Paul McCartney Once Issued an Apology to ‘All Frogs’ for His Youthful Crimes Against Them

Paul McCartney has been a vegetarian for years and has devoted himself to animal welfare so intensely that he once felt obligated to apologize to frogs. The former Beatle hunted frogs as a child in order to prepare for potential military service. As an adult, he felt ashamed of his behavior. Consequently, he issued a public apology to all frogs.

The former Beatle became a vegetarian in the 1970s

McCartney grew up eating meat and rarely picked a vegetarian option at restaurants. 

“I’d go to America and have the biggest steaks in the world,” he told The Guardian in 2010. “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.”

In the 1970s, though, McCartney and his wife Linda sat down to a roast dinner. Midway through the meal, he looked out the window and watched lambs roaming around their property. Something in both McCartney and Linda clicked.

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

Paul McCartney apologized to frogs

Long before McCartney converted to vegetarianism or even joined The Beatles, he was a child in Liverpool. When he was growing up, British citizens were required to do 18 months in the military, typically starting at age 17. 

“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,” he told GQ in 2018. “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.”

McCartney was so worried about the prospect of going to war that he began killing frogs as practice.

“I was probably about 12, I was looking at being 17, which is kind of looming — it’s going to happen fast — and 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***, I’ve got to think about that. How do I do that?’ So I ended up killing frogs.”

Years later, though, he felt ashamed about his violent adolescent behavior. 

“I made a decision one day in the woods: National service or not, I’m stopping this,” he told PETA, per the Chicago Tribune. “I saw the lunacy, and I apologize to all frogs.”

Paul McCartney said there’s 1 creature — besides frogs — that he harms

These days, McCartney is devoted to animal welfare.

“I still try and block that,” he said. “Because I’m now devout animal welfare, wouldn’t kill a fly.”

He does make an exception for one creature, though.

“[I] rescue flies,” he said. “But mosquitoes [I] will kill, because they’re attacking me. So, you know, I have my parameters.”