The Beatles may be one of the most documented bands in history, inspiring countless books and biographies about the “Fab Four” and their lasting impact on popular music.
A recently released interview featuring Paul McCartney includes a memory that could influence how some fans view John Lennon, The Beatles’ co-lead vocalist.
The conversation was conducted with Vanity Fair in 2015, but it was only published last week to coincide with the documentary Man on the Run, which explores McCartney’s life and career after leaving the band.
In the interview, McCartney recalled a phone call from Yoko Ono—Lennon’s wife from 1969 until his death in 1980—in which she shared her belief that Lennon “might have been gay,” echoing a long-circulating claim about the singer.
He said: “I swear she rang me shortly after John died and said, ‘You know, I think John might have been gay.'”
McCartney, however, suggested he didn’t share Ono’s suspicion, pointing to his long history with Lennon, whom he’d known since they were teenagers.
He added: “I went, ‘I’m not sure.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so. Certainly not when I knew him.’ Because we’d been 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. There was never a gesture, never an expression. It was nothing. So I had no reason to believe this at all.”
Over the years, McCartney has repeatedly pushed back against suggestions that Lennon had sexual relationships with men, noting that Lennon’s interest in women was widely observed within their circle.
Since the 1980s, he has also addressed claims made in various biographies alleging Lennon once had a sexual relationship with The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein.
Much of the speculation traces back to a 1963 trip to Spain, during the early surge of Beatlemania, when Lennon traveled with Epstein—an episode McCartney has previously framed as more about influence and dynamics than romance.
“But I saw that as a power play, which was very John,” McCartney said. “Brian would ask him as a homosexual thing – a good-looking boy who Brian fancied. They went down to Spain, had a fun time. No doubt John would play into the thing.”
McCartney has argued that, given how closely the band lived and worked together, he would have noticed if Lennon had been attracted to men. He made a similar point in The Beatles Anthology, the band’s well-known telling of its own story.
He said: “That was the intimacy we had. We would always be walking in on each other and things.
“I’d walked in on John and seen a little bottom bobbing up and down with a girl underneath him. It was perfectly normal: you’d go, ‘Oh shit, sorry,’ and back out the room…”
“That’s why I’ve always found very strange the theory that John was gay. Because over fifteen years of sharing rooms, sharing our lives, not one of us has an incident to relate of catching John with a boy.”