SPASTIC PHONO BAND – “Wings Under Japan” (1980 7″ single, Slipped Disc Records)
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT – 45 years ago…
[Editor’s note: the authors of this report have asked to retain their anonymity.]
The year: The harsh winter of 1980, remembered for its deep cold and snow. In the realm of popular music, all four Beatles were still alive, even though the band had been broken up for a decade. One of the Beatles soon found themselves in a wee bit of trouble. This trouble would spill all over the world news, causing rippling effects and ramifications far beyond the shores of England, for that winter in New York State, a band would go on to record a song….
The Beatle in trouble was the still-babyfaced Paul McCartney. It was no secret that he was already known for enjoying the green leaf. Back in 1972, McCartney was arrested in Sweden for possession of Lady Ganja. He was released without charges at that time, but his reputation was now cemented. McCartney wanted to book a Japanese tour in the mid-70s, but the country was very strict about illegal substances and refused Paul permission to play. The fans in Japan would have to do without.
Finally, in 1980, Japan had a change of heart and granted permission for Paul McCartney and Wings to tour in the Land of the Rising Sun.
He just needed to make sure he packed appropriately for the trip.
Paul McCartney is an undisputed musical genius. His songs will last 100 years. That does not mean that Paul always used his head. Despite the scrutiny he was bound to experience upon entering Japan, he decided to bring a stash with him. He was arrested upon discovery at the Narita Airport with 220 grams of Hawaiian green. Reportedly, he didn’t even attempt to hide the electric lettuce, just packing it in his carry-on bag with his clothing. Paul subsequently spent 10 days in the keiji shisetsu (刑務施設); actually the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Teenage girls numbering about 50 serenaded the station during Prisoner 22’s incarceration.
Unfortunately for Paul, the nature of this arrest and jailing far away from home meant headlines all over the world. “PAUL IN CHAINS” and “EX-BEATLE ARRESTED IN JAPAN” went the articles, along with a photo of McCartney being escorted by Japanese officials. It was huge news, especially in the UK where it became a bit of a media circus.
The judge in the case determined that McCartney brought the drugs for personal use and not trafficking, and decided that Paul had spent enough time in jail. He was taken to the airport, and flown to Holland, where he was (perhaps surprisingly) refused entry. He still had time for a chat with the press.
“How did you get out?” asked the reporter.
“Walking on foot,” answered Paul in typical cheeky Beatle humour.
The experience was “a drag” for Paul. “I was woken up at six in the morning, then had to sit cross-legged for a roll-call. It was like Bridge on the River Kwai. They shouted out ’22’ in Japanese, and I had to shout back, ‘Hai!'”
The 11 date Japanese tour was cancelled at the cost of 2.5 million dollars and 90,000 tickets.
Did he learn from his experience?
“Now I have made up my mind never to touch the stuff again. From now on, all I’m going to smoke is straightforward [cigarettes]. No more pot.” He later acknowledged his own stupidity. “Well, to this day I have no idea what made me do it. I don’t know if it was just arrogance or what. Maybe I thought that they wouldn’t open my suitcase. I can’t put myself back into that mindset now…to this day I have no idea what made me do it.”
Over in America, shortly after shoveling out from a massive dumping of overnight snow, a young songwriter named “Vic Trola” was inspired to write a song. At least that’s how the credits read on the actual record. A recent online theory postulated that “Vic Trola” was indeed a pseudonym, but these writings are mostly found in conspiracy theory discussions. A fringe group that splintered off the main conspiracy theory group added that “Vic” was short for “Victoria”, not “Victor” as previously assumed. These theories are largely dismissed by the other groups. Our own extensive research has failed to unearth any other compositions written by Trola; just the one that you are reading about today. We do know, thanks to documents obtained in the process of researching this article, that after catching their breath from shoveling the drive on that cold winter day, Trola went inside and began writing. The surviving notes from Vic Trola’s respirologist confirm these facts.
Vic Trola’s song, as it evolved into its final form, was the product of on-stage gigging by the mysterious Spastic Phono Band, and that is where our story really begins. Though their names are now lost to time, and their relationship to Vic Trola is clouded, we do know that they consisted of a tight rhythm section. Both the drummer and bassist were exceptional. They boasted a dual guitar configuration, and multiple lead singers including one female vocalist who appears prominently on their sole recording called “Wings Under Japan”.
