#90% of my followers like: fiona we know all this shit why did you kill yourself making an encyclopedia of Water Is Wet john lennon factoids

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Care to share the John struggling with sexuality findings… feel as if it would nice to learn

Wow this is a HUGE question. I'll try to gather some evidence (I was actually doing a Notion doc on this as a sideproject lmao but it's nowhere near finished)

This is definitely not a complete list (and most of this will be old news to people who've been on here for a while), but it's quite extensive and hopefully helpful to someone who's just starting to research this, I'd say. Also feel free to come back and ask, if you have more specific questions about this once you read this!

Also, when I was almost finished with this post, tumblr froze on me and I hadn't saved the post as a draft and the text couldn't be copy-pasted anymore. I freaked out since this took me hours, but was able to salvage the raw, unformatted, paragraphless text by getting it from the page inspection thingy (pro-tip!). So, I had to reformat everything and add the sources back in (but least the sources on the frozen page were still clickable so I didn't have to go hunting for them again, just had to recopy the links over).

Point is, there might be mistakes in here because of that :(

April 1963 Trip to Barcelona with Brian Epstein:

(here's some background info on the trip if you're not in the know.)

• Pete Shotton, John's childhood friend's account of a conversation with John shortly after the trip (from the book John Lennon: In My Life)

I visited John at Aunt Mimi’s a few days after his return to England. And when he started in about how much he had enjoyed Spain, I could hardly resist taking the piss out of him. “So you had a good time with Brian, then?” I smirked. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

I was somewhat taken aback when John didn’t so much as crack a smile. “Oh, fuckin’ hell,” he groaned. “Not you as well, Pete!”

“What do you mean, not me as well?”

“They’re all fucking going on about it.”

“It’s OK, John. Don’t take it so serious. I’m just joking, for Christ’s sake.”

“Actually Pete,” he said softly, “Something did happen with him one night.”

Now that wiped the grin right off my face. Had I even dreamed there might be any truth whatsoever to the rumors, I would never have made light of the subject in the first place. Still – as John surely knew – I would have stood by him, and let the rest of the world handle the business of passing moral judgement, even if he had just told me he’d committed murder. And John would surely have done the same for me.

Which, after all, is what true friendship is all about.

“What happened,” John explained, “is that Eppy just kept on and on at me. Until one night I finally just pulled me trousers down and said to him: ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Brian, just stick it up me fucking arse then.’

“And he said to me, ‘Actually, John, I don’t do that kind of thing. That’s not what I like to do.’

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘what is it you like to do, then?’

“And he said, ‘I’d really just like to touch you, John.’

“And so I let him toss me off.”

And that was that. End of story.

“That’s all, John” I said. “Well, so what? What’s the big fucking deal, then?”

“Yeah, so fucking what! The poor bastard. He’s having a fucking hard enough time anyway.” This was in reference to the “butch” dockers who, on several recent occasions, had rewarded Brian’s advances by beating him to a bloody pulp.

“So what harm did it do, then, Pete, for fuck’s sake?” John asked rhetorically. “No harm at all. The poor fucking bastard, he can’t help the way he is.”

Comment: Pretty eyebrow-raising to offer yourself up like that if you don't on some level desire it, but at the same time this plus John's violent reaction to Bob Wooler insinuating something happened weeks later to me indicates he was not feeling very secure and normal about what had happened.

• John himself on the trip (from his 1980 Playboy interview)

I went on holiday to Spain with Brian... which started all the rumors that he and I were having a love affair. Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But we did have a pretty intense relationship. And it was my first experience with someone I knew was a homosexual. He admitted it to me. We had this holiday together because Cyn was pregnant and we left her with the baby and went to Spain. Lots of funny stories, you know. We used to sit in cafs and Brian would look at all the boys and I would ask, 'Do you like that one? Do you like this one?' It was just the combination of our closeness and the trip that started the rumors.

Comment: "Never consummated" might be consistent with Pete's account if to John "consummation" entailed some form of penetration. It's left to the imagination what John might've meant by "almost a love affair". Also, his interest in how Brian experiences his own sexual orientation is of note, regardless of the extent to which something between him and Brian happened, I'd say.

• John on the trip (from his 1970 Lennon Remembers interview)

Q: Let me ask you about something else that was in the Hunter Davies book. At one point it said you and Brian Epstein went off to Spain.

A: Yes. We didn’t have an affair though. Fuck knows what was said. I was pretty close to Brian. If somebody is going to manage me, I want to know them inside out.

Comment: This is kind of weird to me, because Brian had been signed on as his manager for over a year by April 1963. John wanting to "know him" seems a bit late by this point. He might not be lying though and just genuinely have confused some memories.

