No, fluid sexuality is not some new thing that Miley Cyrus came up with. And who better to queer our musical icons than conceptual artist and musician Yoko Ono? In an interview with the Daily Beast, the original Plastic talked about sexuality with her husband, John Lennon. “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.” It’s heartening to see that this kind of enlightened pillow talk existed well before Orange Is the New Black (and probably even before that — the Greeks, hello?).
There were rumors that Lennon had hooked up with the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein during a 1963 vacation to Spain, which inspired the 1991 film The Hours and Times. “When they came back, tons of reporters were asking, ‘Did you do it, did you do it?’ So he said, ‘I did it,’” said Ono. “Isn’t that amazing? But of course he would say that.”
She thinks he was just baiting the press, and that while Epstein definitely “made a move” on Lennon, she says her husband wasn’t really interested. (Lennon told Playboy in 1980, “Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But we did have a pretty intense relationship.”)
In fact, Ono doesn’t think Lennon ever actually acted out his homosexual desires. “I think he had a desire to, but I think he was too inhibited,” she said. “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.”
John Lennon: picky bisexual — just like you.
