Cynthia Lennon Quotes

Most descriptions of Mimi that have appeared in print were based on interviews with her – she outlived John by eleven years. She loved to fuel the image of the stern but loving aunt who provided the secure backdrop to John’s success. But that wasn’t the Mimi I knew. She battered away at John’s self-confidence and left him angry and hurt.

Those weeks in Hamburg were among the happiest times John and I had together. We were free and in love, life was full of promise and the sun shone.

George’s father was a bus driver and he was planning to buy him his own bus.

In March Brian heard that Decca weren’t interested. The chap he spoke to told him groups with guitars were on the way out and they didn’t like the boys’ sound.

He took them to London on New Year’s Eve, while Brian went by train. Like the rest of the boys, Neil had never been to London.

Once again John and I kissed good-bye.

John and Paul always had a special link between them, a chemistry that added to the heat: they knew intuitively how to share the stage and the limelight, how to spar with each other and how to play the audience so that the girls went wild.

Although George was quieter than the others too, when it came to banter he could give as good as he got. Just when you thought he wasn’t listening to one of John’s wicked teases he’d shoot back a withering line that had everyone in stitches.

Pete was getting on the others’ nerves. It wasn’t that he did anything wrong: he was a nice guy and a good enough drummer. It was simply that his personality was different: he preferred to sit on his own rather than join in with the others’ non-stop banter.

Cynthia pinpointed Lennon’s wayward behavior with his subliminal goals: “Ultimately, of course, it was John who broke up the Beatles, just as he had formed them in the first place. He had moved on in his life, not just from me but from Paul, the other person who was closest to him throughout the sixties.

I met Brian soon after he had signed the Beatles. He was charming, polite, well spoken and I liked him. He accepted that I was John’s girlfriend, but he told John that it would be better if all girlfriends kept a low profile. I didn’t mind because I had no interest in the limelight. As long as I could be

I met Brian soon after he had signed the Beatles. He was charming, polite, well spoken and I liked him. He accepted that I was John’s girlfriend, but he told John that it would be better if all girlfriends kept a low profile. I didn’t mind because I had no interest in the limelight. As long as I could be with John, I was content to stay in the shadows.

My feelings for John were very different from those I’d had for any other boy: more powerful, more exciting and totally unshakeable. And I sensed in John the same strong feelings. Perhaps each of us recognised and was drawn to a deep need in the other. But at the time I didn’t analyse it. I simply felt certain that this was no passing fling. It was real love.

Outside, the rain was bucketing down. We ran along the street, laughing at the madness of it all, and burst into Reece’s, where we had to queue for the set lunch of soup, chicken and trifle. Reece’s had no licence so, when we finally got a table, we toasted ourselves with water. But we didn’t care: we were on a high. A full church wedding with all the extras couldn’t have made me happier.

John's particular talents hadn't gone unnoticed but they weren't his artistic talents. They were his talents for having his fellow students fall about with shocked, uncontrollable laughter at his wicked, disrespectful wit. His ability to disrupt a lecture had to be seen to be believed and John's appearance was even worse than his humour. I think he was the last stronghold of the Teddy Boys - totally aggressive and anti-establishment. My first impression of John, as he slouched reluctantly into the lettering class for the first time, was one of apprehension. I felt that I had nothing in common with this individual and as far as I was concerned I never would. In fact he frightened me to death. The only thing that John and I had in common was that we were both blind as bats without our glasses.

was grateful, relieved and happy. I’d have understood if he had walked away, although it would have hurt. And although I hadn’t thought about marriage yet – believing we had years in which to make that kind of decision – I was certain that I loved him and wanted to be with him. So, on a summer’s night in my little room, John and I decided to marry, have our baby and become a family together. We loved each other and it was what we both wanted, even if it had been forced on us far sooner than we’d have wished.

