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LENNON: There were times when we might have done things, sexually. We came close to it a couple of times.
Q: You and Paul?
LENNON: Yes. Well it's touchy to talk about. I don't want to land him in it on the one hand. We were attracted - we always had a mutual attraction. It was always this very intense relationship. Creatively...and personally, you know. It's like we became...one person. At points. It would come and go, like that. I used to go mad over it and not really know why I was feeling that way. When we were in Hamburg, you know - there were women there. We were young guys, having sex all of a sudden, more than we'd ever had back home. And Paul would sleep with a girl, or I'd be with a girl - actually I think someone might have told this story already. I'd steal their clothes, you know, times when Paul was with a girl, in bed. I stole their clothes and cut the clothes up with scissors.
Q: You cut up their clothes?
LENNON: I'd get like that. Sort of vindictive. I was doing it and I didn't understand why I was doing it at the time. I just acted out like that. I never thought..."Well, hang on, what's going on with this? This isn't normal," anything like that. Look, I mean I already had that feeling of, "What is normal?" to begin with. It makes it so that a lot of the things you do sort of go unnoticed in your own head - go unnoticed to yourself. "Oh, that's just one more thing where I'm - off on my own planet". But I was always jealous with Paul.
Q: In what way?
LENNON: In every way. We were always competing, you see. It would make you jealous if the other one was doin anything. I was jealous if he wrote a song. I was jealous if he could sing a song in a way I couldn't. I was jealous of his appearance, I was jealous if a girl wanted him. I was jealous if he'd sleep with a girl. I could get...pretty terrible about it. Like a kid, you know.
Q: Jealous of the girl, you mean?
LENNON: Jealous of her, jealous of him. I resented anything that was taking away from me and him. Any sort of distraction. If he was sexually distracted and - preoccupied - then that drove me crazy. I felt possessive over him. And he was the same with me, only he could hide it well. When we were younger, he couldn't hide it as well. I'd get jealous if he had anything else taking up too much of his attention. As long as the stuff with the girls stayed trivial - like it was separate - from our thing. Then that was all fine. I mean, I'd still have moments of hating even knowing he was having sex with a girl. But if I felt like he was too interested in something else and I felt forgotten about - believe me, I let him know about it. I couldn't take being ignored. That's how I perceived it. I made sense of it that way, you know. Really it was jealousy about the girl, but I'd blow up about it and make out it was about him getting distracted from the group. Then he'd put whatever it was aside.
Q: You'd tell him to?
LENNON: Yes. Even something like - his dad made him get a little job, working on the lorries or something like that. Daddy wanted him to get a job and Paul gave into it. I went into a rage over that. I made him quit.
Q: You made him quit?
LENNON: I said here's your choice: quit the job, or you're out the group. You know, "Take this seriously, or piss off and work like daddy told you". I was the leader. So I held that over him.
Q: Do you think he was putting the job above the group?
LENNON: No. No, as I say, it was just to keep his father happy. The problem was anything that I saw as taking away his attention - and it was that he was obedient to his father. I couldn't have that. I needed him to be as...focused on what we were doing as I was. And he was. But I had to show him. It was sort of to prove to both of us that if it came down to...me or the job, it was going to be me. What we were doing mattered most, and what I said was gonna come first. I had a very low...tolerance for anything that took his attention. And that was even at the time when I'd had - my own sort of questioning of if the group was even worth it. I'd just come back from Hamburg and I'd had my moment of - "What's this all about?" But I came out of it and I then had no tolerance for him questioning what we were doing.
Q: He quit the job?
LENNON: Oh, within a day or so. And I calmed down and then it was all fine again. But it would explode like that, every now and then. Whenever I felt 'neglected'. I needed to come first. I didn't really scrutinise myself over it. I'd just go into this jealousy when it came to him. I felt overwhelmed sometimes by the relationship. We were young guys, you know, and we never thought about it, properly. It would just hit these points...where usually it would be me needing to act out. Once a year or so. It seemed like something would have to happen to be a sort of a release valve - we'd have to come to a crisis and confront this thing between us for a bit and sort of tacitly acknowledge it, without ever naming it explicitly, you know. That would have been unthinkable. Then we moved on like nothing had happened. But we knew it was there between us. And we didn't know of any other...two people, who were like us. Men, I mean. Writing songs together, being that close, thinking the same thoughts. We'd be having the same dreams, you know.
