Cynthia Lennon
Cynthia Lennon 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 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. A year later, she was accepted into Liverpool's Junior Art School, which was also attended by Bill Harry, later the editor of Liverpool's Mersey Beat newspaper.Art college
When Powell was 16, her father died following a lengthy bout with lung cancer. Before dying, he told Powell that she had to get a job to support her mother and would not be able to go to art school. As her mother wanted her to receive an education, Powell rented out a room to four apprentice electricians. In September 1957, Powell gained a place at the Liverpool College of Art. Although studying graphics, she also took lettering classes, as did John Lennon. He never had any drawing tools with him, so Lennon constantly borrowed pens and pencils from Powell, who discovered that he was only there because other teachers had refused to instruct him. Powell had an air of respectability and moved in different social circles from her future husband. Lennon and an art school friend, Jeff Mohammed, used to make fun of her by stopping the conversation when she walked in the room, saying: "Quiet please! No dirty jokes; it's Cynthia."Powell once overheard Lennon give a compliment to a girl with blonde hair in the college, who looked similar to the French actress Brigitte Bardot. The next Saturday, Powell turned up at the college with her hair several shades blonder. Lennon noticed straight away, exclaiming, "Get you, Miss Hoylake!". Dressed like a Teddy Boy, Lennon sometimes brought a guitar with him into class, and once sang "Ain't She Sweet" directly to Powell.
Relationship with John Lennon
After a college party to celebrate the end of term, Lennon asked Powell if she wanted to "go out" with him. Powell quickly replied that she was engaged to a young man in Hoylake even though the engagement had ended; Lennon replied, "I didn't ask you to fucking marry me, did I?" 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.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 could also manifest itself in violent behaviour towards her, as when he slapped her across the face, 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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.
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, with fans sticking chewing gum in the lock of the flat and tearing at any article of clothing when she or Lennon were leaving or arriving. American girls would write her letters proclaiming their desperate love for John; the women in the lives of the other Beatles received equivalent missives. As late as 1967 Beatles' wives were still dealing with occasional physical danger from female Beatles fans, with Cynthia being kicked in the legs by one who demanded she "leave John alone!"
As Lennon was either touring or recording, supposed family holidays in 1966 were spent skiing in St Moritz, with producer George Martin and his girlfriend, or staying at a castle in Ireland, with George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd. Even these were subject to being discovered by fans, and Powell and Boyd had to escape the Irish location dressed as maids. As a result of the long recording sessions and tours, Lennon usually slept for days afterwards. When Lennon started filming How I Won the War in Almeria, Spain, he promised his wife and son they could join him there after two weeks of filming. The small apartment they were allocated was swiftly replaced by a villa when Ringo Starr and his wife joined them.