Cynthia Lennon

Cynthia Lennon (; 10 September 1939 – 1 April 2015) was a British artist and author, and the first wife of John Lennon.

Born in Blackpool and raised in Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula, Powell attended the Liverpool College of Art, where Lennon was also a student. Powell and Lennon started a relationship after meeting in a calligraphy class. When Lennon was performing in Hamburg with the Beatles, Powell rented his bedroom at 251 Menlove Avenue in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton from his aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith. After Powell became pregnant with their son Julian, the couple married in August 1962, and they lived at Kenwood in Weybridge from 1964 to 1968, where she kept house and participated with Lennon in a London-based social life. In 1968, Lennon left Powell for Japanese artist Yoko Ono; the couple's divorce was granted in November 1968 on the grounds of adultery.

Powell had three further marriages. She published a book of memoirs, A Twist of Lennon, in 1978, and a more intimate biography, John, in 2005. Over the years, Powell held several auctions of memorabilia associated with her life with Lennon. In her later years, Powell lived in Palma Nova, Mallorca, Spain, where she died in 2015.

Early life

Cynthia Powell was born in Blackpool on 10 September 1939, the youngest of three children of General Electric Company employee Charles Powell and his wife Lillian (), who already had two sons named Charles and Anthony. Her parents were from Liverpool, but her mother (along with other pregnant women) was sent to the safer area of Blackpool after World War II had been declared and lived in a small room in a bed-and-breakfast on the Blackpool seafront. After the birth, with Liverpool becoming a frequent target of German air raids, the Powell family moved to a two-bedroomed semi-detached house in Hoylake, a middle-class area on the Wirral Peninsula which was considered "posh" by those in Liverpool. At age 11, Powell won an art prize in a competition organised by the Liverpool Echo. He later approached her and asked if she would go to the Cracke pub. Powell was confused when Lennon ignored her all evening, but eventually invited her into the group with a joke.

thumb|The [[Ye Cracke|Cracke public house]]

They began dating, with Lennon now referring to her as "Cyn". In the autumn of 1958, Powell ended her engagement to be with Lennon, and he ended his relationship with another art student, Thelma Pickles. Lennon's jealousy once manifested itself in violent behaviour towards her, when he slapped her across the face (causing her head to hit a wall), after watching her dance with his friend Stuart Sutcliffe. After the incident, Powell broke up with Lennon for three months, but resumed their relationship after his profuse apology.

Powell's work at art school began to suffer, and teachers told her the relationship with Lennon was doing her no good. Lennon continued to be casually inconsiderate towards Powell, later saying, "I was in sort of a blind rage for two years. I was either drunk or fighting. It had been the same with other girl friends I'd had. There was something the matter with me." Tony Bramwell—a friend of Lennon's since his youth—later said: "Cynthia was beautiful, physically, and on the inside. Although she knew he [Lennon] was apt to find love on the road, she was totally dedicated to his success... and extremely influential. He was insecure and Cynthia was there to pump him up, to buttress, sort of, his weak side."

The Beatles' first Hamburg residency took place in 1960, with Lennon writing frequent and passionate letters back home to Powell. After returning home, Lennon's aunt and legal guardian, Mimi Smith, threw a hand-mirror at him for spending a lot of money on a suede coat for Powell. Smith later referred to her as "a gangster's moll", and was often unpleasant towards Powell. The Beatles went to Hamburg for a second time in 1961, and both Powell and Dot Rhone (Paul McCartney's girlfriend at the time), visited them two weeks later, during the Easter holidays. They had to stay up all night because of the long sets, both taking Preludin to stay awake, which the group was also taking. Lennon and Powell stayed with Sutcliffe's girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, at her mother's house.

After the trip to Hamburg, Powell's mother Lillian said Powell's cousin and her husband were emigrating to Canada with their newborn baby, and that she, Lillian, would be going with them while they studied to become teachers. Powell waited until Lennon came back from Hamburg before she asked Smith—who had taken in lodgers before at 251 Menlove Avenue—if she would rent a room to her. Smith rented out the box-room above the front door (which had been Lennon's bedroom), but insisted she also do chores around the house. After her student grant had run out, she took a job at a Woolworths store in Liverpool in order to pay the rent. In the same year, when Lennon was 21 years old, he received £100 () from his aunt Elizabeth Sutherland (whom he called "Mater") who lived in Edinburgh, and went to Paris with McCartney. Powell could not accompany them as she was studying for her final exams.

