All the episodes of Beautiful Possibility in sequence are here.
This Rabbit Hole works fine on its own, but it works a lot better if you’ve listened to episode 1:4 (Are You Afraid Or Is It True?).
Welcome to this week’s Rabbit Hole. As always, Rabbit Holes are shorter and scruffier than the main episodes, and this one continues that tradition.
Before we go further, if you’re thinking from the title that we’re going to violate the ethical standard we set out in episode 1:3 by speculating on either Paul or John’s sexual orientation, you may be either relieved or disappointed that no, that’s not what this Rabbit Hole is about, despite its somewhat unavoidably click-baity title — which is not my original phrase, but rather appears in Philip Norman’s “definitive” 2008 biography of John.
In the ‘Nerk Twins’ Rabbit Hole about Paul and John’s 1960 trip to Scotland, we looked more closely at one small description of one small event in the story of The Beatles that reveals how Grail-phobic writers, out of their fear of softness — which, remember, is in part the fear of emotional receptivity that we talked about in episode 1:4 — visibly distort the story away from the actual research, and thus away from the possibility that John and Paul were lovers.
The phrase “immovable heterosexuality” is another example of that distortion. And unlike the relatively small example of the Scotland trip, this one has — on its own — caused no end of trouble when it comes to the credibility of the lovers possibility.
In this Rabbit Hole, we’re going to take a closer look at that phrase, and at the context in which it appears, before we leave behind, for now, our exploration of the credibility of the lovers possibility and return to our story of the story of The Beatles — and how, if we can find our way through the ethics of it, the lovers possibility might be the key to healing the wound at the heart of that story.
I feel a little bad for once again making an example of Philip Norman — but only a little bad, because Norman has earned his own trouble and then some. As we’ll see in subsequent episodes, his writing has done as much and maybe more than anyone else to wound this story — and John and Paul — by consciously and aggressively stripping away the love at the heart of it, and canonising the false and divisive ‘John vs Paul’ breakup narrative.
Here’s the context in which “immovable heterosexuality” appears, in what might be the most famous — or perhaps infamous — passage from Norman’s book, where he talks about John’s state of mind during the breakup—
“Indeed, John’s wounded anger was more that of an ex-spouse than ex-colleague, reinforcing a suspicion already in Yoko’s mind that his feelings for Paul had been far more intense than the world at large ever guessed. From chance remarks he had made, she gathered there had even been a moment when — on the principle that bohemians should try everything — he had contemplated an affair with Paul, but had been deterred by Paul’s immovable heterosexuality. Nor, apparently, was Yoko the only one to have picked up on this. Around Apple, in her hearing, Paul would sometimes be called John’s Princess. She had also once heard a rehearsal tape with John’s voice calling out ‘Paul . . . Paul . . .’ in a strangely subservient, pleading way. ‘I knew there was something going on there,” she remembers. ‘From his point of view, not from Paul’s. And he was so angry at Paul, I couldn’t help wondering what it was really about.’”1
What I can’t help wondering is what this passage is all about — because it’s hard to know where to start with all the things about it that don’t add up.
Let’s start by considering those infamous two words — “immovable heterosexuality" — two words which have probably done more to stop scholarly inquiry into the possibility that John and Paul were lovers than anything else written about The Beatles. The Grail-phobic crowd wields it like a cross warding off a vampire to avoid having to deal with the lovers possibility. And at the same time, many countercultural Beatles scholars agonize over the phrase, believing that — despite the substantial body of research to support the lovers possibility — these two words somehow invalidate all of that research.
I suspect that all of that was — consciously or not — exactly its purpose.
As with the bed-sharing detail we considered in the Nerk Twins Rabbit Hole, we’re not going to speculate directly about the truth of these words. Paul’s sexual orientation is none of our business. And practically speaking, it doesn’t need to be our business for us to talk about either this passage in Norman’s book or the lovers possibility. As we talked about in episode 1:3, human sexuality is complicated and messy, and presents itself in a wide spectrum of colours. And what we think of as our primary sexual orientation often bears little relation to who we fall in love with, have an affair with, or even who we marry and choose to spend our lives with.
In short, while it is, of course, not entirely irrelevant, sexual orientation tells us almost nothing, relative to the credibility of the lovers possibility.
What we’re concerned with in this Rabbit Hole is how the phrase, along with other words that surround it, distorts our perception of the rest of the passage away from the lovers possibility, in a similar way to the descriptions of the bed-sharing on the Nerk Twins trip — only with far more damaging consequences.
So let’s take a closer look at the phrase that has the Grail-phobic crowd so confident and the countercultural Beatles studies world so stressed out, and me mostly just wishing I didn’t have to deconstruct yet another Philip Norman quote. But here we are. So let’s do this thing.
The first and most obvious question when deconstructing a quote is always to ask whose words they are. So whose words are “immovable heterosexuality”?
They’re not John’s words, although many people seem to assume they are — in part because there’s an unconscious belief that formed after John’s murder that everything Yoko says is the equivalent of John saying it, as if she’s some kind of quasi-oracle channeling John from the other side (which is, I hope, obviously, not the case).2
But the phrase isn’t even Yoko’s words, because although Yoko’s the one being interviewed, it’s not a direct quote. And if Yoko had said something as quotable as “immovable heterosexuality” in her interview with Philip Norman, you can bet your Super Deluxe Revolver Box Set that Norman would have quoted it directly.
Writers who want to sell books — which presumably includes Norman — tend not to paraphrase good quotes like that, especially not when those quotes are about topics of, shall we say... heightened audience interest. That’s not a criticism, mind you — most writers do this, including me, and especially when a quote memorably makes a point that the writer very much wants to put forth as the truth, or in this case, wants very much to put forth as not the truth—
Because Norman almost certainly does not want it to be true that John and Paul were lovers. He doesn’t even seem to want John and Paul to have liked each other, given his assertion that they only had a “professional relationship”3 — an assertion that contradicts even the research in his own books.
All of which is to say that if Yoko4 had actually spoken the actual words “immovable heterosexuality,” I doubt Norman would have pulled his punches on his best supporting piece of research denying the lovers possibility.