Then one morning the nightmare happened. John and I were in bed together when I heard the landlady calling up the stairs – she was coming to empty the meter, which was in my room. We panicked. I wrapped myself in a sheet and fled into Dot’s room, leaving John to his fate. I heard the landlady go in and, a few minutes later, come out and go back down the stairs. Baffled, I went back into my room. No sign of John. It took me a minute or two to work out that he was under the large pile of blankets, coats and clothing on the bed. He’d grabbed whatever he could see from around the room and piled it on top of himself. Gasping for air and red-faced, he crawled out, cursing the landlady. We thought we’d got away with it – until

I’d always had to keep a low profile when I went to watch him play. Now that I was pregnant and beginning to show we agreed that I should stay safely at home. By this time the Beatles, though still unknown elsewhere, had a huge and possessive local following. Girls queued outside the Cavern for hours to see them.

It was a difficult time. Cold, miserable weather, John away more than he was at home, Mimi resentful of my presence in the house. And I was about to become a mother – a notion that terrified me.

BRIAN EPSTEIN HAD ALWAYS SAID that the Beatles would be bigger than Elvis, and at first everyone laughed. Elvis was securely on his throne as the king of rock and roll and no one had heard of the Beatles. But by 1965 his prediction had come true: the Beatles were the biggest pop act in the world, eclipsing Elvis and every other popular musician.

Some accounts of John’s life have said that he was a womaniser from the start, that even in our art college days he was seeing other girls behind my back. All I can say is that if it was true I never knew about it. I saw John flirting at parties, but that was all, and at college he was with me for so much of the time that he had little opportunity to see anyone else. In those days I never dreamt that he might be unfaithful. We were together, we loved each other and that was all I needed. It was only after we came to London and began our new life that the doubts crept in.

Sometimes, especially when he’d been shopping with Paul, George and Ringo, he’d come home with the car boot full of toys for Julian. These were usually meant for eight- or nine-year-olds, John having forgotten, in his enthusiasm, that his son was still only two. The more complicated articles would be put away, still in their packaging, for a later date. But Julian soon learnt to root them out. One day when he was just three he found a toy that required a great deal of skill to assemble. To our pride and astonishment, he had put it together in double-quick time – even though he couldn’t read the instructions. ‘That’s my boy,’ John cried. ‘I couldn’t have done that myself.

Then one day John came in very excited, made me cover my eyes and led me outside. Standing on the drive was a gold Porsche for me. A few weeks later I got up to find the Porsche gone and in its place a red Ferrari. Now that he, too, was able to drive, John had part-exchanged my car for one for himself. Generous as he was, this impulsive act was typically thoughtless: he hadn’t stopped to consider whether I might mind, just rushed ahead. Once he’d taken a decision everyone and everything had to fall into line with it. He had little time for negotiation, considering or planning, preferring to act on impulse and hang the consequences

I really miss him as a person now – do you know what I mean – he’s not so much ‘the baby’ or ‘my baby’ any more he’s a real living part of me now – you know he’s Julian and everything and I can’t wait to see him, I miss him more than I’ve ever done before – I think it’s been a slow process my feeling like a real father! I spend hours in dressing rooms and things thinking about the times I’ve wasted not being with him – and playing with him – you know I keep thinking of those stupid bastard times when I keep reading bloody newspapers and other shit whilst he’s in the room with me and I’ve decided it’s ALL WRONG! He doesn’t see enough of me as it is and I really want him to know and love me, and miss me like I seem to be missing both of you so much. I’ll go now cause I’m bringing myself down thinking what a thoughtless bastard I seem to be – and it’s only sort of three o’clock in the afternoon and it seems the wrong time of day to feel so emotional

His letters weren’t always so reflective, but that one wasn’t unusual. He found it easier, in many ways, to say what he really meant in a letter and, as he had since the Hamburg days, he used them to tell me how he really felt. A few years later, when John and I had divorced, I sold this letter, along with several others John wrote. I was touched and delighted when, some years afterwards, the owner put it up for sale again and Paul McCartney bought it. He had it framed and presented it to me and Julian as a gift.

John loved being with his son, but in short bursts. His moods could be unpredictable and at times he was intolerant and impatient with Julian. On one occasion I remember him shouting at the dinner-table because Julian was eating messily. I was livid and stormed, ‘If you were here more often you’d realise that this is how little boys of three eat. Now leave him alone.’ I rushed upstairs in tears: the shock on Julian’s face when John had erupted at him had really upset me.