When Lennon went to Hamburg again in April 1962, Powell found a bedsit in a terraced house at 93 Garmoyle Road, Liverpool. In August 1962, shortly after having failed her art teacher's diploma exam, Powell learned that she was pregnant by Lennon. She later explained that she and Lennon had never used contraception, had never talked about it, and did not think about it at the time. When she told Lennon he said, "There's only one thing for it, Cyn, we'll have to get married."

Marriage to Lennon and birth of Julian

Powell and Lennon were married on 23 August 1962 at the Mount Pleasant register office in Liverpool. Fellow Beatles McCartney and George Harrison were in attendance, as was their manager, Brian Epstein, who was best man; no parents were there. The wedding was farcical, because as soon as the ceremony began a workman in the backyard of the building opposite started using a pneumatic drill that drowned out anything the registrar, Lennon, or Powell said. When the registrar asked for the groom to step forward, Harrison stepped forward instead. With no photographs or flowers, the wedding party celebrated afterwards, at Epstein's invitation, in Reece's restaurant in Clayton Square, which was the place Lennon's parents, Alfred Lennon and Julia Lennon, had celebrated their marriage in 1938. Lennon was 21 years old, and Powell was 22. The newlyweds had no honeymoon, as Lennon had to play an engagement at the Riverpark Ballroom in Chester the same night. They travelled to the Hotel George V in Paris for a belated honeymoon on 16 September but were accompanied by Epstein, even though he had not been invited to join them.

During Powell's pregnancy, Epstein offered her and Lennon the use of his flat at 36 Falkner Street, Liverpool, and later paid for a private hospital room when the pregnancy was coming to term. Although still unknown outside Liverpool, by now the Beatles had a fanatical following among girls within the city. Epstein had one condition which the Lennons had to follow: the marriage and the baby were to be kept a close secret, so as not to upset any of these fans. One time when news of the wedding leaked out, the group denied it.

The Lennons' son, Julian, was born at 7:45 a.m. on 8 April 1963, in Sefton General Hospital. Lennon, being on tour at the time, did not see his son until three days later, and when he finally arrived at the hospital, said: "He's bloody marvellous, Cyn! ... Who's gonna be a famous rocker like his Dad then?" Lennon then explained that he would be going on a four-day holiday to Barcelona, with Epstein. Lennon later referred to Julian as a "Saturday night special; the way that most people get here", or said that his son "came out of a whisky bottle," suggesting this as explanation for his poor parenting of Julian as compared to his second son, Sean Lennon: "Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child."

Beatlemania

Around the time of Julian's birth, the Beatles became a pop sensation across Britain, a phenomenon which became known as Beatlemania. That one of the members was married and had a son was not publicly known at the time; a 1963 "Lifelines of the Beatles" page in the New Musical Express detailed over 25 biographical facts about each member of the group, but never gave any hint Lennon was married, even reporting "girls" as one of his hobbies.

The press heard rumours about Lennon's wife and child at the end of 1963—after Beatlemania had already swept the UK and Europe—and descended on her mother's house in Hoylake (where mother and son were staying), in November and December. Friends and neighbours protected their anonymity, but Powell was often approached by journalists. In November, she had Julian christened at Hoylake Parish Church, but did not tell Lennon (who was on tour at the time), because Powell feared a media circus. She told him two days after, and Lennon was angry as he had not wanted his son to be christened, even though Epstein had asked to be Julian's godfather. Not long after the christening, every newspaper was full of the story about Lennon's secret wife and son.

Brian Epstein told the other Beatles to make the best of the situation, and hoped newspapers would not say Cynthia was pregnant before marrying him. After living at Lennon's aunt's house for some months, the couple moved to London and found a three-bedroomed maisonette at 13 Emperor's Gate, off Cromwell Road. it was the top maisonette of three, each built over two floors. This meant climbing six flights of stairs since the building had no lift. Cynthia had to carry Julian up to the flat and then go back down to collect shopping bags. The Beatles' fans soon found out where they were living and she would find them camping out in the hall and have to push through them when leaving or arriving.