Well, when in doubt, ask. So I emailed Philip Norman and asked him whose phrase “immovable heterosexuality” is. Norman made it (politely) clear that he was not happy with me writing about his role in crafting the distorted breakup narrative, and that he did not want to participate. But he was also kind enough to confirm that to the best of his memory, “immovable heterosexuality” is his phrase, not Yoko’s.5
So then, “immovable heterosexuality” — this phrase that has so many people so worked up — is not John’s words. It’s not even Yoko’s words. It’s Philip Norman’s words.
But more than that — or rather less than that — the phrase isn’t even Norman paraphrasing Yoko’s memory of what John said. It’s Norman paraphrasing Yoko’s “gathering” — aka her speculation — about the meaning of “chance remarks” that she heard John say.
To be clear, there is nothing at all wrong with speculation. Yoko gets to speculate, Philip Norman gets to speculate, I get to speculate. And y’all can speculate, too. Absent Paul or John confirming it, speculating is about all we can do relative to the lovers possibility. But for that speculation to be credible, we need to know that it’s based on things that are verifiably true. If we start to speculate from speculation, it becomes fiction — which is fine in fanfic, but not so fine in a published biography.
The problem is that we don’t get to know what those “chance remarks” were, or when John said them, or in what context he said them, or whether it was a single remark or twenty or a hundred. And all of that is information we’d need, to be able to evaluate the credibility of Yoko’s — or maybe Norman’s — speculation, and to decide for ourselves what those “chance remarks” might mean. Instead, we’re meant to take Norman’s — and Yoko’s — word for what those remarks add up to, relative to John’s relationship with Paul.
And, of course, that’s where the credibility of “immovable heterosexuality” falls apart, because for it to have any validity at all, here’s what Norman is asking us to take his word for—
that Yoko’s memory of what John said two decades-plus prior to the interview is accurate
that Yoko is accurately, and without confirmation bias, interpreting what she heard John say
that Yoko is telling Norman the truth about whatever it was she heard John say
that Norman is accurately, and without confirmation bias of his own, describing what Yoko told him about her interpretation of what she told him that she heard John say
That’s a lot of assumptions to work through to get Norman’s “immovable heterosexuality” paraphrase to mean anything. And none of these assumptions are safe assumptions to make, if only because there are too many layers between what John may have said and what Norman wrote for there not to be significant distortion along the way, even without any nefarious motives on anyone’s part.
We could just wrap up this Rabbit Hole right here, because that’s four (or more) layers deep in subjective interpretation with little to no tangible detail to back it up. And this falls far short of the “primary research only” standard that I suggested in the Rabbit Hole on the research standards for Beautiful Possibility is the only credible kind of research we have for untangling the story of The Beatles — that if we can’t confirm that someone said something in the first and original place where they said it, there’s no way to know if they really said it or exactly how and in what context it was said.
But since we’re here, there’s a bit more to notice about this passage, beginning with the opening sentence — Norman’s characterization of Yoko’s interpretation of John’s feelings for Paul as having been “more intense than the world had ever guessed.”
Now, obviously John’s feelings for Paul were intense — and credit to Norman for at least acknowledging that much, given his “they only had a professional relationship” assertion elsewhere in the book.
But Yoko isn’t just suggesting mere generic “intense” feelings with what she’s sharing with Norman. With her reference to an “affair,” Yoko is clearly and unambiguously suggesting intense erotic feelings. Norman can’t seem to bring himself to say that though, or maybe it’s just that his publisher wouldn't let him state the obvious. Either way, Norman is already skewing the passage away from the lovers possibility, in contradiction with the only actual, specific information in the passage — the rehearsal tape and the “princess” reference.
Norman — or maybe Yoko — then skews the passage further with the speculation that John only considered an affair with Paul out of a desire for bohemian experimentation. Because remember, these aren't John’s words, nor are they Yoko’s. They’re Norman’s words describing Yoko’s speculative conclusion based on her interpretation of John’s “chance remarks.”
Again, that’s a lot of layers of subjectivity between us and whatever John actually said. And there’s at least one extra layer of distortion going on here, too.
In episode 1:4, we talked about how even when the credibility of the lovers possibility is acknowledged in the Beatles mainstream, it’s virtually always dismissed as accidental, transactional or situational — usually with some variation of, “it was the Sixties and there were a lot of drugs.” This insistence on characterizing the lovers possibility as something — anything — other than a genuine love affair isn’t surprising, in a fear of softness culture that allows men to acknowledge sex, but not love.
You might recognise “it was just bohemian experimentation” as a variation of “it was the Sixties and there were a lot of drugs.” Combined with “immovable heterosexuality,” it follows the same pattern as almost every other reference to the lovers possibility in mainstream Beatles writing (not that there are that many). It acknowledges the possibility of John’s sexual interest in a man (be it Brian or Stu Sutcliffe or Paul), and then quickly explains why even if John was attracted to a man, his attraction couldn't possibly have been either real or acted on. And this conclusion is then inevitably “supported” by quotes from people (virtually always men) speaking with imagined authority, but in no position to know for certain one way or the other.6
And then, to make sure that we get the point that John’s attraction to Paul was just a ticket punch in the street cred of being an avant garde artist, Norman goes several steps further. The bohemian experimentation is immediately qualified with the word “even,” when Norman writes that “Yoko gathered there had even been a moment when — on the principle that bohemians should try everything — he had contemplated an affair with Paul.”
“Even” is a complicated word to pin down the meaning of, though we understand its meaning intuitively when we read or hear it. The Oxford English Dictionary lists seven different definitions, with multiple variations listed beneath each of the seven definitions.7 In this case, Norman seems to be using “even” as an indication of a choice to do something extreme in its unusualness. And in this case, the extreme and unusual thing — in Norman’s view anyway — is John considering acting on his desire and love for Paul.
And “even” if John’s interest in an affair with Paul was rooted in something more, it’s still okay, Norman reassures us (but maybe mostly himself), because despite everything else that Yoko has shared in this passage, John’s desire to have an affair with Paul was just “on principle” — some kind of abstract bucket list lifestyle experiment that he wasn’t emotionally vested in, despite those “intense” (aka erotic) feelings for Paul that Norman opens the passage by acknowledging that John had.
