Paul McCartney issued apology for ‘animal cruelty’ before activism

Paul McCartney found himself regretting his actions when he was a child after he reflected on the harm he had done. The Beatles star was born and grew up in Liverpool, England, and before he became a worldwide phenomenon, he was just another regular boy from the city. That meant he had dreams of joining the army, but he couldn’t quite handle the thought of killing anything. As a result, he decided to train himself.

McCartney looked back in 2018: “We used to live on a housing estate called Speke, in Liverpool, just millions of houses, right on the border of woods and deep countryside. So I did a lot of that, went out in all that. But I was very aware that I would soon be joining the army because all of us were called up for National Service.”

Despite being 12-years-old, McCartney was very worried about what he would be required to do in the army.

He told GQ: “The one thing that I thought is: ‘I can’t kill anything — what am I going to do? Get a bayonet and hurt someone? I’ve got to kill someone? S**t, I’ve got to think about that. How do I do that?'”

In order to prepare himself for what was to come, he admitted: “So I ended up killing frogs.”

McCartney went on: “I do look for rational explanations – I do think, you know, kids are cruel. Kids swing cats. I was from Liverpool — you do that kind of s**t. It’s dumb, it’s mean, it’s horrible, but you do that kind of s**t.” He added: “I used to go out in the woods, and I killed a bunch of frogs and stuck them up on a barbed-wire fence. It was like a weird sort of thing that I kind of hated doing but thought: ‘I’m toughening myself up.'”

McCartney later admitted that he felt shame about his violent acts. As a result, he decided to return to the scene of the crime and make amends for what he had done.

“I made a decision one day in the woods,” he remembered. “National service or not, I’m stopping this.”

He revealed: “I saw the lunacy, and I apologise to all frogs.”

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McCartney, who is now 80-years-old, later said: “I still try and block that. Because I’m now devout animal welfare, wouldn’t kill a fly.” He did add, however: “[I] rescue flies. But mosquitoes [I] will kill, because they’re attacking me. So, you know, I have my parameters.” (sic)

The star grew up eating meat and continued to do so while he was travelling the world with The Beatles. He once recalled: “I’d go to America and have the biggest steaks in the world. So big I’d have to give half of it away. Or I’d have chicken kiev with all the butter oozing out of it. That was great.”

But in the 1970s, McCartney met his wife, Linda, and shortly after they both decided to give up meat for good.

McCartney recalled sitting down with a roast dinner and looking out the window to see lambs roaming their property. Instantaneously, something changed for both of them.

McCartney said: “It was like, the penny dropped. The light bulb lit up. We thought, we might just give this up.”

As a result, McCartney and his wife started a line of vegetarian food products. He has since declared he has not eaten any meat since 1975.

Since then, he has also appeared in many campaigns run by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

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