left|thumb|The Lennons in 1964

Powell accompanied Lennon to the United States in the first Beatles' tour there, with Lennon allowing the press to photograph them together, which infuriated Epstein, as he had wanted to keep their marriage a secret. On the tour, she was left behind in New York when Lennon and the other Beatles were quickly ushered into a car, and in Miami she had to ask the help of fans to convince a security guard of who she was. Lennon's response was, "Don't be so bloody slow next time—they could have killed you." It would be the only time Cynthia went on tour with them. At the Emperor's Gate address the situation grew worse,

Drugs

Cynthia knew her husband took drugs such as Preludin and regularly smoked cannabis but thought of them as not being very dangerous. On 27 March 1965, at a dinner party given by a dentist, John Riley, the Lennons, Harrison and Boyd were given LSD without their knowledge. Although told not to leave the house, Harrison drove them to various nightclubs, with Riley following them by taxi. At the Ad Lib club, they thought the lift up to the club was on fire and started screaming, before finally crawling out of the lift, for which Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull and Starr were waiting. Harrison later drove them back home in Boyd's Mini Cooper at no more than 10 mph, as he was also feeling the effects of the drug. They stayed up all night at Kenwood, experiencing the full effects of their first LSD trip.

Lennon then started taking LSD on a regular basis in addition to his daily use of cannabis. After much encouragement from him, Cynthia agreed to try LSD one more time, but the adverse effects were the same. Although she said at the time she would never take the drug again, she relented and took it for the last time a few weeks later, on the way to a party at Epstein's country house in Warbleton, East Sussex. Although she hated the psychological effects of the drug, from this point she could see the change taking place in her husband: "It was like living with someone who had just discovered religion ... Tensions, bigotry, and bad temper were replaced by understanding and love." In 1970, Lennon confessed that he had probably taken LSD one thousand times since 1965, saying: "I used to just eat it all the time." In the decades ahead, Cynthia would always maintain that John's drug use was the beginning of the end for the couple. Paul Saltzman later published a book of photographs, The Beatles in Rishikesh, showing Lennon deep in thought, and Cynthia's confused expression. Despite the alienation from Lennon, Cynthia later spoke about her time there, saying: "I loved being away from the fans, hordes of people, deadlines, demands and flashing cameras." As Lennon had initiated divorce proceedings, it prompted her to exclaim: "Suing me for divorce? On what grounds is he suing me?" When the news of Ono's pregnancy broke, Cynthia started her own divorce proceedings against Lennon on 22 August 1968.

Their decree nisi was granted on 8 November 1968. The financial settlement was hampered by Lennon's refusing to offer any more than £75,000 (), telling her on the phone that the payment was akin to winning the football pools and that she was not worth any more. The settlement was then raised to £100,000 (), £2,400 annually (), and custody of Julian. A further £100,000 was put into a trust fund which Julian would inherit at age 21, and until then his mother would receive the interest payments. The trust deed had a codicil which provided for any further children by Lennon, so when Sean Lennon was born in 1975, Julian's inheritance was cut to £50,000 ().

Cynthia lived for a few months in a flat Starr owned at 34 Montagu Square, central London, but returned to Kenwood as Lennon and Ono preferred to live there instead, rather than in isolated Weybridge. Lennon and Cynthia had one last short meeting at Kenwood (with Ono alongside Lennon), where Lennon accused her of having an affair in India, saying she was no "innocent little flower." McCartney visited her and Julian that year, and on the way to Kenwood he composed a song in his head which later became "Hey Jude." Talking about their divorce, McCartney later said: "We'd been very good friends for millions of years and I thought it was a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life." Cynthia recalled, "I was truly surprised when, one afternoon, Paul arrived on his own. I was touched by his obvious concern for our welfare ... On the journey down he composed 'Hey Jude' in the car. I will never forget Paul's gesture of care and concern in coming to see us."

