About Me
Before branching out into film, I was a guitarist and songwriter for Motown band Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, briefly featuring a very young Jimi Hendrix. Among my compositions for the group was "Does Your Mama Know About Me", which hit ..29 on the United States pop chart and ..5 on the US R&B chart.In the late 1980s, I was naturalized citizen of the United States.I was a recurring character and later a regular character as the hippie "Leo" during the second, third, fourth, seventh, and eighth seasons of That '70s Show.I had an unabashed love of marijuana "I get high constantly. If you smoke pot, eat well and work out, I guarantee you'll live forever."In 2003, I was one of those targeted by two American investigations code-named Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter, which sought out businesses selling drug paraphernalia, mostly marijuana pipes. I was charged for my part in financing and promoting Chong Glass/Nice Dreams, a company started by my son Paris. I agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute drug paraphernalia in exchange for non-prosecution of mmmy wife, Shelby, and my son.While most of the approximately 55 individuals charged as a result of the operations were sentenced to fines and home detentions, I was sentenced on September 11, 2003, to 9 months in a federal prison, forfeiture of $103,000, and a year of probation.While government officials denied that I was treated any differently from the other defendants, many felt that I was made an example of by the government. Soon afterwards, marijuana advocates started the Free Tommy Chong! movement that called for my release.I served my sentence from October 8, 2003 to July 7, 2004, and in December 2004 I was appear off-Broadway in a one-man show entitled "The Marijuana-Logues", a parody of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. my legal concerns, including that audiences were actually smoking marijuana in some of the shows early in its tour ultimately caused me to quit the show