In the first couple of years, as the Beatles soared, John had been on a high and his confidence had blossomed. But eventually the fame and idolising had become too much, and I believe he had turned to drugs to escape. He soon became addicted to them.

The biggest change in our lives during this time, and the biggest single factor that led to our break-up, was John’s deepening interest in drugs.

But what neither he nor anyone else knew was that my tears were not simply about the missed train. I was crying because the incident seemed symbolic of what was happening to my marriage. John was on the train, speeding into the future, and I was left behind. As I stood there, watching the train disappear into the distance, I felt certain that the loneliness I was experiencing on that platform would become permanent one day.

But I swallowed my feelings, as I had many times before. As ever, I didn’t want a row, and especially not with all the others about. It was another moment when I should have been more assertive with John. I let him get away with an awful lot.

I think our mutual failure to address or resolve painful issues was a major factor in the eventual breakdown of our marriage. We both had the ability to sit on our feelings, but they inevitably resurfaced as resentment. I have no doubt that it would have made us stronger as a couple if we’d been able to deal with incidents like this more openly. But at the time I could only take what felt like the best path.

Meanwhile John and George were also being drawn towards the Maharishi. What had begun as a passing interest now became a life quest. It was as though, with Brian gone, the four needed someone new to give them direction, and the Maharishi was in the right place at the right time.

What I didn’t know was that each morning he rushed down to the post office to see if he had a letter from Yoko. She was writing to him almost daily. When I learnt this later I felt very hurt. There was I, trying to give John the space and understanding he asked for, with no idea that Yoko was drawing him away from me and further into her orbit.

Was I in denial when I clung to the belief that our relationship was not terminally damaged but simply strained? Perhaps. As I saw it, we were undergoing a whole new experience and John’s behaviour towards me was part of it. I was disappointed that the closeness I’d hoped for hadn’t happened, but I still saw us as a unit, shaken but ultimately solid.

John and I were back in the same bed, but the warmth and passion we had shared for so long were absent. John seemed barely to notice me. He was little better with Julian and was more likely to snap at him than give him a hug.

The stupidity of that question has haunted me ever since. Confronted by my husband and his lover – wearing my dressing-gown – behaving as though I was an intruder, all I could do was carry on as if everything were normal.

It was clear that they had arranged for me to find them like that and the cruelty of John’s betrayal was hard to absorb.

Had it all been a nightmare? Or was John truly capable of doing something like that, then dismissing it as unimportant?

Had it all been a nightmare? Or was John truly capable of doing something like that, then dismissing it as unimportant? I knew him so well, but he’d surprised me before with his ability to compartmentalise his life and put aside anything that he didn’t want to deal with.

I’ve come with a message from John. He is going to divorce you, take Julian away from you and send you back to Hoylake.

The papers referred to Yoko as John’s ‘new love’. Her persistence had paid off handsomely: after all the letters and calls, and the times she’d turned up at our door, Yoko had got her man. My man.

Yoko, it seemed, was married too. This was the first I knew of Anthony Cox, her second husband, and her daughter Kyoko, who was four months younger than Julian. How were they feeling, I wondered. Did John and Yoko spare any thought for the two families now being broken up? Did they have any idea of the price of their happiness?

I did my best to keep cheerful when I was with Julian, but every now and then he would catch me crying. He’d throw his arms round me, saying, ‘Don’t cry, Mummy, please don’t cry.’ I lost a lot of weight, unable to face eating.

The only person who came to see me was Paul. He arrived one sunny afternoon, bearing a red rose, and said, ‘I’m so sorry, Cyn, I don’t know what’s come over him. This isn’t right.’ On the way down to see us he had written a song for Julian. It began as ‘Hey Jules’ and later became ‘Hey Jude’, which sounded better. Ironically John thought it was about him when he first heard it. It went on to become one of the Beatles’ most successful singles ever, spending nine weeks at number one in the US and two weeks in the UK.

Paul stayed for a while. He told me that John was bringing Yoko to recording sessions, which he, George and Ringo hated.