Cynthia was once asked if Lennon had written any songs about their time together and answered: "It was too soppy when you were young to dedicate anything to anybody. Macho Northern men didn't do that in those days." Cynthia then bought the Manorhaus in Ruthin, Wales, and opened it as a restaurant called Oliver's Bistro, which also had a B&B above the premises. She enrolled her son into the Ruthin School and he later joined the local Combined Cadet Force. During Lennon's separation from Ono in 1973–74, his partner at the time, May Pang, tried to get Lennon to spend more time with his son, forming a friendship with Cynthia in the process, which continued even after John Lennon and Yoko Ono were reconciled. A meeting during this period was the last time Cynthia saw John. She published a memoir during their time together, A Twist of Lennon, in 1978, about her life before and with Lennon and containing her own illustrations and poetry. Lennon tried to stop the publication of the book after an excerpt was published in a newspaper. Cynthia's memoir gained renewed interest and went to a third printing of 200,000 copies in the weeks after Lennon's death. She and Twist separated in 1981 and were divorced in 1982. Cynthia sold the Bistro and changed her name back to Lennon by deed poll, later commenting about why it was financially necessary, "Do you imagine I would have been awarded a three-year contract to design bedding and textiles [for Vantona Vyella in 1983] with the name Powell? Neither did they. When it is necessary to earn a living, it is necessary to bite the bullet and take the flak". They later lived on the Isle of Man and then in Normandy for some years but separated in 1998. Cynthia said at the time, "I've enjoyed these things for 30 years. But it's time for a change." Cynthia later said, "I think in life we collect so much baggage, when you have a clear-out, you send it to a car-boot sale, etc. My baggage was in demand and sold at Christie's. When you have to pay the bills, you're not proud and you can't take it with you." (after the 1980 John Lennon song) and, in April 1989, a restaurant named Lennon's—at 13/14 Upper St Martin's Lane, Covent Garden—which had menu items such as Rubber Sole (a play on the already-punning 1965 Beatles album), The film characterises Lennon and Cynthia's relationship as one that will eventually be doomed by their wanting different things from life but with Lennon not wanting to hurt her. Cynthia later complained that the film made her out "as a clingy, dim, little girlfriend in a headscarf." In another film covering the early years of the pre-fame Beatles, the 1979 Birth of the Beatles, Cynthia was portrayed by Wendy Morgan. Cynthia was portrayed in 2000 television film In His Life: The John Lennon Story by Gillian Kearney; the negative aspects of John's treatment of her were not overlooked. Cynthia was subsequently portrayed in the troubled, Ono-centric 2005 American musical Lennon, with her character – played by Julia Murney – gaining a little more prominence during one of the show's rewrites. Cynthia's life had a more central role in the 2010 BBC Four film Lennon Naked, with Claudie Blakley playing the part. Cynthia's character was absent from the 2009 British film Nowhere Boy, which purported to cover the story of Lennon from 1955 to 1960 but focused on his relationships with his aunt and mother.

In 1995, Cynthia made her recording début with a rendition of "Those Were the Days" which, produced by McCartney, had been a number one hit for Mary Hopkin in 1968. It failed to chart. Whilst she was living in Normandy, an exhibition of her drawings and paintings were displayed at Portobello Road's KDK Gallery in 1999. In September 2005, she published a new biography, John, re-examining her life with Lennon and the years afterwards, including the events following his death. Michel Faber, writing in The Guardian, said of the book: "John is Cynthia's attempt to prove how much more she was worth. In theory, the disclosures of Lennon's loyal partner from 1958 to 1968 cannot fail to be valuable. On the page, the potential withers."

In 2006, Cynthia and Julian attended the Las Vegas premiere of the Cirque du Soleil production of Love, which marked a rare public appearance with Ono. In 2009, Cynthia and Julian opened an exhibition of memorabilia at The Beatles Story exhibition in Liverpool, and she and Pattie Boyd staged a first-ever joint appearance at the opening of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in Yerevan, Armenia. On 30 September 2010, Julian opened his "Timeless" exhibition of photographs at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York. In attendance were Cynthia, Ono, Sean, and Pang, which was the first time all five had been in the same room together.

The John Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled by Cynthia and Julian at a ceremony in Chavasse Park, Liverpool, on 9 October 2010 to celebrate the anniversary of Lennon's 70th birthday. Cynthia lived with her husband, Noel, on the Spanish island of Mallorca

On 1 April 2015, Cynthia died of cancer at her home in Mallorca with Julian by her side; she was 75 years old. Public messages of condolence were made by McCartney and Starr, with McCartney saying, "She was a lovely lady who I've known since our early days together in Liverpool. She was a good mother to Julian and will be missed by us all", and Starr saying, "Peace and love to Julian Lennon God bless Cynthia." Beatles biographer Hunter Davies, who had spent considerable time with Cynthia and Lennon in the 1960s while researching his book, remembered her as "a lovely woman ... She was totally different from John in that she was quiet, reserved and calm."

Cynthia Lennon

Early life

Marriage to Lennon and birth of Julian

Beatlemania

Drugs

References

Sources

External links