Sir Paul McCartney has claimed Yoko Ono told him she thought John Lennon "might have been gay" in a phone call after his death.
The Beatles legend recalled speaking to his bandmate's widow on the phone shortly after his murder in 1980, but he disagreed with Yoko's suspicions about her husband's sexuality because he had seen him get "a lot of girl action".
In an interview conducted in 2015 for the book Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine which has now been published in full by Vanity Fair magazine, Paul said: “I swear [Yoko] rang me shortly after John died and said, ‘You know, I think John might have been gay.’
“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.”
Paul, 83, insisted he had "no reason" to believe the Imagine hitmaker had been attracted to men.
He added: "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."
Paul believes rumours about John's sexuality began after he made a trip to Spain in 1963 with the group's Brian Epstein, who was gay.
He said: "There were rumours because Brian Epstein - John went with Brian [to Spain in 1963]. But I saw that as a power play, which was very John.
"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.
"I personally didn’t think anything had happened. Certainly never heard about anything happening.
"But I saw it as: 'You want to deal with the Beatles? I’m the leader.'
"John was very political. John, remember, had read the complete works of Winston Churchill. They had them at his house. He was a big Churchill fan. In fact, he’s named John Winston Lennon. So John was very political that way. He wouldn’t voice it, but he would play it."
Paul pondered whether Yoko made the comments because of her grief, reflecting on his own experiences after the death of first wife Linda McCartney.
He concluded: "So anyway, that’s what I say about Yoko being sort of kooky. 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.'...
"When I lost Linda, I said some pretty crazy things. I look back on them now and go, 'That’s grief. That’s just what you do.' You’re dealing with it."