Julian was fascinated. ‘What’s Dad doing in bed on the telly?’ he asked. ‘Telling everyone it’s very important to have peace,’ I answered, through gritted teeth, all too aware that John had found it impossible to allow for peace between us and that the small boy asking the question was paying the price.

Like so many people I was to encounter in the future, he couldn’t see beyond John’s fame to the real man. It was as though, for him, the ex-husband who had behaved so appallingly towards me was another man entirely from the superstar.

There was one more factor in the the Beatles’ break-up, in my view the most important. John’s relationship with Yoko had infuriated and alienated the other three. From the beginning there had been an unwritten agreement that wives and girlfriends would never be allowed to interfere with the Beatles’ work.

Yoko had replaced me as John’s wife and Paul as his artistic collaborator. Of course, change is inevitable and both John and Paul went on to be creative and successful separately, but the way it happened was sad, and it was sadder still that their relationship never really healed.

But as time passed with no word Julian drew his own conclusions. ‘Dad’s always telling people to love each other,’ he said to me one day, ‘but how come he doesn’t love me?

For me there was an obvious parallel: Aunt Mimi. John had grown up in the shadow of a domineering woman – it was what he knew and was most familiar with. While I had offered the devotion and loving acceptance he had needed after his mother’s death, Yoko offered the security of a mother figure who always knew best. When, in later years, I read comments from Yoko comparing herself to Aunt Mimi I had to smile. She’d got it dead right.

after the restrictions of life with Yoko he was indulging in as much excess as he could. Apparently he had been so cut off with her that he no longer knew how to use a bank or shop in a supermarket.

By the end of the evening I was optimistic. The thaw had begun. John and Julian had spent time together, John and I were talking, and he was with a woman who was supportive of his relationship with his son.

I was also sad for May, who I imagined must be hurt. Yoko had dismissed her fifteen months with John as his ‘lost weekend’, and John made a statement saying that his separation from Yoko hadn’t been a success.

John’s erratic behaviour around Julian continued – fun one moment and violent anger the next. And he could be like this with Sean too, reducing the little boy to tears of terror. Fred Seaman, or sometimes Yoko, would act as a buffer when John lost his temper. Julian was constantly on tenterhooks, sensing that an eruption was coming and retreating to his room in the hope of avoiding it.

He saw no evidence that John was a devoted househusband or Sean’s carer. Helen looked after Sean, and there were periods when he saw little of either parent. Far from baking bread or playing with Sean, John seemed to live in his own small world in the bedroom. He had relinquished all power to Yoko, who, he told Julian, ‘knows best’, and he appeared to have little interest in making music or anything else.

By late 1980 Julian began to feel that there was a genuine breakthrough in his relationship with his father. John was at last making a new album, Double Fantasy. He began to call Julian more often. It was as though, with his creative juices flowing, he had woken up and realised his son needed him.

He even played Julian tracks from the album and asked his opinion, something he had never done before and which gave Julian’s confidence an enormous boost.

Her nurse told Julia that Mimi’s last words had been, ‘I’m afraid of dying. I’ve been a wicked woman.

I understood Julian’s frustration with Yoko. I have always been sorry, and frustrated, that Julian and I could not have had a better relationship with her. I often wonder if her trouble in accepting Julian, or indeed John’s life before he met her, was due in part to the loss of her daughter.

For the next few months I had no contact with John. He and Yoko were involved in a series of what were – to me anyway – increasingly odd stunts. First they issued their Two Virgins album, three weeks after our divorce. The furore about the cover picture, which featured them naked, overshadowed the music, which was a critical and commercial flop.

Two days later I was watching television when a newsreader announced that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had been in a car crash in Scotland, with their children Julian and Kyoko. No one was badly hurt and they were all in hospital. I was horrified. What on earth was John doing taking Julian to Scotland without telling me?

Meanwhile he thrived on the attention Roberto gave him. For the first time in his life he had a man around every day, someone who was interested and involved with him, who took him to school in the mornings, helped with his homework and played football with him in the park. Julian adored Roberto, and the two were like best friends.

Later Julia told me that when Mimi met John and Yoko after their Two Virgins album was released she’d said to them, ‘Why didn’t you get somebody attractive on the cover if you’ve got to have somebody naked?’ As forthright as ever.