Q: The same dreams?
LENNON: Yes. It was like we were living in each other's heads. It was an incredibly intense thing. And very confusing. Having that relationship. Because the attraction was so strong, you see.
Q: Was it a sexual attraction?
LENNON: Yes. It frightened the hell out of both of us. We're still frightened of it. We'll probably always be frightened of it. But at least I'm here acknowledging it.
Q: What was the specific event?
LENNON: There were two times - there were two events. Where something almost happened. Both times were when we were younger, you know. A bit before our twenties, and then in our early twenties. And again - right now, there's part of me that's goin, "Shut up, Christ, you can never talk about that." That's what's been put into me. That's what I'm trying to get away from. And I feel like I'm betraying him, you know, to talk about it. This was something we were never going to speak about, we were never going to be public about this.
The one time something happened was in Hamburg, when we were starting out. Something nearly happened. But it was a minor enough sort of thing that it could be swept under the rug. We could forget about it. Mutually...we didn't think about it. The other time it happened was in America. And that was one where we couldn't just - sort of act like nothing had happened. It was... Actually it was during the American tour. Sixty-four. Ooh-er. That might upset some people.
Can you tell I'm hesitating? This is where my brain catches up to what I'm saying. I'm thinking about it - should I really be putting all this out there? Part of me doesn't want to put it out there. But then part of me thinks...just fuck it. If I'm going to drop the bomb, then...I'm going to drop the bomb.
Q: What happened?
LENNON: It happened here in New York. Paul was very drunk one night. We'd all been out. He made a pass at me. You know. He kissed me. We'd been out with Murray the K - the DJ. He'd shown us around some of the New York clubs. Peppermint Lounge, I think we went to. Some place like that. Paul had drunk too much, which he didn't usually, not like that. We were on tour. We were pretty professional as far as performing. I had to help him get up to the hotel room. That kind of thing. You know. The usual inhibitions are lowered. You have to imagine, at that time, we were having this - really surreal experience. Taking off in America like that, just like a rocket. I helped him get up to the hotel room, which we were sharing. We hadn't been able to be alone together really since we'd left England. He couldn't get his coat off. I took off his coat for him. And that was it.
Q: He kissed you?
LENNON: That's right.
Q: What did you do?
LENNON: Well I mean I was just frozen. Then I quickly - put a stop to it... It came as a big shock - to both of us. He really hadn't meant to do it. Was the thing. You know. I could tell just from the look on his face. It was like being hit by lightning, that type of thing. For us both. I think we'd just found ourselves in that situation suddenly and we weren't...ready for it. We just had no clue what to do about it now that we found ourselves there.
Q: What was your reaction?
LENNON: Shock, like I said. Well I mean, I couldn't believe he'd done it! He'd made the move, he'd actually done something. He was terrified, I was terrified...
Q: Why was he terrified?
LENNON: Well because... obviously. He didn't think of himself as - capable of feeling any attraction towards...another man. That was impossible. And that was mostly how I thought about it as well. How you think about yourself. "Well, I'm not like some poof. I'm not fuckin a queer." So this just happened and we had to face it. And it wasn't a good time for it to happen. It was like stepping on a landmine. I reacted...just terribly to the whole thing. I look back and I just think... I could have dealt with that better. I took it - really pretty badly.
Q: What did you do?
LENNON: I hit him the next day. Right then in the moment, I didn't do anything. I was too much just in shock. You know, I went into myself.
It was only being drunk that he could let himself act on the attraction. We'd known each other since we were fifteen, sixteen. And the thing is, the attraction was always between us. But it was unspoken. Oh, we were incredibly careful to never acknowledge it. You'd take pains to not acknowledge it. But now he'd actually gone and done something. My God. It happens that way with wanting another person who you know you're not supposed to want. You keep turning away from it and it's staring you right in the face. If we weren't together all the time, if we weren't in each other's heads the way we were and sort of sharing our minds, in order to be creative - maybe we'd have gone on with pretending and nothing ever would have happened. I think a lot of people do that. But for us, it came to a head. And then you're thinking, well fucking hell, what do we do now?
