Yoko Ono Told John Lennon How to Take Heroin, New Book Claims: I Told Him ‘It Was Just a Nice Feeling’

In an excerpt from The Beatles oral history book ‘All You Need Is Love,’ Ono reportedly recounts how Lennon “wouldn’t take anything unless he wanted to do it”

Yoko Ono and John Lennon pose for an image at London Airport in 1971. PHOTO: R. BRIGDEN/DAILY EXPRESS/GETTY

Yoko Ono reportedly told John Lennon how to take heroin, according to an excerpt from a new oral history book on The Beatles.

The Sunday Times shared several new excerpts from All You Need Is Love — a book featuring interviews from the early 1980s with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as well as Ono and other loved ones in the band’s world.

In one interview from the book, Ono, now 91, reportedly said she advised Lennon on how to take heroin, and denied that she “put John on H,” which she claimed his bandmate Harrison had accused her of. Ono also said that Lennon “wouldn’t take anything unless he wanted to do it.”

Per the Times excerpt, Ono reportedly said she first “had a sniff of” heroin in Paris and that she experienced “a beautiful feeling” as she did not get sick from it. “It was just a nice feeling,” she said in the book, according to the outlet. “So I told John that.”

Ono also reportedly said that Lennon would ask her about her experience using the drug, the Times reported. Ultimately, Ono thought he “wanted to take it, that’s why he was asking,” per the excerpt. She also said that they “never injected” the drug.

A rep for Ono did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono photographed in November 1980.JACK MITCHELL/GETTY

In 1970, Lennon, who was killed in 1980, previously detailed his first experience with heroin, telling Rolling Stone that it was “not too much fun” and that he “never injected anything.”

“We sniffed a little when we were in real pain,” he said. “We got such a hard time from everyone, and I’ve had so much thrown at me, and at Yoko, especially at Yoko. Like Peter Brown in our office – and you can put this in – after we come in after six months he comes down and shakes my hand and doesn’t even say hello to her. That’s going on all the time.”

“And we get into so much pain that we have to do something about it. And that’s what happened to us,” Lennon added. “We took ‘H’ because of what the Beatles and others were doing to us. But we got out of it.”

All You Need is Love comes from former members of the Beatles inner circle, Peter Brown and author Steven Gaines, who first interviewed group members for 1983’s The Love You Make. The initial book was not well-received by the band, The Times notes, with Gains sharing that Paul and Linda McCartney “tore the book apart and burned it in the fireplace, page by page.”

Now using those same interview transcripts, the new oral history details tensions between those within The Beatles inner circle, the ending of the band and more.

In one excerpt, Starr, now 83, discussed how he knew “it was time” for The Beatles to break up, and in another, McCartney, now 81, reportedly compared the group to a “football team,” stating, “You don’t like to see a chick in the middle of the team.”

The Beatles photographed on May 19, 1967.JEFF HOCHBERG/GETTY IMAGES

McCartney previously reflected on the “period of change” in the Beatles’ history when Lennon would bring Ono to studio sessions during his McCartney: A Life in Lyrics series on iHeartPodcasts. McCartney said at the time that “anything that disturbs us, is disturbing” while recording.

“We would allow this and not make a fuss,” he said. “And yet at the same time, I don’t think any of us particularly liked it. It was an interference in the workplace. We had a way we worked. The four of us worked with George Martin. And that was basically it. And we’d always done it like that. So not being very confrontational, I think we just bottled it up and just got on with it.”

All You Need Is Love, which is being touted as a “groundbreaking oral history of the one of the most enduring musical acts of all time,” will be out on April 9 via Macmillan.