McCartney winces, suppressing a feeble whimper. The 72-year-old musician is bent over down in an alleyway behind Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in Detroit, Michigan. With his trousers dropped and a funnel in his butthole, this larger-than-life figure seems rather small, remarkably human.
“You sure you want another shot, Paul?” I ask Mr. McCartney, concerned. He nods, avoiding eye contact with any of our crew.
“Down the hatch, I s’pose,” he mutters dryly, unable to summon his normally cheerful demeanor. For Paul McCartney, it was going to be a hard day’s night.
McCartney originally came to Detroit last August, intending to donate to the failing public schools. When he got there, he found a problem no amount of money could solve.
“These kids, they’re addicted to butt-chugging,” he told me in a coffee shop a few months ago. Instead of getting an education, these inner- city kids were getting drunk, pouring alcohol-laced mouthwash down their rectums.
McCartney’s mission, he told me, was a simple one. To fight the butt-chugging epidemic, someone had to understand it. Paul McCartney, international superstar, decided to be that someone.