1998 Julian dedicated his album Photograph Smile to Roberto, in loving memory of the step-father he felt had been more of a father to him than John ever was.

How had I managed to fail at marriage twice? And with two men who had little in common other than the exhausting emotional toll they took from me.

Jim and Cyn confided in me that they didn’t like what had happened to John. According to them, he seemed dominated by Yoko. She called him all the time and he was constantly concerned that he’d be in trouble with her. His nickname for her was ‘Mother’, and they said he seemed to have a love-hate relationship with her, unable to tear himself away, yet constantly angry and resentful towards her.

Julian was eager to see his baby brother, but the planned summer visit never materialised and it was another two years before he met Sean.

I learnt later, from John’s sister Julia who was in touch with him by phone at this time, that John felt guilty about the way he had treated Julian and, determined not to repeat his mistakes, made an extra effort with Sean. But how was Julian supposed to know this unless John told him – or at least attempted to make up for lost time?

EVER SINCE THE DIVORCE SETTLEMENT I had relied on interest from Julian’s trust fund to pay his school fees. When Sean was born the fund was cut in half, reducing the amount of interest I could draw, as well as the amount Julian would eventually inherit. This was a blow and I found it hard, given that John was now worth many millions of pounds, that he hadn’t left Julian’s fund intact and set up a new one for Sean.

At seventeen Julian had begun to look uncannily like John, the same aquiline profile, the same slim build. Julian wore his hair long, and in his leather jacket and jeans he could almost have been the young John.

At one point Fred drew Julian aside and told him quietly to be prepared for the fact that Yoko was not going to include him in any arrangements. ‘She will do anything to keep you in your place,’ he said. ‘Sean is the only person who matters to her. There’s simply no place for you in her world.’ Fred’s message was pretty brutal but it was proven absolutely true over the next weeks and months.

Before Julian left, Yoko offered both him and Sean one of John’s guitars. Julian asked for one he had always loved, a black Yamaha inlaid with a pearl dragon. He remembered John playing Sean songs on it. Yoko told him he couldn’t have that one and gave him two others instead, which, sadly, he didn’t recognise and which therefore had no meaning for him. These were the only possessions of John’s Julian was ever given, yet when he returned to the Dakota building on another occasion he saw that Sean had the full use of all John’s musical equipment, including the guitar Julian had wanted.

Relatives only want you for your money,’ Yoko reportedly told Julian. A sad and, in my experience of John’s family, untrue perception. I don’t think they were ever interested in his money: they just loved him because he was part of them.

John’s death had been so unnecessary and for both of us the hardest part of losing him was the loss of hope – for me that we would one day be friends again, able to laugh together, enjoy past memories and talk about the son we both loved,

John’s death had been so unnecessary and for both of us the hardest part of losing him was the loss of hope – for me that we would one day be friends again, able to laugh together, enjoy past memories and talk about the son we both loved, and for Julian that he and John would become close, understand each other and spend time together.

Also, persistent rumours that John’s second marriage was far from happy and that Yoko was considering divorcing him heightened my sense that in time many things might have changed.

It was also in a moment of sentiment, but perhaps of tenderness and love too, that John once said to Julian, ‘If anything ever happens to me, look for a white feather and you’ll know I’m there, looking out for you.’ I think of John every time I see a white feather.

He was an extraordinary man: talented, flawed, a creative genius who sang movingly about love while often wounding those closest to him.

I was instructed to hold back until the boys were safely in the car, but the first time we tried it I was almost left behind. The police line holding back the fans broke and a sea of people cut me off from the boys and Brian. I had a terrifying couple of minutes until, with John screaming at them, the police realised who I was, lifted me bodily through the crowd, and almost threw me into the car. I got no sympathy from an irritated John: ‘Don’t be so bloody slow next time – they could have killed you.

Meanwhile George, who’d just turned twenty-one, had met a young model called Patti Boyd and fallen in love. Patti had been given a part in A Hard Day’s Night, playing a schoolgirl, because she had appeared in a successful crisps advertisement – she was known as the Smith’s Crisps Girl. She was blonde, beautiful and a sophisticated Londoner, like Jane Asher. But, like the rest of us Beatles girls, she was friendly, too, and easy to get on with.

