Revisiting the time George Harrison's house was raided by police as part of infamous 1969 drug bust

March 12th, 1969, is a monumental day in the history of The Beatles for two polar opposite reasons. Just as the London police service launched a suspiciously well-timed drugs raid conducted on George Harrison’s estate, his bandmate Paul McCartney was on the way to the church to marry his fiance, Linda, on the very same day.

The raid, which came shortly after John Lennon was also visited as part of a wide-scale attempt to indict as many high profile names as possible, was directed with the attempt to gain maximum media attention in an effort to spread an anti-drug message with the likes of Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton also being targeted.

At the time of the drugs bust, Harrison was busy working at the Beatles’ Apple Corps headquarters. However, his wife at the time, Pattie Boyd, was home and remembered the visit vividly in her autobiography Wonderful Tonight: “Suddenly I heard a lot of cars on the gravel in the drive, far too many for it to be just George,” she wrote. “My first thought was that maybe Paul and Linda wanted to party after the wedding. Then the bell rang. I opened the door to find a policewoman and a dog standing outside. At that moment the back-doorbell rang and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is so scary!’ I’m surrounded by police.”

Source: Joe Taysom/faroutmagazine.co.uk

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