But we’re not done yet, because then, for good measure, Norman adds that John only contemplated this extreme bohemian lifestyle experiment for “a moment,” implying that it was just a passing madness and a momentary lapse of reason, nothing to get concerned about — no different than primal scream therapy or buying a Greek island or wanting to have holes drilled in his head. Certainly it doesn’t suggest any actual erotic desire or, heaven forfend, genuine and mutual romantic love.
And of course anchoring the whole passage is Norman’s infamous phrase, “immovable heterosexuality” in all of its absolute and assertive glory — custom crafted, consciously or otherwise, to stop in its tracks any further consideration of the lover's possibility.
Part of me kind-of-but-not-really feels sorry for Norman’s dilemma here. He’s got this information from Yoko that he knows will sell books — that John had erotic feelings for Paul — which as we talked about in episode 1:4 isn’t much of a revelation if you have eyeballs and are even a little bit Grail fluent, but is a big revelation if you’re a Grail-phobic Beatles writer who’s also a chief architect of the distorted breakup narrative and who’s deeply identified with John,8 and therefore does not want John to be attracted to and in love with Paul — never mind the completely-rejected-by-both-Norman-and-Yoko possibility that it was mutual.
So Norman works to have it both ways. He includes those delicious “book selling” tidbits in his biography, and then does some pretty impressive pretzel-twisting to get them there without having to acknowledge things he doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge. He shares what Yoko told him — or at least curated bits of it — and then surrounds those curated bits with a collection of loaded words that retain the titillation, but diminish the credibility of the lovers possibility lurking in what Yoko’s told him.
Without access to the original interview tapes,9 it’s impossible to tell if these qualifying words are Norman telling us Yoko’s interpretation of John’s remarks, or whether they’re Norman’s own qualifying words telling us how he wants John to have felt about a romantic relationship with Paul. But either way, the problem for Norman is that none of this “even” and “for a moment” and “on principle” bohemian experimentation business is supported by the only actual information in the passage, or by basic reasoning.
Yoko’s memory of hearing John moan Paul’s name suggestively into the microphone — which, given the context, is what “pleading and subservient” implies — does not suggest a momentary impulse.10 Yoko’s noticing the intensity of John’s anger at Paul and “knowing” it meant something more was going on relative to John’s feelings for Paul does not suggest John’s desire for Paul was just an act of principled bohemian experimentation.11 And the Apple staff referring to Paul as “John’s princess” implies both an ongoing attraction and a mutual relationship dynamic.12
All of which is to say that someone is in denial here about John’s feelings about Paul, and it’s either Philip Norman or Yoko or — given they both have obvious reasons for wanting to dismiss the lovers possibility — both.
We already know Philip Norman, as one of the primary architects of the distorted breakup narrative, isn’t credible on the subject of John and Paul’s relationship. He doesn’t even want to acknowledge that they were friends. And even outside of his fear of softness, Norman has strong motivation to deny the lovers possibility — if John and Paul were lovers, then Norman’s status as a “Beatles authority” evaporates overnight, his life’s work becomes invalid, and his books basically become doorstops.
As for Yoko, fully untangling Yoko’s bias relative to the lovers possibility requires venturing into the love triangle of Yoko/John/Paul. And that’s a rabbit hole so deep that it descends through the centre of the earth and comes out in a whole other dimension — and we for sure do not yet have enough context to take that particular plunge. But there are a few obvious truths we can acknowledge from even just standing at the edge and looking down into the bottomless void.
Yoko is at least somewhat Grail-fluent. She picked up on the erotic tension between John and Paul as early as 1968, when she said in her audio diaries that, “I’m sure that if he [Paul] had been a woman or something, he would have been a great threat, because there’s something definitely very strong between John and Paul”13 — and note that here she’s suggesting that whatever it was between John and Paul was mutual, which is a different story from what Norman tells us she said years later in her interview with him. It’s also far more credible because Yoko’s audio diary entry was recorded literally in the moment, as she’s watching John and Paul together in the studio. That’s reasonable, credible speculation, based on direct, in-the-moment observation, and especially since it was made by Yoko at the very beginning of her involvement in the story, and before she’d built an entire life and brand based on the JohnandYoko love story.
But the Yoko who talked with Philip Norman obviously has her own bias, relative to John and Paul — which is why she’s almost as much an architect of the distorted breakup narrative as Philip Norman is, and with similar motivations.
Even beyond the obvious personal jealousy and rivalry that comes with being one-third of probably the most famous and consequential love triangle in modern history, as with Philip Norman, acknowledging a romantic relationship between John and Paul would be a direct threat to Yoko’s cultural status and her life’s work, if one thinks of Yoko’s life’s work as the years she’s invested in building the JohnandYoko brand. Because that brand is built on Yoko as the singular romantic love of John’s life.14 A love affair between John and Paul, especially a long-term, intimate, committed romantic relationship, undermines that brand — and with it, Yoko’s cultural status.
A romantic relationship between John and Paul also undermines Yoko’s culturally-bestowed power to speak for John— especially if, as there is some research to suggest, that romantic relationship between John and Paul was rekindled during the Lost Weekend. If John and Paul were a romantic couple, Yoko still gets to be John’s widow, but she doesn’t get to be the single and only love of John’s life. And that means the great romance of JohnandYoko more or less goes poof — along with a lot of her cultural power.
I don’t mean any of this disparagingly. As I've mentioned several times in the footnotes of prior episodes, I will always defend anyone against racism and sexism, and I’m an admirer of Yoko’s visual art. She has interesting things to say and she says them in interesting ways, and that’s more or less the definition of a good artist. But as with most everything in this story, Yoko’s involvement is more complicated than many people — maybe including Yoko — might wish.
Unfortunately, visual artists, no matter how interesting, do not have much cultural status in our world — and especially if they’re avant garde countercultural performance artists. That’s another piece of collateral damage from the collapse of the Love Revolution and the turning back towards “suffer now, rewards later” and “might makes right” that we’ve been talking about throughout the run of this series.