It was a very intense relationship. Without even bringing anything sexual into it. When you create art with someone else. It's like being naked. It's showing that deepest - part of you that you keep hidden away from the rest of the world, but there's this other person who you will show it to. I was his person for that, and he was mine. We went into that, just naturally, without it being a decision we'd made.
There's a powerful feeling that goes along with it. It's electric. It's incredibly exciting. You're stimulated by this person. If one of us had been a woman - that would have been that. But we're both men. So there was nowhere to go. We were in a, sort of in a conspiracy together. The two of us, and we'd pretend neither of us could feel what it was between us.
He was the one to actually do something - like point to it. I was too - closed off, inside. Paranoid about myself. Just...mortified. It was only towards the end, I could look at it, and call it what it was. It was attraction. Mutual attraction and - infatuation, really. In those days. The way we were both brought up, there was never talking about it, other than - as a joke. You know, the queers. 'Them'. Those people - of course, that's not us, we're not those people. Us is us, we're not freaks. And it's as simple as that.
This is all stuff I could only come to much later on. When I could finally look back at everything. I let myself really look at what actually went on. When you're in the middle of it all, you're just...reacting. I reacted just - the way that I reacted. I don't know. I reacted out of terror.
And for a while after the break up, I didn't want to think about any of it. Part of it was - feeling pissed off and feeling resentful and all the rest of it. And part of it was, the - the Paul and me part of it, the attraction thing. I didn't want to look at that. I was terrified to look back at that with...with clear eyes.
Q: Why?
LENNON: Well what if it turns out you're not the person you thought you were? It took me...feeling safe that nothing would ever happen. That's ironically what happened. Only then could I go, "Well hang on - what was going on with the two of us? All these things did happen. Of course there was an - electric fuckin charge between us. There was this big thing where everybody knew it and nobody said it. There was an elephant in the room. Am I really going to be the only one who's willing to say it? And this happened, and that happened. And oh, I understand why now. That's why I did that. That's why he did this."
I can look back. I don't feel - defensive and - and afraid to look at myself. I still feel...protective. That's where I do think...'I don't know how much of this I want to put out'. I feel protective of - of us and - and him and me and of course I think, "What if I say this and it changes how people see us?" Well I don't care anymore. I've got the distance and I can look back and I can see what really went down and I'm not going to...keep propping up some - cleaned up neat and tidy version of the way it was. For what? For money? For an image? What's an image? It matters to me that I see it clearly, and I say what I saw. And he can say what he saw, we can all have our own version of things.
Q: So let's go back to, what happened afterwards? After he'd tried to kiss you?
LENNON: Oh. Well, he kissed me and we were both terrified out of our minds. He was afraid. He was...drunk, anyway, and he'd gone and done that... and it was, things came crashing down, basically. For a couple of days, him doing that threatened to bring everything crashing down. That was how it felt. You know. One minute you're driving. Then just like that, you hit into another car. I don't think we've ever seen each other as panicked as we were right after that happened. We were sort of standing back from each other like a couple of aliens. It was a real moment. One of those very real moments. It was as much a shock to him. His real self sort of took control when he'd done it - like his unconscious did the thing he never would have planned to do in a million years.
Q: Did you talk about it?
LENNON: No, no. I pushed him away or something. Maybe I said something. I don't remember. He'd put himself in a position where I could just destroy him for that. If you see what I mean, if you have a male friend like that. It was something that could have destroyed us.
When I really reacted was when I hit him, that was the big reaction. That was the next day. Sort of a delayed reaction. I had to go away and think 'This is how I should have reacted'. I had to react with - hitting him. So that we were men again. "We're never doing that. Let's be clear, so we understand each other." It was a knee-jerk thing. Tellin him, "No!" And it was much more...extreme than it had to be. I was a dumb kid, so I went to violence. Because of that macho thing. I now wish...I had reacted some other way. I didn't need to hit him. He'd made this opening move and he was petrified. Paul was only about twenty-one or something at this point. But I hit him the next day. I didn't have the words to...talk to him about it. I didn't want to think about it. And hitting him, that ended it, and then we didn't have to think about it.
