John Lennon Had ‘Loud, Raucous Sex’ at a Party While Yoko Ono Sat in ‘Mortified Silence’

John Lennon and Yoko Ono got together while he was still married to his first wife, Cynthia Lennon. He cheated brazenly during his relationship with Cynthia. While he claimed he had a deeper connection with Ono, he reportedly was still unfaithful. A friend of both Lennon and Ono said Lennon once cheated on Ono extremely publicly while she and other party guests sat in stunned silence.

John Lennon openly cheated on Yoko Ono at a party

In 1972, Lennon and Ono attended a party at anti-war activist Jerry Rubin’s apartment. They were waiting on the results of the presidential election between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. 

As the night wore on — and Nixon began to emerge as the victor — Lennon began drinking heavily. At some point, Lennon slipped away and had “loud, raucous sex” with another woman. 

“Throughout it all,” the couple’s friend Elliot Mintz wrote in We All Shine On. “Yoko sat on the sofa, in stunned, mortified silence, as other guests began awkwardly getting up to leave — until they realized that their coats were in the bedroom where John was having sex.”

Mintz said that Ono could deal with a lot — she ended up forgiving Lennon for his blatant infidelity — but this night was particularly brutal for her.

“He was placing [his wife] in the most embarrassing position that you could ever place a woman in — having a romp in the hay in another room with thin walls while your wife was attending a small party and could hear everything,” Mintz told People. “Yoko is a very stoic woman, but it would have severe consequences.”

Mintz said this was a side of Lennon that he came to know well.

“The reality is,” Mintz said, “as I would learn over the years in the bad behavior department, John would say to me, ‘Ellie,’ which is what he called me, ‘I’m not always the ‘Imagine’ guy.’”

Yoko Ono later told John Lennon they needed to separate

Lennon and Ono’s marriage struggled for several more months before Ono sat down with him in 1973. There wasn’t one specific moment that made her realize they needed space, but neither was happy in the relationship.

“One night John and I were lying in bed in the Dakota, and John kept saying how miserable he was, how he needed to get away,” Ono recalled in the book The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles by Steven Gaines and Peter Brown. “I said that we had been together twenty-four hours a day for five years and that I needed some time apart for myself. I told him, ‘Why don’t you go to Los Angeles?’”

Ono encouraged him to bring the couple’s assistant, May Pang. He began a relationship with her during his lost weekend period.

His friend said he had no shame about cheating

According to Brown and Gaines, Lennon admitted to cheating on Cynthia Lennon with far more women than Ono.

“John had confessed to dozens of infidelities committed during the eight years of their marriage, none of which she had suspected. He claimed in his list of conquests the American folk singer Joan Baez, the English actress Eleanor Bron, the Evening Standard journalist Maureen Cleave, and American pop singer Jackie De Shannon, along with what he estimated at three hundred other girls in towns and cities around the world.” 

Lennon’s friend Bill Harry said the Beatle hardly even attempted to hide his infidelity. He just behaved as though he didn’t have a wife at all.

“He had no shame,” he said, per the book The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz, adding, “He acted as if he were still a bachelor — even after the baby came.”