Legendary actor Danny Trejo has revealed in a new interview about the time when The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ led to a riot while he was serving time in prison.
Speaking with NME to promote his new documentary Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo, the star explained that he first heard the iconic tune while in solitary confinement during the late ’60s.
Trejo said, “It’s always real noisy and chaotic in the hole and this song comes on and you can barely hear it from the officer’s radio, and the hole got quiet and quiet and quiet.”
The 76-year-old continued: “It’s not good when the hole is quiet. And then, [Trejo sings] ‘Judy Judy Judy Judy Judyyyyyy!’ Sinks were broken! Toilets were flooded! We went just totally insane! That song was so beautiful it was worth a riot.”
After decades of crime beginning from a young age, Trejo revealed to Variety last year that his life was changed after a former inmate came to San Quentin to inform others of his recovery.
“That guy saved my life,” Trejo said at the time. “He said, ‘Why don’t you join us? Before you do anything, just join us. Give it a try. What do you have to lose?’ It was kind of like an awakening. So when I got out of the joint, I went back to meetings.”
It comes after another bizarre Danny Trejo news item, in which he and a bystander, Monica Jackson, saved a baby trapped who was trapped in a car in Los Angeles in August 2019. One of the vehicles involved in the accident overturned and Trejo sprung into action after noticing the infant strapped into the car seat.
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“I couldn’t get the baby out,” Trejo explained at the time. “I couldn’t unbuckle the seatbelt so she got in and undid the seatbelt. I pulled the baby out of the other outside. The only thing that saved that little kid was his car seat, honest to God.”
He added: “Everything good that has happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else. Everything.”
Trejo was 24 when he began attending AA meetings in 1969 while serving time in San Quentin State Prison in California.
