Yoko Ono and John Lennon in 1980 shortly before Lennon's death. Photo / Brenda Chase, Newsmakers
Yoko Ono and John Lennon in 1980 shortly before Lennon's death. Photo / Brenda Chase, Newsmakers
Sir Paul McCartney claims Yoko Ono once told him she believed her husband John Lennon “might have been gay”.
McCartney said Ono made the surprising admission about his Beatles bandmate shortly after Lennon’s 1980 murder, according to the Daily Mail.
“I swear she rang me shortly after John died andsaid, ‘You know, I think John might have been gay’,“ McCartney said in a recently republished 2015 Vanity Fair interview.
McCartney said he remembered feeling unsure about Ono’s claim, because “in the 60s, we’d been around with loads and loads of girls. And I bumped into seeing him jacking… a lot of girl action”.
“And I’d slept with John very often, but there was never anything... never a gesture, never an expression. It was nothing. So I had no reason to believe this at all.”
Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1968. Photo / Stroud, Hulton Archive
McCartney said he was aware of rumours Lennon may have had a relationship with the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, who was gay, but doubted there was any truth to them.
“I saw that as a power play, which was very John,” McCartney said, adding he didn’t doubt Lennon would “play into” the rumours.
Lennon and Ono married in 1969 and welcomed their son, Sean Ono Lennon, in 1975.
Lennon also had an older son Julian Lennon with his first wife Cynthia Lennon, to whom he was married from 1962 to 1968.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon were married from 1969 until Lennon's murder in 1980.
In 2015, Ono spoke candidly to the Daily Beast about the possibility Lennon was attracted to men.
“I think he was too inhibited,” she said.
“John and I had a big talk about it, saying, basically, all of us must be bisexual.”
McCartney later attributed Ono’s comments to the grief she was experiencing at the time, saying he made similar “crazy” remarks after his wife, Linda McCartney, died in 1998.
“I look back on them now and go, ‘That’s grief. That’s just what you do’.”
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison. Photo / Reuters
McCartney, who has a new retrospective documentary out about his post-Beatles life, Man on the Run, has spent recent interviews addressing rumours about himself.
Responding to a long-running criticism from fans that he was to blame for the Beatles’ split, he said: “Whenever I hear someone damning Paul McCartney, I tend to agree with them.
“So when everyone was saying I broke up the Beatles, and I was just overbearing and all of that, I kind of bought into it.”
Kiwi fans can stream Man on the Run on Amazon Prime Video.
