has anyone who knew the beatles in real life, even if it was only a distant association, ever said/ hinted that they thought john and paul were lovers or having sex? the only person i can think of is francie schwartz.
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Francie is very clear throughout her statements that she believes there was something going on between John and Paul, but even she never outright calls them lovers or suggests they were having sex. And that's the thing: nobody has any way of knowing whether they were physically intimate. Only John and Paul would know that. That's why we don't really have insiders flatly claiming they were sleeping together, and honestly, we shouldn't be surprised by that. What we do have are quite a few people who knew them describing their relationship as unusually intense, often using language that seems to imply they believed there was something more there. Sometimes the language feels deliberately suggestive; other times it feels like they are reaching for metaphors because they genuinely don't know how else to describe what they witnessed. In some cases, I think the person using the language probably does mean it metaphorically and simply sees John and Paul as extraordinarily close friends. In others, I get the impression that they suspect something deeper but stop short of saying so directly. It's also worth remembering that it's rather unusual for an insider—not just in the Beatles world, but in general—to publicly declare that two people were lovers, especially when those two people never claimed that themselves. Most people don't expose things like that. Even if they had suspicions, those suspicions would ultimately be based on things they witnessed: behavior, dynamics, comments, jealousy, emotional intensity. Those things can be suggestive, but they don't constitute proof.
That's largely how I see the Beatles situation. Many people around them seem to have observed dynamics between John and Paul that made them question whether "just friends" was a sufficient description. We see hints of this in things like the "John's princess" and other nicknames that people at Apple came up with after whatever they witnessed in their dynamic. But because they couldn't possibly know for certain, they often ended up talking about them in very suggestive, sometimes awkwardly contradictory ways, as if they themselves weren't quite sure how to define the relationship.
As for examples of insiders (besides Francie and Yoko) who at least seem to believe there was something deeper than friendship there, we have:
"My role as a journalist was to cover the final act of the Beatles' career, and to observe the fall-out, largely, though by no means totally, with John and Paul. There were some bizarre and revealing moments during those days." (He left it there and didn't elaborate. He also talked to Jane quite a bit after her breakup with Paul, and she confided in him many things, like the problems she had with Paul, like infidelity, drugs, and him priotizing John over her)
"It's like a marriage.These two broke up. And it took Paul a long time to get over it. John too, but he was just too macho to show it. But they had a marriage before Yoko arrived, although they both had girlfriends before.
Pattie Boyd (when asked about a photo she took that makes her smile because she knows what was going on behind the camera):
"I got one shot of Paul and John sitting together. John is just looking at Paul and Paul is making some sort of face. And I just wish I knew what they would have been saying. But something... there's something going on."
"This blurring of sexual lines was part of the creative mix of the era, but it also had its dark side. The homoerotic subculture had as a nasty by-product a virulent strain of misogyny. And Mick and Keith were hardly immune from this. [...] The trial and acquittal (the Redlands drug bust trial in 1967) bonded Mick and Keith - but it created a very odd dynamic. For Keith it was just an alliance within a group, but for Mick it was a lot more than that. It has all the irrationality and passion of a love affair. It's a pity that the things people put Mick down for are what make him Mick: his narcissism and his queeniness. Lennon and McCartney had a similar bond between them. Not as strong, of course, but both groups had these duennas, these strange bisexual figures as managers, Brian Epstein and Andrew Oldham." (She later described how Mick would go on and on about how much he wanted Kaith sexually).
"Why this odd little Japanese lady? The reason, many people believed, was that more than a trophy wife, a model or an actress, John needed a chum. His love affair with Paul McCartney was ending."
"One week and one day after Paul married Linda, I received a phone call from John. John and Yoko were at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris and wanted to get married, immediately. People believe that John's desire to get married so soon after Paul's marriage was a knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps it was psychologically about breaking up with Paul."
"Of course, for me Yoko provoked all the echoes of the past, of Stuart and John. How Stuart was the one who was between John and Paul. We must all bring our own interpretations of what jealousies or fears did really lead to the abandonment of the Beatles. I would suggest that it had to do as much with personal relationships and power as with artistic ambition and financial awareness." (This is significant because she once said that Pauls antagonism towards Stu was probably because he suspected John and Stu had a sexual relationship. Whether one agrees with her or not, it shows that she clearly did not view the dynamics between these relationships as purely platonic).
"Julian and Sean had lost a father; Cynthia, her knight in shining armour; Yoko, a fellow artist, contemporary and house husband … and Paul? Well, call me crazy, but he lost the wife. I’m certainly not implying anything of a carnal nature here, but to almost all intents and purposes (as John would have put it), what they had was a marriage. Mark David Chapman’s selfish quest for his Warhol-esque fifteen minutes of fame was the fatal wound to an injured relationship that had lasted almost 23 years. This unconventional partnership, much like a paradigmatic marriage, had endured its sundry situations...its honeymoon period; its seven year itch; the adoption of its offspring by Northern Songs and some time foster parent Michael Jackson; the tender temptations of Jane, Cynthia, Yoko, Linda, May Pang and others. [...] On the February 9, 1964, Ed Sullivan shone the proverbial light on the viewing public. The long night was over. The Beatles had conquered America. For the next two and a half years, John and Paul, (together with George and Ringo), would travel, eat, rehearse, write, play, record and “sleep“ (again, not literally) together." (If she really didn't want to imply something, why does she keep being so suggestive? It's almost like a wink to the reader)
Also worth mentioning is Maggie McGivern.
"The accommodation for bands was still in the attic. There were still brothels with prostitutes sitting in the windows just down the street. [...] It was easy to imagine The Beatles living the same life, not least because it looked suspiciously like the bed sheets in the attic hadn’t been changed since John and Paul had slept in them."
As for more distant associations, there are several biographers. Obviously, they did not personally witness anything in the 60s. However, they spent years interviewing people who were there and had access to enormous amounts of material. It's fair to speculate that some of them may have been told suggestive things—or had things implied to them—that they ultimately chose not to include in print. Bob Spitz himself has said this. The reason I think some biographers may know more than they explicitly say is the way they write about John and Paul, especially Bob Spitz, Peter Doggett, and, more recently, Lesley-Ann Jones. I have plenty of criticisms of Jones's work, but what caught my attention was how dramatically her tone changed between her earlier writing on John and her later writing on Paul. In her Lennon biography, she was generally dismissive of their relationship. In her Paul biography, however, her language became noticeably suggestive. And a few months ago she responded to one of Sean's tweet by saying that she had discovered things during her research that could not be published. I wouldn't treat that as evidence of anything specific, but it certainly made me curious. As for Bob Spitz, I honestly don't think he even tries to hide his view, lol. He repeatedly describes John and Paul in romantic terms, often quite explicitly.
Who knows what these writers were told, what they heard secondhand, or what impressions they came away with after years of interviews? We can only speculate. But what strikes me is how often people who spent significant time studying John and Paul end up reaching for the language of romance, marriage, heartbreak, jealousy, and love affairs and them replacing each other with Yoko and Linda when trying to describe a relationship that, supposedly, was "just a friendship." When multiple observers end up using the exact same language (and even John and Paul themselves), you have to start wondering why.
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