Q: Can you remember what he said?
LENNON: After I hit him?
Q: After he kissed you?
LENNON: Oh, it was the usual thing, extremely apologetic, all the rest of it. He said it was from being drunk, just silly stuff. To reassure me he wasn't attracted. But that wasn't enough for me, you see. He'd set off a bomb. He was trying to calm us both down...and he was pissed anyway. What was he going to say? He was drunk, he tried his best to sort of smooth it over. And then we both went to sleep.
Obviously it was going round and round in my head all night. I didn't want to go along with just pretending nothing had happened. So the next day I picked some stupid fight with him over nothing, just out of nowhere, and I hit him. It was in front of everyone. We were at the buffet at lunch. Everyone was there. The whole place freaked out. Brian was going round, I don't know what he did to hush it up. It never got out we'd been fighting.
Q: So you punched Paul in the face?
LENNON: Sucker punched him. Just out of nowhere, cowardly, you know.
Q: What happened then?
LENNON: I got in a lot of trouble. One of the guys pulled me away. Paul had blood all streaming from his nose. Brian was worried about it getting out, as I say. We were in America, it's not the sort of impression... Anyway he took us up to a room and he tried to sit us down, he wanted us to explain it. Like two naughty boys. "Now boys, what's all this?" It was very out of character for us, you understand. I just remember Paul with his bloody shirt, and sitting like this, like this with his head down not looking at Brian or me, and I was refusing to explain why I'd done it. Brian wanted me to apologise and I wouldn't do that. I got up and looked out the window. Brian wasn't letting anyone come in. He locked us in together - 'Sort it out between you', you know. We didn't even look at each other. And then we had the schedule and it was onto the next thing, we couldn't spend any more time on it, we had all these events we had to get to. Paul put on a clean shirt and we got on with it.
Q: So Paul said nothing to you?
LENNON: He didn't say anything, no. Neither of us said anything.
Q: Why?
LENNON: Because that's - two men. That's how you relate to another man, that's how you're taught to be in a situation like that. I knew I should have hit him - when it happened, you see. Right after he'd - kissed me - that was when I should have hit him. And the fact that I hadn't was sort of...hanging over me. It was my pride. I didn't want it between us that I hadn't done anything. It was his problem. I had reacted appropriately. I turned my shock and confusion and whatever else I was feeling into...what is the acceptable emotion for men - which is - okay, I'm gonna thump you.
What was actually going on - in my head - I was worried about the relationship. That was it. It was fear. Because that relationship - me and Paul - it's hard to explain how much...we needed that relationship. So any threat to us had to be dealt with. It felt like Paul doing that was jeopardising our - everything. He'd thrown this in between us. And it was the worst moment he could have done it. It was sort of - "Well, what the hell do you think you're doing? How dare you do that?" And the thing was, he regretted it, obviously. It was instant regret. I could see - it was like looking at a mirror. That fear and confusion that I felt, looking back at me.
I remember we were due to fly to Montreal a couple of days after that. We did a show, we did some press, you know, it was incredibly busy, and we got through all that without any problem. We were very professional like that, you know, we could put any problem away for the time being and just get on with it.
Q: You didn't talk about it?
LENNON: Well we did, but only afterwards. There was a dinner, something at some rich fancy building. I think we were being given an award. I went outside and I was smoking out there. I was pretty well in the dog house with Brian, and everyone was a bit - you know - "What's going on with them?" Everyone was on edge, because there was obviously - something had happened between Paul and me. And Paul came outside and it was him apologising to me, and really just - reassuring me, that kind of thing.
Q: How reassuring you?
LENNON: About everything I just went into. You know. He bloody well knew just like I did that this was a major threat to the relationship. It had threatened us - it threatened me. I didn't want to see myself in what he'd done. All he'd done was put into action the thing both of us had been feeling. That's the thing, you see. It was true. You can keep denying something like that for a long time. But when it's true, some part of you knows it's true. And if it gets pointed out, then you really have to work to keep yourself from looking at the truth.
