{"id":324432,"date":"2026-03-11T16:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T16:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/324432\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T16:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T16:32:11","slug":"paul-mccartney-recalls-yoko-ono-saying-john-lennon-might-have-been-gay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/324432\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney recalls Yoko Ono saying John Lennon \u2018might have been gay\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BeatlesBeatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1968. Photo \/ Stroud, Hulton Archive<\/p>\n

McCartney said he was aware of rumours Lennon may have had a relationship with the Beatles\u2019 manager, Brian Epstein, who was gay, but doubted there was any truth to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that as a power play, which was very John,\u201d McCartney said, adding he didn\u2019t doubt Lennon would \u201cplay into\u201d the rumours.<\/p>\n

Lennon and Ono married in 1969 and welcomed their son, Sean Ono Lennon, in 1975.<\/p>\n

Lennon also had an older son Julian Lennon with his first wife Cynthia Lennon, to whom he was married from 1962 to 1968. <\/p>\n

\"YokoYoko Ono and John Lennon were married from 1969 until Lennon’s murder in 1980.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Ono spoke candidly to the Daily Beast about the possibility Lennon was attracted to men.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he was too inhibited,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn and I had a big talk about it, saying, basically, all of us must be bisexual.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCartney later attributed Ono\u2019s comments to the grief she was experiencing at the time, saying he made similar \u201ccrazy\u201d remarks after his wife, Linda McCartney, died in 1998.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look back on them now and go, \u2018That\u2019s grief. That\u2019s just what you do\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PaulPaul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison. Photo \/ Reuters<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Responding to a long-running criticism from fans that he was to blame for the Beatles\u2019 split, he said: \u201cWhenever I hear someone damning Paul McCartney, I tend to agree with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when everyone was saying I broke up the Beatles, and I was just overbearing and all of that, I kind of bought into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiwi fans can stream Man on the Run on Amazon Prime Video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1968. Photo \/ Stroud, Hulton Archive McCartney said he was aware…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1558,8843,2562,156,21327,305,10109,5126,4920,23905,5978,111,139,69,6029,175013,17357,29541,2687,6859,175012],"class_list":["post-324432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-been","tag-believed","tag-claims","tag-entertainment","tag-gay","tag-have","tag-husband","tag-john","tag-lennon","tag-mccartney","tag-might","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-once","tag-ono","tag-paul","tag-recalls","tag-saying","tag-told","tag-yoko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}