“I married a broke student who played the guitar and ponced all my grant money off me.”ĭuring the Beatlemania years, Cynthia was at first a total secret, then a disregarded afterthought. “I didn’t marry a Beatle,” Cynthia told The Independent in 1999. Initially, Epstein worked to keep Lennon’s wife and child a secret from the band’s young female fans. Their son, Julian, was born the following April. However, upon learning she was pregnant in 1962, Lennon married Powell at a local registrar’s office with no family members in attendance - only fellow Beatles Paul McCartney and George Harrison and their manager, Brian Epstein. There was also an incident where a cleaning woman saw Lennon physically assault her and suggested she get away from him. She later wrote of his jealousy and temper John once hit her after she danced with his friend at a party, leading to a breakup with him that lasted several months. They began dating, with Cynthia doing things like dying her hair blonde for Lennon’s tastes (he was infatuated with Brigitte Bardot.) Lennon’s anger also quickly became apparent to Cynthia.
Everybody was amazed by him.”Ĭynthia and John at Heathrow Airport, 1964 “You couldn’t resist watching what he was up to,” she said of her initial attraction to Lennon. Lennon had been known as a troublemaker both in school and around his neighborhood, and Powell was drawn to his charisma and rebellious nature. A brash but creative teenager, Lennon asked her out and the two began dating after she broke her engagement with another man. Her mother worked and rented rooms in their home to be able to send Cynthia to the Liverpool College of Art, where she met John Lennon. John Lennon’s death in 1980 turned him into a rock martyr and a sanitization of his public image, but his first wife was living proof of his many demons and misdeeds.īorn Cynthia Powell, she lived a relatively modest-but-stable life until her father’s death when she was 17. She witnessed Lennon’s evolution from rough-edged Northerner to hippie spokesman - and had to suffer through the star’s dark side. Lennon was married to the former Beatle from 1962 to 1968, during the days that the band went from local Liverpool sensation to global phenomenon.
Her son Julian indicated on his website that she’d lost a recent battle with cancer. Cynthia Lennon, first wife of legendary singer-songwriter John Lennon, died this Wednesday in Mallorca, Spain at the age of 75.
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