But us doin anything about it was...completely out of the question. At that age. He'd brought it to a head sort of prematurely - and it was just too much for us to handle. It was him having had too much to drink and the truth came out at the wrong moment, and it came out too strongly. His reading of my reaction was that I absolutely was rejecting his advance - and I was. He saw it as - like a straight male, how a straight man would react if it was a queer coming onto him. I made him feel like that.
I think...he found that - pretty unbearable. He's incredibly proud as well. People don't seem to see that. We were both...very...jealous in terms of guarding or preserving how the other one thought of us. We were both performing for each other. It was hard to be weak in front of the other. I wasn't used to him making a mistake like that.
We're actually very alike in that way, in terms of our pride and our ego. People outside us don't really understand that. And to him it seemed like I thought less of him. As if by doing that, he'd...diminished my view of him. Which wasn't true at all. I saw myself in what he'd done. It exposed the truth, that I was queer, somewhere inside I was queer, even if I liked women. He'd shown an explicit...sexual interest, and it was like putting a spotlight on my interest in him. That was the whole problem.
Neither of us saw us as queers. You see. We both knew we were straight. So it didn't make any sense to us. Even if that sounds ridiculous - I can hear how it sounds. Obviously we weren't totally straight or we wouldn't be in the situation. It was some type of bisexuality, or whatever you want to call it. I just call it being human. I don't think anyone is completely straight. I don't. All you have to do is look around...but this is my theory and people start to get uncomfortable. If people are really willing to be honest... But most people would rather die than admit to that sort of thing.
Q: You said Paul apologised to you?
LENNON: He apologised. He promised me it was all just being drunk, he'd never do anything like that again. You know, just a moment of madness, all that kind of thing. And we agreed, sort of without saying it out loud, we'd just pretend it hadn't happened. You couldn't have found two people more...desperate to repress something. [Laughs] So that's what we did. We were very good at it. It was like - I'd hit him, so that had settled it between us. I'd done that...bit of violence, and now we could move on. He followed my lead. I'd given him no room to doubt that it was a "no" on my end of things. It was a bad thing, the whole - way I went about it. I think I really put him off about ever even - thinking about the idea of...me and him again. That's what I regret. I was rough, how I went about it. There wasn't any need to hit him.
I was lookin through old photos the other day. It's incredible, it's like science fiction. Those photos of when we landed, it's like I'm lookin at myself landing on the moon. When we did the tour of North America. The pictures of Paul at that time - I mean we all look so young. But I sort of forget, how young he was when this was all happening. I think of people as they are now, even when I'm thinking back. I don't know if that's just me. But when I was looking through the pictures - I just thought. The way that went down, it was a bad scene. He was trying something, reaching out or however you want to call it, and the rejection I put across was much stronger than it needed to be.
By the time I actually...opened my mind somewhat, or I grew up to a degree, I overcame my hangups or whatever, enough to where I could look at that thing between us - and my reaction was no longer...this is anything ugly or that I should feel ashamed of. I could look at the sex side of it without - feeling like the world would fall apart. The thing is, by the time I got there, he'd long ago rejected that in himself.
Q: Because of what happened after the kiss?
LENNON: Because of the violent way I'd rejected him, yeah. I mean, this is just me guessing. He never spoke to me about what happened. We didn't talk about it. But I could tell how much it hurt him. Right after it happened, it put a distance between us. We were tip-toeing around each other, even just - with how you touch someone. Two friends, you know. Two men who've been friends as long as we have, been through what we've been through, knew each other like we do - he couldn't touch me. You know, just casually like friends do, and I was the same, I was careful about how I'd touch him. It was a disaster. He went and slept with a lot of women. Even as far as Beatles go...he really went for all that. He was famous for that, even among us lot. He was working something out. I worked it out in my own way, or I tried to.
Q: You never discussed it?
LENNON: No. Well, I mean, I tried to. This was later. But he would just switch off. You know. He couldn't go there. I tried to have a proper talk with him once.
Q: When did this happen?
LENNON: That was in India.
Q: When you were with the Maharishi?