Most of us have at least a vague sense of what an avant garde performance artist is, but try naming a famous one — off the top of your head, no looking it up — other than Yoko Ono. The reality is that, because of the low status of visual artists in Western culture, were it not for her having married John Lennon, it’s likely that today, no one other than an expert in the Sixties avant garde art world would even know Yoko’s name.
Again, this isn’t meant as disparaging. Yoko herself is well-aware of where her cultural power comes from. She’s acknowledged as much in interview.15 And even if she hadn’t acknowledged it overtly, she’d be misunderstanding her own art if she didn’t understand the source of her cultural power — because her own art often self-referentially explores the concept of cultural power (or lack thereof) of both artists and of women — most notably in “Cut Piece,” probably her most famous piece of work not related to her relationship with John, in which she sits silently onstage while audience members cut away pieces of her clothing.16
Yoko’s awareness of her limited cultural power outside of being John’s widow is probably a large part of why she’s worked so relentlessly to build the JohnandYoko brand — and why that power is directly threatened by a long-term romantic relationship between John and Paul.
The JohnandYoko brand is also Yoko’s best leverage in the decades-long cold war between her and Paul for the right to define John’s legacy and claim the title of most important relationship in John’s life — which again is the foundation of Yoko’s cultural power (and by the way, that there even is a cold war between Yoko and Paul is in and of itself something to consider, when it comes to the lovers possibility).
There’s a simple mathematical formula at work here. Since Yoko’s cultural status is permanently and inextricably tied to her relationship with John, the weaker the bond between John and Paul is perceived to be, the more important Yoko is in the story of John’s life — and thus the more cultural status Yoko gets to claim for herself, both in the story and in the larger culture.
Yoko’s cold war with Paul is mostly, it seems, waged in private — at least on Paul’s side. And it’s always been a zero sum game — right from the start, when John made it clear to the whole world during his Breakup Tour that it was either Yoko or Paul, but not both (and again, that either/or in and of itself supports the credibility of the lovers possibility).
Yoko is almost certainly aware that Paul McCartney has — and will always have — more cultural power than she does. That’s simple math, too, and it has nothing to do with gender or sexual politics. Paul is an actual Beatle and by most standards, the most successful solo artist of all time, in a culture that recognises the cultural power of rock stars. Yoko is the wife of a Beatle and an avant garde countercultural performance artist. And when it comes to cultural power, those things are not and for the foreseeable future, will never be equal, no matter how much Yoko — and others — might wish them to be.
This permanent imbalance in their cold war is also almost certainly why Yoko has for decades been a primary architect of the ‘John vs Paul’ distorted breakup narrative. And it’s also why Yoko has consistently demonstrated over the years that she has no interest whatsoever in ceding to Paul any additional cultural status relative to John (or in any other way) — and we’ll talk more about that in a future episode.
For here, remember Yoko’s audio diary comment we just looked at — that “if Paul were a woman or something,” he’d be a “great threat.” The possibility — and the lurking threat to Yoko — of a romantic relationship between John and Paul is contained in the “or something” of that quote. Because if John and Paul were a long-term, committed romantic couple, and the world finds out about it, the cold war is over — Paul wins, if for no other reason than that JohnandPaul is by definition a more compelling story than JohnandYoko.
All of which is why Yoko has nothing to gain and everything to lose by confirming a love affair between John and Paul to Philip Norman, even if she was in a position to do so, which she likely isn’t — if for no other reason than that men don’t usually tell their wives about their extramarital relationships, especially if those relationships are still going on. And also because it stretches credibility to think — given the potential risks of doing so — John would disclose an romantic relationship between him and Paul to anyone without Paul’s consent, even at the height of their feud and even, and perhaps especially, to Yoko.
All of this does beg the question, though — if a love affair, and especially a long-term, committed love affair, between John and Paul undermines Yoko’s cultural power and gives Paul the edge — and probably the victory — in the cold war between them, why would Yoko say anything at all about John’s attraction to Paul? Why not just slam the door shut entirely on that possibility and agree with Philip Norman that John and Paul only had a professional relationship and weren’t even close? Yoko has certainly on occasion asserted as much and more elsewhere.17
One answer might be that — as we saw in episode 1:4 — John didn’t exactly go to great lengths to hide his desire and his love for Paul. Yoko’s not stupid, and she’s not Grail-illiterate. She noticed the sexual tension between John and Paul right from the start. And she’d probably prefer not to look like a numpkin to Norman’s readers if she pretends not to see something so obvious that she’s famously already on the record as having acknowledged.
Also, John being attracted to men gives the JohnandYoko brand an extra bit of avant garde edginess. And it’s far more interesting and on brand for a countercultural performance artist to have married a man who’s also attracted to men, rather than just (from Yoko’s perspective) a garden-variety straight guy — because, y’know, a marriage between a straight man and a straight woman is so very predictable and cliched.
And of course, by suggesting that John didn’t act on his attraction — not just to Paul but to men in general — Yoko scores a romantic and sexual win over not just Paul, but all men. And that, too, is very on brand for an outspoken, self-styled feminist artist, and especially of Yoko’s generation.
There’s one more thing to notice here, relative to the credibility of Yoko’s speculation in the “immovable heterosexuality” passage. And that’s that, like many people in this story, Yoko often seems to enjoy a... flexible... relationship with the truth.
Now as hopefully you’re starting to see by this point in the series, Yoko is by no means the only person who plays games with reality when it comes to the story of The Beatles. And if we’re giving out awards of the most unreliable narrator, that honour would almost certainly go to the Fabs themselves. But maybe because she’s a performance artist whose art challenges reality and whose life is arguably her masterwork, Yoko’s games with reality are occasionally especially inventive.18
For example, in a 2015 interview with The Daily Beast, Yoko tells this story, about John and Brian’s trip to Spain in 1962—
“‘Uh, well, the story I was told was a very explicit story, and from that I think they didn’t have it [sex]. But they went to Spain, and when they came back, tons of reporters were asking, ‘Did you do it, did you do it?’ So he said, ‘I did it.’ Isn’t that amazing? But of course he would say that. I’m sure Brian Epstein made a move, yeah.”19
There are several amazing things about this anecdote, but none of them have to do with anything in it having actually happened. I confess to being both horrified and fascinated by it, because more than just “not being true” in the garden variety way, Yoko’s story is so extremely not true that she’s basically writing her own alternate universe Beatles fanfic.