The Spastic Phono Band had experience. They had already been working on a set of originals and comedic covers. Favourite hits by Santana and the Might Zep were endowed with new witty words, and they found an audience who shared their sense of musical comicality. Encouraged by the audience reception to these songs, the Spastic Phono Band turned their attention to the hot news of the day: Paul’s arrest in Japan. Presumably with Vic Trola’s lyrical input, they started playing bits of his Beatles and Wings hits in a medley. Egged on by the crowd, and adding throwaway lyrics here and there, the song “sort of wrote itself”, according to a maraca player who claims to have been there at the time (and requested complete anonymity). It took only three or four shows for the song to come together as we know it today. The Paul medley became an instant live hit. The crowds ate it up. They learned the words, sang along and shouted for more! Clearly, the song needed to be recorded in a studio, and put out on a record.
Unfortunately for the band and Vic Trola, who were based out of Liverpool (New York, pop. 2400), there were few studios around within the reasonable driving distance of a beaten-up touring van. Their studio of choice would be unavailable for three weeks, and time was of the essence. The Paul story was hot now, not later! Even if they recorded the song immediately, it would have to be mastered and pressed at a record plant, meaning they had to act immediately. The scarcity of nearby studios presented a challenge. Would these young musical minds be able to publish their Paul pastiche in time?
As they used to say, the Spastic Phono Band let their fingers do the walking: They picked up the phone and eventually connected to something that somehow passed as a recording studio. The old schoolhouse that they booked was certainly was not conceived as a studio when it was built in the last decade of the 1800s. The top floor housed the recording space, but in a decidedly inconvenient design and safety choice, it was only accessible via an outdoor fire escape. All the band’s equipment had to be hauled up the emergency exit: drum after drum after drum, followed by amp after amp. Bags were passed from vehicle to musician and up the fire escape, which wobbled with every tentative step. Also, it was winter. Members of the band were not sure if they were going to survive the combination of snow and ice, metal steps, and gravity. To our great fortune, they did.
The studio owner was also the engineer, and his soul still lived in the 1950s. He didn’t grasp the nuance, or understand the Spastic Phono Band’s particular brand of humour. He did, however, have a friendly personality and got along with the band. A good sounding record began to take shape on tape. The band nicknamed the engineer “Eddie”, a reference to a classic Leave It To Beaver character, Eddie Haskell. Eddie’s studio had all the necessary equipment (minus an elevator). He even had an ARP synthesizer which can be heard on two segments of the recording: “Silly Drug Laws“ and “Banned in Japan”. Though the band did not have the budget to spend more time in the studio to do some further work on the guitars, the band climbed down the fire escape holding in their mittens a reel-to-reel tape of their hard-earned work. Physicists specializing in the behaviour of water at low temperatures speculate that the tape was almost dropped once on the way down, but saved from an icy fate in the snow.
The schoolhouse was demolished in 2025 at 131 years old.
Though recorded, the song still had to be mastered and cut to vinyl. With time slipping away, and Paul McCartney finally starting to experience a decline in the media frenzy over his Japanese vacation in the big house, the Spastic Phono Band were in an ever-increasing time crunch. Their song, heavily dependent on McCartney’s imprint in the public consciousness, had to make its way to a physical record that you could buy. Their preferred manufacturer was fully booked and the band could not wait any longer. The track was complete, mixed and ready to be mastered…but where?
Through furious searching and some tense bidding on eBay, we have obtained some of the logs, unfortunately anonymous, detailing the following sequence of events of the recording:
Monday.
Tempus is fugiting. Much to our dismay, the cute Beatle’s troubles in the Far East are rapidly becoming old news. Also with windchill, it is about four degrees today.
The Paul story was soon displaced by other current events. The Iranian Revolution made fresh headlines, and soon came the hostage crisis. Front pages were dominated by the tense 444 day crisis, during which 66 Americans were held hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran. As it happens, another band in the same area as the Spastic Phono Band, a trio, were working on a song referencing these events. One of the songs in their regular set, popular in some of the local Irish venues around the area, was Jerry Jeff Walker’s “London Homesick Blues”. It featured the unique chorus of “I wanna go home with the armadillo.” (Who wouldn’t?) This was easily adapted into “I’ve had enough of the Ayatollah”. The clever lyrical substitute worked, and the band approached the club owners documented only as “The Brothers Three”. The Brothers actually owned three clubs, which seemed poetic. The Brothers Three liked the song, feeling that it tapped into the sentiment of the day. The reached into their pockets and financed a studio recording of the Walker cover. They were now in the record business.
