Cynthia Lennon (1939–2015)

Meet a VERY UNLIKEABLE John Lennon

This first person account by John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia Powell, paints a deeply unflattering portrait of the famous Beatle. And an equally flattering picture of a loyal, loving, long-suffering Cynthia. No surprise there, right? But what did surprise me is just how different this private Lennon was from the public figure we watched for 20 years.

Cynthia shows a Lennon that was deeply insecure, often cruel and psychologically abusive (even physically show more once), and completely self-absorbed. During their 10 years together (including some years when they hid the fact that John was married to protect his public image), he was largely an absent husband and absent father to son Julian. He lied about his developing relationship with Yoko Ono and had serious anger management issues. In fact he comes across as a perpetual adolescent interested primarily in his own pleasures and pursuits. Worse even is the picture Cynthia paints of Yoko and the strange dynamic of John's second marriage.

It's not a particularly well-written book. A bit dry. But if you want an inside look at what Beatlemania looked like to an insider or if you, like me, are endlessly fascinated by trivia around the Fab Four, this book is for you. show less

Let’s get the sad, disgusting part out of the way first. John Lennon was, like so many who went before him and those who will surely follow, simply a hypocrite. The 20th century’s secular deity whose mantra was “All you need is Love” abandoned his own son, Julian - his six year old son. Scoot down Jim Baker, and make room for one more. Now that the ugliness is out of the way, let’s move on.

John, Cynthia Lennon’s account of her relationship and marriage to John Lennon, was a show more quick and easy read. The forward is by Julian which seems to lend it some credibility straight away. Also the fact that it was written 25 years after John’s death, allowing much of the hype to melt away, adds strength to the idea that Cynthia simply wants her side of the story to be heard. I would imagine that had money been the primary motive, putting her story in print in the early 1980’s would have been much more lucrative.

I’ve read a great number of books about the Beatles or its individual members over the years, and despite her seat in the eye of the storm, I don’t think Cynthia adds anything truly new to the record. However, I think her voice offers flesh and blood and feeling to those who, like herself, woke up one morning to find their seat next to John had taken center stage in the eye of the hurricane that was Beatle mania. Even John’s aunt Mimi, often a very unlikeable woman, gains some sympathy in the crushing fame that followed in the wake of the lads from Liverpool. Of course the most tragic figure in the tale is John and Cynthia’s son, Julian.

Only six when his parents divorced, and still very young when his father was murdered, the tragedy is compounded by the fact that not only did a boy lose his father, John turned into the man he hated above all others, his own father. John’s slow but unstoppable drifting into his own father’s footsteps is at times harder to grasp than Julian’s pain at the repeated loss of his father.

Cynthia does a few things in the book that I really like. The vast majority of the book deals with the good times she and John shared, and the love they had for one another. She makes this quite real. While there is nothing flattering about Yoko in Cynthia’s account, she does not make Yoko the devil. At times she makes John’s relationship with Yoko seem almost like a byproduct of his drug use rather than love. While that may be too dismissive of the love John and Yoko clearly felt, Cynthia lays the responsibility for this tragedy squarely at the feet of its author – John.

Life rarely gives us “happy ever after”, and I take comfort that Cynthia allows us “at least we ended up OK”. In my mind this in line with another spiritual maxim sung about by the fab four “and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make”. show less

I have had such a long desire to read this book that at times I cannot believe I actually got my hands on a copy. For years, every time I have gone into a bookstore, I use their self-search kiosks to see if they had this book on the shelves. For years, it was never there. Of course I could always find it online and have it shipped to my door in 5 working business days, but I had gotten it in my head that I needed to go to a physical book store and buy a physical copy. After all the searching show more I had done, that was the only way I was going to be truly pleased. And then one day this summer, I was in New York City at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side, telling myself that any books I bought now would only add weight to my suitcase on the plane ride home, and I found it. It was the only copy on the shelf, and it wasn't even the cover/edition I had my eyes on. But I had wanted it for so long, I was in New York, and I needed this book.

Worth. The. Wait.

John is amazing. I have had such a struggle in the past with my admiration of John Lennon. Right from the beginning of my love affair with the Beatles, I always called John my favorite. I have no idea why - maybe it was the glasses. But after years of denial of the kind of person he was and the things he did to the people he once loved, I forced myself to admit that he was not the person I had built up in my head. I abandoned him as my favorite and set out to choose another one (right now I pick George because I don't know anything about him yet). Once realising that Cynthia, his first wife and mother of his first child, had written about his life both before and during the rise of the Beatles, I knew I needed to read the book to come to terms with myself and remind myself that the image of John Lennon in my head I had crafted and had resembled something far away from the man he had actually become. And like previously mentioned, it was worth the pain and struggle I went through to track the book down. I don't know if Cynthia had a ghost writer or a helper assisting her in writing her story, but it was very well-written. Sometimes I almost forgot how big the Beatles were during the 60s, just because Cynthia writes from the sidelines of the story and not the centre. It really was an eye-opening book, and now I want to read a book about each of the Beatles, preferably by someone at their sides and not themselves. The pain I felt for Cynthia and Julian was real, and the hatred for John's betrayal with Yoko was heart-wrenching.

If you have any interest in the Beatles, John, Julian, or Cynthia, any interest at all, I would recommend you read this book. I absolutely loved it and would read it again for the first time if I could. show less

Meet a VERY UNLIKEABLE John Lennon

This first person account by John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia Powell, paints a deeply unflattering portrait of the famous Beatle. And an equally flattering picture of a loyal, loving, long-suffering Cynthia. No surprise there, right? But what did surprise me is just how different this private Lennon was from the public figure we watched for 20 years.

Cynthia shows a Lennon that was deeply insecure, often cruel and psychologically abusive (even physically show more once), and completely self-absorbed. During their 10 years together (including some years when they hid the fact that John was married to protect his public image), he was largely an absent husband and absent father to son Julian. He lied about his developing relationship with Yoko Ono and had serious anger management issues. In fact he comes across as a perpetual adolescent interested primarily in his own pleasures and pursuits. Worse even is the picture Cynthia paints of Yoko and the strange dynamic of John's second marriage.

It's not a particularly well-written book. A bit dry. But if you want an inside look at what Beatlemania looked like to an insider or if you, like me, are endlessly fascinated by trivia around the Fab Four, this book is for you. show less