Paul McCartney: Russian People Secretly Listen To The Beatles' 'forbidden' Music

JAKARTA - The Beatles have the idea that the Russians are secretly listening to their forbidden' music, said Paul McCartney.

The Beatles' music, along with other Western artists, was prohibited from being imported or screened in Russia from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Speaking in the podcast episode McCartney: A Life In Lyrics about the famous song The Beatles, Back in the USSR, McCartney discussed the ban.

"Everyone in Russia goes back to the times of The Beatles and remember having to smuggle our albums or all of them, you know, the small room you can play in and you don't want anyone else to know about it," he said.

"You don't want the authorities to know that you're listening to this forbidden group, and we really like the idea that we smuggled together with Levi's jeans. It's like the real arrival of a culture."

When podcast host Paul Muldoon told McCartney it was dangerous, the musician replied: For some people. We always thought that we were on the right side, that if we were dangerous, we were dangerous to Russian authorities, and for us they said they weren't that good.

That's how we feel, and I think it's true that they are trying to suppress the influence of the West and this continues... I know there is a time when you think 'oh, everything is done', but actually the oppression has happened again... God knows what politics and the reality that lies behind the oppression. So for me, it's great to be able to sing songs like this."