno Koschmider. According to the 1998 biography Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now by Barry Miles, Koschmider reported McCartney and Best for attempted arson.
The pair spent three hours in a local jail before being deported to England. Best, now 84, was dismissed from the Beatles in 1962 and replaced by Ringo Starr, making the Hamburg period one of his last stints with the group.
McCartney’s new album draws on his Liverpool childhood, his late parents, and early years with John Lennon and George Harrison. “People say, ‘Well, why do you still write songs?’ And it’s just because I love it. I’m addicted,” he told the New York Times.
The Beatles undertook several residencies in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962, playing extended sets in the city’s clubs. The period is widely regarded as formative for the group’s live performance and musical development before they achieved international fame.
•Featured images: Paul McCartney/Getty Images