• John on attacking Bob Wooler at Paul's 21st birthday party (Interview with Andy Peebles, 1980. I can't for the life of me find a full transcript of this but here's a post transcribing this bit and the audio is on Youtube, I haven't double-checked the transcription though)

The Beatles’ first national coverage was me beating up Bob Wooler at Paul’s 21st party because he intimated I was homosexual. I must have had a fear that maybe I was homosexual to attack him like that and it’s very complicated reasoning. But I was very drunk and I hit him and I could have really killed somebody then. And that scared me…

Comment: John is directly expressing that he once doubted his own sexuality. Obviously, this does also slightly read like a denial, in that his use of "must have had a fear" sounds, grammatically, like that fear was perhaps unfounded.

At the same time, can you blame him for backing out of admitting to this, if that's what's going on? I also sort of personally doubt he ever got to a point in his life where he was actually fully comfortable with his attraction to men, and even went through phases where he actively repressed/denied it.

• John on attacking Bob (1971 interview with Peter McCabe & Robert D. Schonfeld)

I remember it, vaguely. I was out of me mind with drink – when you get down to the point where you drink all the empty glasses, that drunk. And he was saying, “Well, come on, John, tell us,” something like that, “Tell me about you and Brian, we all know,” like that. And obviously, I must have been un– uh, f– frightened of the fag in me to get so angry at that. You know, when you’re twenty-one, you want to be a man, and all that.

Comment: The same as above, essentially

John and Paul (+ Yoko's suspicions):

• John on his expectations from a romantic/creative partner (1972 Interview with Sandra Shevey)

It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists. [faltering] An artist – it’s more – it’s much better to be working with another artist of the same energy, and that’s why there’s always been Beatles or Marx Brothers or men, together. Because it’s alright for them to work together or whatever it is. It’s the same except that we sleep together, you know? I mean, not counting love and all the things on the side, just as a working relationship with her, it has all the benefits of working with another male artist and all the joint inspiration, and then we can hold hands too, right?

Comment: Even in a quote technically denying being attracted to men he seems to express a wish for having such a relationship. The last statement kind of feels like at least some part of him wants to hold hands with the men he's worked with.

• John (+ Yoko), when asked about how people perceive his relationship with Yoko, bringing up Paul (Interview with David Scheff 1980; this didn't get printed by Playboy)

JOHN: Well, that’s rubbish, you know. Because nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one that can control me is me, and that’s just barely possible. [Yoko laughs] But that’s what life is about. And that’s the lesson I’m learning. Because – nobody ever said anything about Paul having a spell over me, when I was with him for a long time. Or me having a spell over Paul. They didn’t think that was abnormal, two guys together.

YOKO: They might have. [laughs]

JOHN: Or four guys together. In those days? Why didn’t anybody ever say, “How come those guys don’t split up? I mean, what’s going on backstage? I mean, what is that Paul and John business? Why – you know, how can they be together so long?”

Comment: John clearly sees a parallel between JohnandPaul and JohnandYoko (where few saw it) and uses it to demonstrate a hypocrisy he perceives. However, when claiming no one found his and Paul's relationship oddly close, Yoko calls this into question; she appears to disagree with John's assessment that what he and Paul had was "normal". Also, John correcting from it being about two people to about four, only for him to return right back to just him and Paul is of note to me.

• John, on how he feels about his relationship and partnership with Yoko (December 1970, Rolling Stone)

It’s just handy to fuck your best friend. That’s what it is. And once I resolved the fact that it was a woman as well, it’s all right. We go through the trauma of life and death every day so it’s not so much of a worry about what sex we are anymore.

Comment: Just pretty interesting, considering how often he compared Yoko directly to Paul and made allusions to replacing him with her. Also, his comment on having to resolve the fact she was a woman is odd (but he very well might be talking about the role of a "best friend" and deconstructing some type of misogyny that stopped him from opening up to women). John generally had an interesting perspective on the roles of being a friend, a sexual partner, a creative partner and how those intersect.

• John to Paul reflecting on the songs they've been writing for the Get Back sessions (Get Back sessions, January 24th, here's the audio, I don't have a link to the video. It's in episode 2 or 3 of Get Back though)

PAUL: It’s like, uh, “We have to get back.” “We’re on our way home.”

JOHN: Yeah.

PAUL: There’s a story. There’s another one – ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. “Oh darling, I’ll never let you down.” Like we’re doing—

JOHN: Yeah. It’s like you and me are lovers.

PAUL: [reserved] Yeah. [pause]

JOHN: We’ll just have to camp it up for those two.

PAUL: Yeah. Well, I’ll be wearing my skirt for the show, anyway.

Comment: Paul not flatout laughing at the comment kind of makes it seem like the vibe John was giving off here wasn't a joke (Paul knowing him well, would probably have a better feel for this than we do). But I will say that Paul during this period generally seems to have had trouble reading John and his emotions.

• Yoko on John and Paul (from the book John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman, which Yoko later revoked her endorsement from)

From chance remarks he had made, she [Yoko] 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.”

Comment: I've already talked about how problematic and ambiguous this passage is but the basic gist of it is quite clear: Yoko felt justified in suspecting John had sexual feelings for Paul. She had reason to believe she wasn't the only one suspecting this.