Patti and I were becoming close friends. I admired her gorgeous figure and perfect fashion sense, and I think she enjoyed the company of someone who’d been with the Beatles from the beginning and knew the ropes.

Too often I’ve seen it reported that John wouldn’t allow me to have a nanny for Julian, insisting that I bring him up with no help, as a reaction to his own mother-deprived childhood. In fact, he left it to me and I chose not to have a nanny. Julian was a source of delight: I loved being with him and watching him learn new things every day.

We would visit each other far more often than anyone or anywhere else. We almost always went on holiday with one or all of the other Beatles and we usually spent Christmas Eve together at one of our homes and swapped presents. Remarkably, perhaps, there was seldom any tension between us. Minor disagreements were quickly sorted out.

He was the only member of the Beatles family who’d had the courage to defy John – who had apparently made it quite clear that he expected everyone to follow his lead in cutting me off. But Paul was his own man and not afraid of John. In fact, musically and personally, the two were beginning to go in separate directions so perhaps Paul’s visit to me was also a statement to John.

I saw John and Yoko once more, in the lawyers’ office to which John and I had been summoned to sign the divorce papers. John barely looked at or spoke to me throughout the meeting, and when he left the room to go to the loo, Yoko followed him.

While I realised that I was lucky compared to most women divorcing at that time, it still hurt to be dismissed so lightly. John was being meaner than I’d ever known him, which baffled me: typically he was generous to those around him. Why not now, to his wife and son?

It seemed that John sometimes had angry outbursts towards him, shouting at him for the way he ate or being too slow, which had made Julian nervous. He was afraid of provoking John, who switched very quickly from playful to furious.

When John got together with Yoko this changed. He refused to do anything without her – as I’d seen when she tagged along on his visit to the loo at the lawyer’s office.

I spent a few weeks consumed with worry, but far from asking for his son or wanting to see more of him, John abandoned him.

It seemed that John was willing to sacrifice his son to protect Yoko.

A couple of weeks later I picked up the phone to hear Yoko’s voice: ‘Hello, Cynthia,’ she said. ‘John and I have decided that if you wish to make contact about Julian, you should talk to me. I will be the one to speak to you from now on and John is going to be the one to speak to Tony about Kyoko.

I had put up with a great deal from John and Yoko, but now they had pushed me too far. I was not willing to deal exclusively with Yoko and told her so. If John wanted to see Julian, I said, he could call me himself. Then I hung up.

Surely, I reasoned, Julian meant more to him than some foolish agreement with Yoko about dealing with each other’s ex-partner. I was wrong. It was three years before John saw Julian again.

Julian adored Sean, who was almost a year old. On the phone he told me that his baby brother was crawling, and sat on his lap to watch television.

Neither was he conscious of the difference between Sean and Julian’s lifestyles. While Julian lived in a modest Welsh cottage with limited possessions and money, Sean’s bedroom was full of the most expensive toys money could buy. John had boasted publicly of splashing out on anything and everything Sean might want, yet he gave Julian only modest presents at birthdays and Christmas.

One incident in particular did him lasting damage. The whole family had been having fun, making Mickey Mouse pancakes and fooling around, when Julian giggled. John turned on him and screamed, ‘I can’t stand the way you fucking laugh! Never let me hear your fucking horrible laugh again.’ He continued with a tirade of abuse until Julian fled once again to his room in tears. It was monstrously cruel and has affected him ever since. To this day he seldom laughs.

Back in Wales Julian continued to ring John, but all too often he was unable to get past Yoko. Julia, John’s sister, experienced the same response. When, on rare occasions, Julian managed to reach his father, John seemed glad to hear from him and would chat happily about what he was up to.

This statement, published in newspapers around the world, summed up so much of what Julian had had to go through. There was no mention of his being there with Yoko when she told Sean. Yoko even quoted Julian’s words as her own. There was no mention that John’s older son had also lost his father.

Julian showed immense courage and composure throughout the terrible days after his father’s death, and on top of this he had to endure being excluded from all Yoko’s public responses to John’s death.