Now I’d for sure read that fanfic if someone decides to write it, but a fanfic is all this scenario could ever be, because literally not one single word of what Yoko has said here is true, other than probably that last bit about Brian making a move on John.
I’m not sure how much we need to step through the details of why this scenario is a work of fiction, but for the record—
There were no “tons of reporters” asking John whether he had sex with Brian Epstein in 1963 — because, first, there were no “tons of reporters” asking John anything in early 1963, because The Beatles weren’t yet big enough for “tons of reporters” to be asking them anything. And even if there had been, reporters in 1963 didn’t actually ask pop stars — or anyone else — who they’d had sex with, and I'm not entirely sure they ask that even today, though I admit I don’t keep up on that sort of thing.
If John had ever told “tons of reporters” (or even one reporter) that he’d had sex with Brian Epstein, we would know about it, and not just because Yoko Ono spilled the beans in a Daily Beast interview in 2015, but because John’s “I did it” comment would be remembered as being the final public statement by a member of an obscure, if promising, English pop group way back in the early ‘60s who might have gone on to become something, but didn’t because one of their members confessed to a homosexual love affair in a time when that would have categorically ended their career before it even got started — because of everything we’ve talked about in prior episodes about why an openly transgressive male artist who acknowledged having sex with another man would never ever (ever) have been able or allowed to reach the mainstream. And also because in 1963, same sex love between men was illegal in the UK and men were still actively being prosecuted and imprisoned for violating that law.
Maybe this anecdote of Yoko’s is intended as a piece of especially inventive performance art. Or maybe Yoko was just having a little fun with the interviewer, who maybe didn’t know the history well enough to know that she was obviously spinning a fiction. Or maybe Yoko felt the interviewer was being intrusive and decided to give back as good as she got — which would be in keeping with the Fabs’ approach to interviews20 — and maybe she did the same thing with Norman when he asked a similar question (although it’s hard to imagine Norman asking that question in the first place).
For our purposes, it doesn’t matter much which it was. What matters is that all it takes, really, is one spectacularly not-true quote like this to make everything else Yoko says at the very least subject to scepticism. If Yoko was willing — and more than willing, apparently delighted — to say something so obviously false in one interview, then there’s every reason to think she might have done the same in other interviews, and perhaps especially with regard to questions about John’s interest in other men, and for the aforementioned reasons, particularly an interest in Paul.
I realise that some of you may not be happy with me in this moment for pointing out Yoko’s tendency to be less than truthful in her interviews, and for pointing out Yoko’s role in furthering the ‘John vs Paul’ distorted breakup narrative, in the same way that some of you probably weren’t happy when I suggested in a prior episode that the JohnandYoko love story might have been in large part performative. If considering the possibility of John and Paul as lovers is the third rail of Beatles scholarship, then — at least for a certain section of the Beatles world — criticizing Yoko and suggesting that the JohnandYoko story might not be what it appears to be is close behind as a place we're not supposed to go.
I’ve been careful throughout this series to cushion mentions of Yoko’s role in wounding this story by emphasising that I’m an admirer of her as a visual artist, and that I will always defend anyone, Yoko of course included, against racism and sexism, which Yoko has endured plenty of over the years.
But being a feminist artist and a woman of colour doesn’t make someone incapable of bad behaviour, and it doesn’t make pointing out that bad behaviour sexist or racist. This is one of the problems with those bright-line moral absolutes we talked about awhile back — they tend to fall apart in the messiness of real life, and especially the messiness of this story.
Like everyone else in this story — including, as we’ve seen, John, and as we’ll see in a future episode, Paul — Yoko is human and flawed, and vulnerable to her own demons. And we can’t tell this story truthfully and still protect Yoko from her own words, or from the self-evident jealousy and fear that those words — and her actions — consistently reveal to anyone even remotely conversant in the language of emotional subtext.
The emotions involved in this story, and more specifically in the love triangle of Yoko/John/Paul — love, yes, but also jealousy, fear and grief — are perhaps the most powerful and painful emotions in the human canon. And if you’ve had the misfortune to find yourself in the grip of jealousy or fear or grief, then you know how searingly painful those emotions are — even love. And you also know that they often compel us to act in ways that are counter to the angels of our better nature — and especially if the people involved are feeling that jealousy and grief and fear all at once, and for decades on end, and under the white-hot glare of the world’s media spotlight trained on the very relationship that is the source of that jealousy and grief and fear.
All of which is to say, you can blame the messenger if you like, but as we’ll see more directly in a future episode, Yoko herself has made it clear with her own words that she’s a deliberate architect of the ‘John vs Paul’ breakup narrative.’ And while she has also sometimes been gracious relative to this story, when it comes to the distorted narrative, Yoko is at or near the top of the list of people who have done damage — in John’s life and in Paul’s life and in the story as a whole — largely because she’s done nothing to counter and everything to encourage the erroneous perception that she speaks unerringly for John. And, again, that's a specific problem that we'll get to in future episodes.
It’s possible every word of what Yoko told Philip Norman in her “immovable heterosexuality bohemian experimentation” scenario is true — but we have no way of knowing one way or the other, and neither does Philip Norman.
For us to take all of this as credible, we’d have to ignore the substantial research that points to the credibility of the lovers possibility in favour of the unsupported assertions of two people who have a significant, vested interest in John and Paul not even being friends, including one person who has an especially casual relationship with the truth, along with the words of yet another person — John — who has a significant, vested interest in not telling his wife he had — and maybe is still having, depending on when the “chance remarks” were made — a long-term romantic relationship with her arch rival.