LENNON: Yes. I thought we could lay it all out on the table and just sort it out one way or another. We were somewhere different. I thought, well if anything's going to give us permission to speak the unspoken thing, you know, now is the time. So I tried sitting down and talking to him about it. He'd been going through lots of women. He was with Jane at the time, and that was turning serious. I suppose I thought, I need to get this out before he goes any further with that, because it was looking like they were about to get married. I could feel him pulling away. I don't know if it was the best time to try and...raise the subject with him again. There was never a proper time in the end, because he was past it. He'd shut the door on it years ago.
Q: What did he say?
LENNON: I don't remember specifically. He put up a sort of front. "Oh, that thing? What you bringing up that for? That was ages ago," that sort of thing. He was terribly polite of course. It was very civilised. Sort of, from my end, "Well what are we going to do about this?" And he went, "What is there to do about what? Whatever can you mean?" And so I felt - I suppose just foolish. And embarrassed for bringing it up, and I wanted him to admit it wasn't nothing to him, which he wasn't going to do. I just came away thinking, "Well that's what I get."
And that was my little depression I had after that. That was my realisation that the moment had passed us by. There was probably an opportunity where I could have mended things. I think I could have sent him the message that I wasn't going to rip his head off next time. That I was interested, on my side of things. But it slipped away, and I was pretty passive. I did my usual thing. And by the time I thought to mend things, he'd moved on.
If I'd reacted better at the hotel, basically. Or if after I'd hit him, if I'd tried to fix it. If I'd explained then that I was just scared and stupid, that I acted like a kid - but I never felt the urgency to explain myself. I ignored the nagging feeling. I was too much of a coward, is what it comes down to. And then time passes by, and...the moment when things could have changed passes by. It's like your youth goes, you wake up suddenly, "When did so much time pass?"
Q: Do you think you two would have...had an affair of some kind? If things had gone differently?
LENNON: Well we wouldn't have had to do a thing of - like a man and a woman. It would have been something else entirely. I don't know what it would have been, but it definitely could have been something. Would it have been staying together forever? Or telling anyone about it? I mean, I don't think so. But between us... I feel like we owed it to ourselves to - address the truth. I wasn't prepared to keep on with the lie. But it was a lie I had started. I lied to him, that there was nothing on my side. And he believed me. All that happened was - that kiss happened when we were too young. We didn't know how to handle it. If we'd tried it later on, if it had happened in India, say - we wouldn't have been so up tight. I could have handled it much better, and we could have...said what needed to be said, and - been together, whatever. Whatever needed to happen, whatever we needed to express together that we've been hiding from.
Q: So nothing ever happened between you, intimately, beyond that?
LENNON: No. We had some intense stuff happen while we were dropping acid. There would be times where something could happen... But I think we just never had the nerve. And when it's drugs, it's not the best time for trying anything like that. I think that would have just been another disaster. The sexual...feeling between us, that's always stayed. That never went away. It caused things to get very intense. I think it was always animating a lot of the energy in the partnership.
I think it came out in the work. We'd get a high off of being together but not being about to cross that boundary between us. It was a turn on, in a way. Maybe he won't ever admit that. I'll admit it. A tension like that is a problem in a lot of ways, but it's actually...very exciting to be that close and to want that person, but not have them. As men especially. It was just a very natural love and attraction between two human beings. But we're never getting away from these hang ups.
It was a sort of knife edge of it benefitting us on the one hand, where we could put up with the not-having - but then it could tip into a destructive thing if it drove us too mad. Like once the girlfriends and the wives came into the picture. Once it got serious with the women, and the shadow was over us of all the 'settle down, play at starting a family now' - when that set in, it created terrible...bitterness.
Emotionally, or with our spirits or with our souls or whatever you want to call it - we were in a marriage. Him and me. Long before anyone else came along. And the women would come onto the scene and quickly pick up on that - there's already a marriage here. There's this invisible thing. We were possessive over one another. So there would be resentment towards the woman in the other's life, you know? Oh, he felt that too. Absolutely he felt it. I'm always painted as the mad one. We both felt it, it was obvious between us without anything even needing to be said.
It was me and him, and then us...and everyone else. All the other relationships were secondary. So you tell me where that leaves us? How do you live with that? That's not something trivial, let me tell you.