Misc. other things John (allegedly) said on this topic:

• Yoko on her and John discussing the terms of an open marriage in 1973 (John Lennon: The Life)

There was even some discussion, albeit not very serious, of whether he should stick to his own gender. “John said ‘It would hurt you like crazy if I made it with a girl. With a guy, maybe you wouldn’t be hurt, because that’s not competition. But I can’t make it with a guy because I love women too much, and I’d have to fall in love with the guy and I don’t think I can.’”

Comment: It's odd of John to suggest going out with a man if he doesn't actually want to, isn't it? We're also missing any hint of how Yoko reacted to the suggestion so this passage is eyebrow-raising to say the least. Especially given that Yoko appears to have had suspicions about John and Paul. It's not unreasonable to assume he backed out the moment Yoko showed some resistance towards the idea.

• John mixing up pronouns when reflecting on his partnership with Yoko (1971 Peter McCabe/Robert D. Schonfeld)

And it was like finding gold or something. To find somebody that you can go and get pissed with, and have exactly the same relationship as any mate in Liverpool you’d ever had, but also you could go to bed with him, and – it could stroke your head when you felt tired, or sick, or depressed. It could also be Mother. And obviously, that’s what the male-female – you know, you could take those roles with each other. And if the intellect’s there, [and] you know, compatible, well it’s just like – we’re in the pools.

Comment: I don't usually like to put too much weight on misspeaking because I think it happens without much reason most of the time. However, John saying "him" and then switching to "it", and not bothering to explicitly correct himself is interesting. He also barely falters, doesn't laugh about the mistake. It doesn't appear to be a normal instance of misspeaking to me because of this.

• John talking about what he aspired to be as a teen (I'm not actually sure what interview this clip originates from but it appears to be from 1975)

I was thinking, if only I could get out of Liverpool, be famous and rich, that would be great. I’ve always wanted to be a famous artist, you know? Possibly I’d have to marry a very rich old lady… or man, you know… to… to look after me while I did my art. But then Rock & Roll came and I thought ‘Ah, this is the one’, so I didn’t have to marry anybody or live with them, you know?

Comment: John openly suggesting he wanted to marry a man at some point.

• John in an interview during the "Lost Weekend" on all the press coverage his split from Yoko was getting at the time. (December 1975 interview with Lisa Robinson)

Yes, all your best friends let you know what's going on. I was trying to put it 'round that I was gay, you know– I thought that would throw them off... dancing at all the gay clubs in Los Angeles, flirting with the boys... but it never got off the ground.

Comment: Here, he is openly admitting to wanting people to think he is gay. It does seem to be quite a jokey tone though. Still, not the most common joke for straight people to make.

• John, interviewing himself, bringing up bisexuality (Andy Warhol's magazine, 1974)

Q. I’m sorry. Just a few more questions MR. LENNON, I’m sure you understand I have a deadline… my editor… etc..

A. Alright then, GET ON WITH IT!

Q. Have you ever fucked a guy?

A. Not yet, I thought I’d save it til I was 40, life begins at 40 you know, tho I never noticed it.

Q. It is trendy to be bisexual and you’re usually 'keeping up with the Jones’, haven’t you ever… there was talk about you and PAUL…

A. Oh, I thought it was about me and Brian Epstein… anyway I’m saving all the juice for my own version of THE REAL FAB FOUR BEATLES STORY etc.. etc..

Q. It seems like you’re saving quite a lot for when you’re 40..

Comment: Honestly, the awareness of bisexuality currently being trendy and bringing it up is extremely interesting to me, as someone who has accused myself of faking my own sexuality for attention. It makes it seem like this is not something he took lightly, even if he is joking about it here.

There's also something on Tony Manero who openly claimed John came onto him multiple times and called him bisexual but I've heard that people have had trouble confirming he's a real person I think (?), so I didn't include it. You can read his account here though.

As I've said, this list isn't comprehensive, there's a few more anecdotes that I've either seen people mention but haven't come across the original source yet or stuff other people see as compelling evidence that I don't agree is relevant. Also, of course, I might have forgotten some things.

Here's some other places you can check out, off the top of my head:

My John speculation tag

My John-Paul speculation tag

My John-Brian tag

@thecoleopterawithana's "I'm not a homosexual" tag

@amoralto's oh john and awkward best friend talk placeholder tags

#90% of my followers like: fiona we know all this shit why did you kill yourself making an encyclopedia of Water Is Wet john lennon factoids #making this traumatized me #i WILL be copying this back into my notion doc lmao #i saved this as a draft like five times after getting burned so hard #i was almost sobbing and my mum was like “What's wrong?” and how was i supposed to tell her my john lennon wasnt straight essay was perhaps #lost to cyberspace #ask #anon #mine #john #ref #john speculation #my analysis #straight up FORGOT to add hunter davies and that other guy whose name escapes me saying john TOLD THEM he had a thing with brian