Like I said, untangling the Yoko/John/Paul triangle is complicated and more than we can fully do here. But to put it more simply — John’s not likely to tell Yoko about a romantic relationship with Paul, and even if he did, Yoko’s not likely to tell Philip Norman more than it seems she did because doing so gets her nothing that she wants. And both Philip Norman and Yoko have an incentive to downplay Paul’s importance to John, and to steer John’s obvious erotic desire for Paul away from romantic love and towards something more situational. And also, like a lot of people in this story, Yoko makes stuff up at an impressive rate and this passage is likely no exception.21
Look, here’s the thing about all of this, and by “all of this,” I don’t mean “immovable heterosexuality,” I mean the whole story of The Beatles.
The story of The Beatles — and especially of John and Paul — is complicated, to say the absolute least. I can tell you from soft-won experience that trying to understand Lennon/McCartney is without question a life’s work, every bit as much as understanding Shakespeare, and perhaps in some ways, more so, because of the possibility of a hidden, deeply intimate, culturally transgressive love affair, within a complex web of interpersonal relationships in which every single person involved has their own motivation — and often more than one — to bend the truth in one way or the other.
There’s no reasonable way to understand this passage — or the story as a whole — by simply believing at face value assertions that are based on information that we don’t have access to, that may or may not be credible, made by people with clear and significant motivations to advance those assertions.
This is another example of why the frame of history and journalism is not how we’re going to understand this story, and why history and journalism are not how we’re going to sort out the credibility of the lovers possibility. The vast majority of historians and journalists (and biographers) simply do not have the fluency in the language of emotional subtext and the complexities of human behavior — and most importantly, the language of love and desire — required to be able to untangle the emotional truth — and thus the larger truth — of this story. And we’ll continue to take the time and care required to do that in the next part of this series.
So where does all of this leave us with the “immovable heterosexuality” situation?
Well, it leaves more or less where we started.
I shared with you in the Research Methodology Rabbit Hole that my measure of when I felt good about shifting from researching to writing this series was when the body of research supporting the lovers possibility was substantial enough that it was highly unlikely that a single piece of new information would invalidate it. “Immovable heterosexuality” is a single — and not even remotely credible — piece of information. And when we look at what’s really going on with it, relative to the credibility of the lovers possibility, those two words that have everyone so flustered or so confident don’t actually move the needle even a little bit either way.
So let’s all take a deep breath, put down the Norman book, slip Rubber Soul on the turntable, and chill about “immovable heterosexuality.”
As for the rest of the passage, putting aside Yoko’s adventures in fanfic, the more tangible information she shared with Norman is consistent with — among other things — the abundant evidence of our own eyeballs that John was attracted to and in love with Paul. And that evidence of John’s desire for Paul exists independently of what Norman or Yoko has to say about it, which in turn leads us back to the chain of reasoning that we stepped through in detail in episode 1:4 — a chain of reasoning that took us, along with their art as a reflection of the truth of their lives, to the credibility of the lovers possibility.
What the kerfuffle about this passage does offer is a reminder of the extent to which fear of softness, along with other motivations and a generally inadequate approach to understanding the research, has distorted this story — and thus why the story of The Beatles as a whole is in such a wounded, dysfunctional mess. And it’s a reminder that whether John and Paul acted on their love for one another or not, the story of The Beatles is at its heart, a love story — and that as long as the only people willing to write publicly about them are people who are afraid of love, we won’t be able to fix the wound at the heart of it.
Before we wrap up, a few housekeeping reminders.
Next week will be another full-length episode, when we’ll pick back up our story about the story of The Beatles. And remember, you’re really going to want to be caught up on those first few episodes before then, otherwise that episode and everything that follows will make very little sense — because we’ll be putting together all of the pieces that we’ve laid out over the past weeks. And without those first few episodes, before the lovers possibility was introduced, you’ll be missing most of those pieces, and what follows will likely, again, make very little sense.
And you’ll also be missing the deeper reason why restoring the lovers possibility to the story matters so much. And that’s important, because restoring the love to the heart of this story requires more than just showing that the lovers possibility is credible. We also need to show why it matters, and that's what those first few episodes lay the foundation for us to do in the next episode.
So now’s the week to catch up on those first few episodes.
My fab research assistant Robyn is collecting questions for a possible Q&A episode at the end of part 1. All questions are fair game. Polite questions are preferred, but impolite questions are fine, too, as long as they’re well-considered. You can find her email on my personal website at faithcurrent.com, along with the just-in-case backup version of Beautiful Possibility.
I’ve had a few people write and ask how they can financially support Beautiful Possibility. Thank you so much for wanting to do that. It’s deeply appreciated. BUt the answer is, you can’t, because I don't believe it would be ethical to take money for this work. At least for now, I think it would send the wrong message to Paul in particular, if his love for John was in any way monetized. (but I'll admit I'm constantly tempted to create "Ask my fab research assistant Robyn" swag...)
What I would suggest, instead of a monetary contribution, is that you'd encourage others to listen to or read Beautiful Possibility. And the best way to do that is to tell a friend about it — directly, one-to-one — over coffee, or via text, email, phone, however you connect with your friends.
I’m specifically suggesting that you tell a friend directly about it rather than just posting a link on social media, because as you know, people might need a little help to see that Beautiful Possibility is more than it might appear to be on the surface, and that it's relevant beyond an interest in lovers possibility or even The Beatles. It’s relevant to anyone interested in spirituality, mythology, psychology, cultural commentary and healing our broken world, and to anyone interested in the role of cultural masculine/feminine gender roles.
That’s how we’ll heal this story. One person, one heart at a time. And thank you to all of you who are here, for opening your heart to this work.
Until then, peace, love and strawberry fields,
Faith
Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life, Harper Collins, 2008.
Not that that would make it any more reliable.
“John really loved Ringo,” [journalist] Maureen Cleave remembers. “And he often said how much he loved George, which was a slightly unusual thing for a man to come out with in that era.” He tended to socialize much less with Paul; theirs was always first and foremost a professional relationship.”
Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life, Harper-Collins, 2008.