The Spastic Phono Band, who were familiar with the trio in question, learned of this. Realizing it was a good idea, they decided to make their own pitch to the Brothers Three.
Wednesday.
They went for it. Sure, they argued a bit and the oldest one may have smacked the youngest one, but we did get a unanimous decision. The Brothers Three are going to allow us to use the disc maker where they pressed the Ayatollah record.
The record would be made in a little postage-stamp sized record plant (if you could call it that) in Connecticut.
Tuesday.
One of the Brothers Three picked me up in his MG convertible today. We took the tape to a dumpy little record pressing company. Mission accomplished. We ordered 300 copies to be made. Then headed home, but my companion driving the convertible decided to put the top down. It may be February thaw, but it was so cold I still don’t have feeling back in my nose. Considering calling an otolaryngologist.
Frozen noses aside, when the boxes containing 300 copies of “Wings Under Japan” finally arrived, the McCartney story was equally cold.
Friday.
Believe it or not, there isn’t a lot of demand for a record by a band that nobody’s heard of.
The records were delivered to stores, who tried their best to push it, but were fighting an uphill battle. The record was not a hit. The 300 copies did eventually end up in the hands of the public. There are no documents detailing any sales, so we do not know if the band sold them at shows, or by mail order, or any of the other quaint methods available in 1980. Mr. McCartney never stumbled upon the record, as far as the evidence suggests. At least, we know he hasn’t sued. But could he even locate the Spastic Phono Band if he wanted to? We could not. Vic Trola has pulled a DB Cooper: Taken the money (if any) and flown.
Though only the original 300 copies were made, we were able to track one down for this article. It was clearly loved in its previous home.
Housed in a yellow-brown sleeve (the original?), the 45 has a nice maroon label, stating this is on Slipped Disc Records. Charmingly, the song “Wings Under Japan” is split over the two sides…sides 3 and 4. (It has been suggested that this release, with sides 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2), gave George Lucas the idea to number The Empire Strikes Back as Episode V instead of Episode II as expected. With that film releasing in May 1980, we cannot completely dismiss the claim.)
The track is just over seven minutes combined.
Leavin’ on a Japanese roadtrip,
Headin’ down a London runway,
Paul said ‘I need to bring along some good weed,
Because it helps me relax when I play.’
Guffaw! The song begins with a spoof of “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, now called “The Ballad of Paul and Linda”, with a similar structure, but words about Paul. “The way things are gooooin’, they’re gonna scrutinize me!” And they did…but not long enough for the Spastic Phono Band. The song continues.
Staring at the man with the baggie.
Paul said, ‘Maybe I’m amazed!
It only amounts to less than half an ounce,
Why do you have to get so carried away?’
In perhaps the most obvious yet fun twist, the song then goes into Wings’ “Hi Hi Hi”…but re-written as “High High High”. This is funny because it’s so obvious, it had to be done. It’s amazing nobody else did it. Incidentally the harmony vocals in this section are rich and excellent.
Next up in the Paul medley is “Silly Love Songs”, redone as “Silly Drug Laws”. “What’s wrong with drugs, I’d like to know, ’cause here I go again! I’m in jail…” Another example of great singing by the Spastic Phono Band, but listen to that 1970s groove and the dexterous bassline! This is some serious playing.
Side “3” ends, and so we flip to side “4”. Fortunately in the modern era, we can use our digital capture software to seamlessly edit the two into one track! Next is “Band On the Run”, revised as “Banned In Japan”. In this case, the original song is almost a medley of different sections itself. The Spastic Phono Band do several of them here. “Stuck inside these stone walls, might be here forever!” There is a poignant moment coming here, frozen in time. Little did they know that John Lennon had only months to live, for in December of 1980, he would be murdered in New York. So to hear the line, “I’ll join with Ringo, and George and John and we’ll put the reunion on,” reminds us that finite period of time when such a thing was indeed possible.
A brief pause and then, just like on Abbey Road, wait for a Beatles-y coda.
“Wings Under Japan” is, quite frankly, one of the best parody medley songs (or however you want to describe it) you’ll ever find, for three reasons.
- The mystery. Who are the Spastic Phono Band anyway? We may never know. (Or, more accurately…we may never tell.)
- The musical prowess. There is some serious playing and singing on this brief single, and your life would be richer if you heard it.
- Though depicting events before some of you were born, the lyrics are still hilarious due to the timeless nature of weed jokes.
5/5 stars.
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