Paul McCartney Said Yoko Ono Called John Lennon ‘Gay’ Shortly After His Death

Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono had a famously contentious relationship. While they are on much better terms now, they publicly clashed after The Beatles split. Still, Lennon’s sudden, shocking death in 1980 prompted them to speak to one another. McCartney said that one thing Ono told him came as a surprise. 

Paul McCartney recalled a conversation with Yoko Ono about John Lennon

While McCartney and Ono may never be best friends, he has softened toward her over the years, at least in part because of how much Lennon loved her. Still, he thought of her as “kooky.” He used an example of something she said after Lennon’s death as proof.

“She’s an artist. She’s kooky. But John loved her, and that’s the bottom line. You really can’t go beyond that, no matter what you might think,” he told Vanity Fair in 2015. “Not my type, but I swear she rang me shortly after John died and said, ‘You know, I think John might have been gay.’”

McCartney told Ono that he didn’t think this was true.

“I went, ‘I’m not sure.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so. Certainly not when I knew him.’”

McCartney insinuated that he didn’t approve of the speculation, especially so shortly after Lennon’s death.

“So anyway, that’s what I say about Yoko being sort of kooky,” he said. “And I actually said that to a friend of mine, Robert Fraser, who was gay, and he got very annoyed. ‘Why would anyone say that? Maybe a year after he’s dead, maybe. But people say crazy things.’”

John Lennon once almost beat a friend to death for suggesting he was gay

Rumors that Lennon was gay circulated long before Ono mentioned them to McCartney. In The Beatles’ early years, Lennon went on vacation with their manager, Brian Epstein. Epstein was gay, leading some to assume that they were having an affair. When a friend mentioned this at a party, Lennon responded by violently attacking him.

“John, in a mad rage and obviously very drunk, was pummeling Bob Wooler,” wrote Peter Brown and Steven Gaines in The Love You Make. “It took three men to pull John off, but not before he managed to break three of Wooler’s ribs and send him to the hospital.”

Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono had differing opinions on John Lennon’s sexuality

Over the years, McCartney has repeatedly stated that he doesn’t think Lennon had any interest in men. Ono felt differently. She said that both she and Lennon believed “all of us must be bisexual.”

“I think he had a desire to [have sex with men], but I think he was too inhibited,” she told the Daily Beast. “No, not inhibited. He said, ‘I don’t mind if there’s an incredibly attractive guy.’ It’s very difficult: They would have to be not just physically attractive, but mentally very advanced too. And you can’t find people like that.”

She doesn’t believe he was ever physically intimate with a man, though.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “The beginning of the year he was killed, he said to me, ‘I could have done it, but I can’t because I just never found somebody that was that attractive.’ Both John and I were into attractiveness — you know — beauty.”