NOTE: I didn’t mention this in the prior references to this quote, but what’s happening in this quote is another example of skewing the story away from the lovers possibility without basis. Norman cherry picks a single quote out of context, and then makes a sweeping conclusion based on it. But the conclusion doesn’t factor in that saying out loud to a journalist that he loves George and Ringo is almost certainly a whole lot less complicated for John than saying out loud to a journalist that he loves Paul — which by the way, he also did say, just maybe not to Maureen Cleave.
For those of you who notice such things, I’m referring to Yoko using only her first name as a shorthand, and Norman with either both names or just his last name not to diminish Yoko in relation to Norman, but for the same reason I refer to Paul and John by their first names. Because of how woven into our culture this story is, as the foundational mythology of our culture, our relationship to the people who lived it tends to be on a first name basis, starting with “John, Paul, George and Ringo,” and widening to include Yoko, Linda, Cynthia, Jane, Mal, Neil, etc. On the other hand, our relationship to the writers of Beatles biographies is not an intimate one. Hence, Philip Norman or Norman.
In my email, I told Philip Norman that this series would explore the damage done as a result of ‘John vs Paul,’ (I didn’t mention the lovers possibility, but that was certainly clear in the nature of my question, should he choose to notice it) and offered him an opportunity to comment on his role as a principle architect of the distorted ‘John vs Paul’ breakup narrative. He declined, as is his right.
There are lots of examples of this. Here are a couple more—
Here’s Hunter Davies’ version, a more concise parallel of Norman’s passage, complete with “daft enough” standing in for “there were a lot of drugs,” “try anything” in place of “bohemian experimentation” and “once” in place of “for a moment.”—(Hunter Davies quoted in The Velvet Mafia, Omnibus Press, 2021)
“John wasn’t a homosexual, but he was daft enough to try anything once.”
Here’s Ray Connolly’s longer version, but the same structure, in which “keenly heterosexual” stands in for “immovable heterosexuality” and “loved to shock” and “for the fun of it” and “eager to experience anything new” stand in for “bohemian experimentation” —
“In his book John Lennon: In My Life, John’s childhood friend Pete Shotton would write that John had told him that, eventually worn down by Brian’s entreaties while in Spain, he allowed Brian to masturbate him. It’s highly unlikely that Pete would have made that up. He wasn’t a fantasist. What’s more, John also told a journalist friend about the episode.But was John telling the truth? It was well known to those around him that he was keenly heterosexual. But he loved to shock, too. Did he invent a homosexual experience for the fun of it, or, perhaps, did he just exaggerate the incident after Brian made a pass at him? Both are possible. But, equally, as all his life he would be eager to experience anything new, was he curious about homosexuality? When Brian came on to him, did he simply want to know what it was like to be touched by another man?” (Ray Connelly, Being John Lennon, Pegasus Books, 2018.)
https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=even (retrieved 4-19-25)
“In the Beatles subculture, one inevitably finds oneself tagged either as a ‘John’ person or a ‘Paul’ person. I cannot pretend to be other than the former.”
Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life, Little Brown and Co., 2016.
NOTE: As I will say again in the next episode in just these words, Norman makes this comment as if ‘John vs. Paul’ followed some sort of immutable law of nature, rather than being a division that — as we’ll see in the next episode — he himself was a primary architect in creating.
Given the historical, cultural and mythological importance of this story and the bias in the published research, it’s past time for writers to release the unedited, original interview tapes and notes from any interviews with, at the very least, those who have passed on.
There’s a parallel anecdote involving Paul that I’m working on verifying—
"Around midnight, a Cinderella moment in the empty studio when the gear was being stowed, Paul turned to Linda and one or two friends and told them that it reminded him of the famously trippy session for “All You Need Is Love”. ‘It was that same vibe. I just looked around and there were all these flowers and happy faces smiling up at me.’ Another sip or two, and Paul began murmuring huskily, “John…. John…..”
McCartney, Chris Sandford, Century Books, 2006.
I emailed Chris Sandford, but while he was quite generous in trying to recall his original source for this anecdote, he doesn’t recall, and unfortunately, he’s currently unable to access his research files. If anyone has more information, I’d be grateful if you’d email Robyn and let her know.
.Also, how would John have known Paul was “immovable” unless he really put in the effort to move him? Even if “immovable heterosexuality” is an accurate reflection of what Yoko heard John say, at the very least it suggests a long-term, determined effort at seduction on John’s part. Regardless of anything else, that’s more than just “contemplated for a moment.”
I was hoping to do a Rabbit Hole on the “princess” situation (along with the tiara), but we’ve run out of room for Rabbit Holes in the first part of this series, and it turns out to be a lot more complicated to sort through than I’d anticipated. So we’ll deal with all of that when we get to the breakup in the next part of the series, since we’ve got enough on our hands already with this passage.
full quote:”After the initial embarrassment, then – um, now Paul is being very nice to me. He’s nice, and a – a very, um, str– on the level, straight sense. Like, um, whenever there’s something happening at Apple, he explains to me, as if I should know, [inaudible] and things like that. And also whenever there’s something like they need a light man or something like that, he asks me if I know of anybody in the art world, and things like that. And like, um, I can see that he’s just now suddenly changing his attitude, like he’s being – he’s treating me with respect. Not because it’s me – but because I belong to John. I hope that’s what it is, because that would be nice. And I feel like he’s my younger brother or something like that. I’m sure that if he had been a woman or something, he would have been a great threat, because there’s something definitely very strong between John and Paul.”
As I mentioned in the Rabbit Hole on research methodology, here’s a quote from John in which he named Paul as the first love of his life (and Yoko as the second). That quote has long been thought to be an internet fabrication, like the fake photos of John and Paul kissing — because unfortunately fake internet quotes relative to the lovers possibility are a thing — though it’s usually because someone mistakes a quote from a piece of speculative fiction as a genuine quote rather than out of malice or mischief aforethought.
But there is a reference to John’s “Paul is the first love of my life” quote in a 1986 biography of Paul by Chris Salewicz, which is well before the internet — and this tells me that the quote exists somewhere. And as you might imagine, I’d very much like to verify it. If anyone has seen this printed anywhere besides the Salewicz book, I’d be grateful if you’d let Robyn know. (robyn@faithcurrent.com)
“In later years John would admit that Paul had been the first love of his life, and Yoko the second.”
