Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono spent years on opposite sides of Beatles history. Their relationship was famously tense after the band split, with decades of bitterness, blame, and public side-eyes. But when John Lennon was murdered in 1980, the moment was so shocking that it briefly cut through everything — and McCartney says Ono reached out to him directly.
Years later, McCartney recalled that call and said one comment from Ono left him completely stunned.
In a 2015 interview with Vanity Fair, McCartney described Ono as an artist with an unpredictable streak, and said Lennon’s devotion to her mattered more than anyone else’s opinion. Still, he used the conversation after Lennon’s death as an example of what he meant when he called her “kooky.”
According to McCartney, Ono told him: “You know, I think John might have been gay.”
McCartney said he didn’t buy it.
He told her he wasn’t sure why she would even go there, especially so soon after Lennon’s death, adding that it didn’t match the Lennon he knew.
McCartney also shared that when he repeated the story to his friend Robert Fraser, who was gay, Fraser was furious — not at the possibility, but at the timing and the way it was being tossed out in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy. McCartney’s takeaway was simple: grief makes people say strange things, and some speculation should probably wait.
The Lennon rumors weren’t new — and they’d gotten dangerous before.
Long before Ono’s alleged comment, gossip about Lennon’s sexuality had followed him for years. One major source: Lennon once took a vacation with The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, who was gay. People talked. Some assumed. And according to authors Peter Brown and Steven Gaines in The Love You Make, Lennon erupted when a friend referenced the rumors at a party, beating him so badly he ended up hospitalized with broken ribs.
McCartney and Ono have also described Lennon very differently when the subject comes up.
McCartney has consistently said he never believed Lennon was interested in men.
Ono, on the other hand, has suggested Lennon had a more fluid view of sexuality. In an interview with The Daily Beast, she said she and Lennon believed “all of us must be bisexual,” and claimed Lennon admitted he could be attracted to a man — but felt he’d never met someone who truly fit what he was drawn to. She also said she didn’t believe he ever actually had a physical relationship with a man.
In the end, it’s one of those Lennon questions that still sparks debate decades later — made even messier by the fact that the people closest to him don’t tell the story the same way.
