BOSTON–Red Sox owner John Henry is boycotting tonight’s Paul McCartney concert at Fenway Park after learning for the first time that the former Beatle used performance-enhancing drugs during the 1960s and 1970s.
The owner was spotted burning several vintage LPs, including limited editions of the Beatles’ renowned White Album, in a large trash barrel on the Budweiser roof deck. According to a club official, Henry has also forbidden all Beatles and Wings songs from being played during future Red Sox games.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the club employee who “broke” the news to Henry reported that the owner is “devastated over this. I feel really bad that I told him about it…I thought everyone knew…”
In various interviews over the last 30-plus years, McCartney has admitted to using marijuana, cocaine and LSD–all of which are widely believed to provide musicians with a certain level of creative inspiration otherwise inaccessible to sober artists.
While McCartney has presumably curbed his PED use over the last couple of decades, Henry similarly destroyed more recent albums such as 1997’s Flaming Pie and 2007’s Memory Almost Full out of fear that residual effects from his past drug use lingered during the creation of his more recent cuts.
In addition, James Taylor, a long-time Red Sox fan and legendary songwriter, has been banned from Fenway Park because McCartney played bass on Taylor’s 1968 hit single “Carolina on My Mind.” Henry was overheard saying he can “only assume James Taylor was using drugs at the time as well,” according to the club official.
Responding to a query, the front office’s crack public relations staff issued the following statement:
“John Henry and the Boston Red Sox have no comment on Paul McCartney’s apparent use of PEDs. We will only confirm that Mr. James Taylor has been asked to remove several acoustic guitars he had been storing in the owner’s suite.”
Meanwhile, ESPN’s Peter Gammons has been notified he is no longer welcome in the Fenway Park press box. A guitar player in his spare time, Gammons has been known to quote Beatles songs in his baseball columns and on his ESPN blog.
Club insiders told Fenway Pastoral that Henry planned to skip Thursday night’s concert as well in order to complete formal petitions to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences requesting the immediate revocation of the many Grammys and Oscars awarded to McCartney throughout the years.
Fenway Pastoral 