Chris Salewicz, McCartney, Queen Anne Press, 1986, p. 212.
I observed a real-life demonstration of where Yoko’s cultural power is found when I visited her retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in 2024. I spent over two hours at the exhibition — partly because I found it genuinely engaging and thought-provoking, and partly to see how people were reacting to it. And during that time, the obvious and consistent attention — and emotional reaction — of the visitors to the exhibition was focused far disproportionately on the part of the exhibition dedicated to John and Yoko, rather than on her solo work.
Here’s the introduction to a 2018 interview:
“Yoko Ono needs no introduction. She has been making music for 40+ years, is an artist, a political activist and most famously of all (for me anyway) she was the love of the late John Lennon’s life.’
“The World According to Yoko Ono: Art, Activism, and Vision,” Riot, January 10, 2018.
Also, here’s Yoko in a 1981 Rolling Stone interview:
“Although many critics have in the past either ignored or derided her work, Yoko over the years has gradually been accumulating a large audience. “It’s not like ten years ago — people are catching on,” [Yoko] says of the good reviews that have helped make Season of Glass a best-selling record. But the tragedy for her is that she may never know whether the public interest is truly in her art — or in her late husband. “I have no dreams about that,” she says. “I think the fact that I’m a widow is the initial concern that people have.”
“The Lost 1981 Yoko Ono Interview,” Rolling Stone, Barbara Graustark, October 1, 1981.
Cut Piece by Yoko Ono, 1964—
“‘If the truth be told, the love was lost both ways, and it was a very healthy situation where they outgrew each other’s company. So when John died, before the big reverence was noticed, there were some things that Paul said [from which] I know he was not that enamoured with John. And now it might be important for Paul that the world knows John loved him, because it’s important that the person who is revered did love him. But if John had died and nobody cared, Paul wouldn't have said it.”
Yoko Ono interviewed for a BBC radio series celebrating John's 50th birthday in 1990, published in a book of the series, "In my Life: John Lennon remembered,” Kevin Howlett & Mark Lewisohn,” BBC Books, 1990.
NOTE: It’s not at all clear from the context of the quote what that last “it” refers to, but the overall message of Yoko’s remark is clear — that “the love was lost both ways” between John and Paul. But putting aside everything else there is to notice about this quote, notice how in this comment, Yoko is framing the relationship between Paul and John — and the effect of John’s murder on Paul — entirely based on the respective cultural power of those involved. This is not unusual for her — Yoko’s interviews often frame personal relationships in a culturally and personally transactional way. We tend to project onto others our own view of the world, and I suspect this is a rare moment of honesty — not about the situation, obviously, or about the relationship between John and Paul, but about how Yoko herself experiences the world. That’s part of what makes her art interesting and provocative, but it also means it’s yet another bias to factor in, relative to her comments on the relationship between John and Paul.
The suggestion that Yoko’s most influential and important piece of art is her own life is reflected in the title of what was up until recently her only biography, titled Yoko Ono: An Artful Life (Donald Brackett, Sutherland House Books, 2022.
NOTE: In the same interview, Yoko also claimed that the reason John didn’t have sex with men was that he was “too inhibited” (this, the same man who posed for a full frontal nude album cover), and also that John never found a man who was beautiful and intelligent enough — which is both an almost-certain slag on Paul and also utterly nonsensical, given Paul was widely considered the most beautiful man in the world during the 1960s, not to mention a musical genius who was (till he met both rock and roll and John) a star student at one of the most prestigious schools in England.
Here’s the full quote from the 2015 Daily Beast interview, and its context:
“I ask if [Yoko] has ever had sex with a woman, or been attracted to them.
“Well, that’s another thing. John and I had a big talk about it, saying, basically, all of us must be bisexual. And we were sort of in a situation of thinking that we’re not [bisexual] because of society. So we are hiding the other side of ourselves, which is less acceptable.”
later in the same interview—
“Did Lennon have sex with other men?
“I think he had a desire to, but I think he was too inhibited,” says Ono. “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.”
So did Lennon ever have sex with men?
“No, I don’t think so,” says Ono. “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.”
and further down—-
“Uh, well, the story I was told was a very explicit story, and from that I think they didn’t have it [sex],” Ono tells me. “But they went to Spain, and when they came back, tons of reporters were asking, ‘Did you do it, did you do it?’ So he said, ‘I did it.’ Isn’t that amazing? But of course he would say that. I’m sure Brian Epstein made a move, yeah.”
“Yoko Ono: I Still Fear John’s Killer,” The Daily Beast, interviewer Tim Teeman, Oct 13, 2015.
“To some extent. Even physically, we were apart from everyone else. We were The Boys, y’know. We spent most of our time in this self-enclosed world. No one really knew what we were thinking. Then we’d do these press conferences or whatever and we were just four Liverpool lads taking the piss. It was very funny at first. They’d ask the most ridiculous questions and we’d come straight back at them. Like they’d ask what we thought about Beethoven and Ringo would say, “Well, I like his poems.” Or they’d ask how we found America. And one of us would say, “We turned left at the traffic lights.” What do we do when we’re in our hotel rooms?”We ice skate.” They’d ask us if “Eleanor Rigby” was about lesbians and we’d say, “Of course it is.”They’d say, “Why is that?” And we’d say, “Because all four of us are lesbians.” It was just a bit more interesting than saying it’s a song about a lonely old spinster. We just loved taking the piss out of daft questions.
Paul McCartney interview, My Life In The Shadow Of The Beatles, UNCUT magazine, July 2004.
It’s remarkable that almost no one pushes back when Yoko fictionalizes her answers in interviews. The notable exception is in her 1980 (ish, date not specified) interview with Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, published in 2024 in a book titled All You Need Is Love (St. Martin’s Press). In this interview, Yoko fictionalizes the story to the point where — after multiple attempts to push back against her provably false answers — Brown and Gaines finally resort to footnoting the factual research contradicting Yoko’s claims.
