Cynthia Lennon: The first of the ‘Beatles wives’

1939-2015

LET IT BLEED: Albert Maysles and Mick Jagger making ‘Gimme Shelter’

Two years later, Gimme Shelter secured their reputation. It provided an insider’s record of the Rolling Stones’s 1969 US tour which culminated in a concert at Altamont, California, at which a spectator was killed by Hells Angels members who were acting as security guards. The moment was caught on film.

In 1973 Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy’s sister, suggested to the brothers that they make a feature about her eccentric relatives out in the Hamptons. The film took six weeks to shoot. “We would arrive 15 or 20 minutes early,” Albert recalled. “When we got out of the car we sprayed ourselves so we wouldn’t get bitten by the fleas.”

He directed nearly 50 films (and was a jobbing cinematographer on many others). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, won two Emmys and was described by French director Jean-Luc Godard as “the best American cameraman”.

After the death of David, in 1987, Albert continued to work on films, often in collaborations, on such subjects as the artist Christo — who wrapped bridges, buildings and other public spaces — and the Dalai Lama. His two final films as director will be released shortly: Iris, a portrait of the New York interior designer Iris Apfel, and In Transit, about long-distance rail passengers in the US.

He was well aware, however, that he was best known for Grey Gardens; it was turned into a Broadway musical and then a Hollywood drama starring Jessica Lange.

Old Edie died two years after filming the documentary, and Little Edie in 2002. The Hamptons estate was sold to Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post. In 2005, to mark the film’s 30th anniversary, Albert returned to see the restored house. Surrounded by neat flower beds and a freshly clipped lawn, he said: “I still feel it’s the same old place. I only wish the two women were around.”

Albert Maysles is survived by his wife, Gillian (née Walker), and three children. — © The Daily Telegraph, London CYNTHIA Lennon, who has died at the age of 75, was the first wife of the rock musician John Lennon and the mother of his son Julian; their 10-year relationship began before he was famous and endured through the early days of the Beatles, but foundered when he met Yoko Ono.

Cynthia was Lennon’s first real love and was with him, as Julian Lennon pointed out, for half his adult life. Julian resented pop historians relegating his mother to “a puff of smoke in Dad’s life”.

Yet the bell-curve of Cynthia Lennon’s career as a Beatles wife peaked early, and even before she was confronted by the bleak reality of her husband’s infidelity with Ono — walking into her own house in 1968 to find them sitting crosslegged on the floor, gazing raptly into each other’s eyes — Cynthia knew her marriage was doomed.

Cynthia Lilian Powell was born at Blackpool, Lancashire, on September 10 1939 and brought up at Hoylake on the Wirral. She met Lennon at the Liverpool College of Art in September 1957 and at first demurred at his suggestion of a date. “I didn’t ask you to f**king marry me, did I?” he snapped. Later that evening, they slept together at a flat Lennon shared with a friend.

During a demanding and, at times, abusive courtship, Cynthia became a loyal follower of his various groups as well as a girlfriend, and was with him during the drinking session at the Renshaw Hall, Liverpool, at which Lennon came up with the name “Beatles” in the summer of 1960.

When, in the summer of 1962, Cynthia discovered that she was pregnant, Lennon insisted on getting married. Julian was born in April 1963.

On the orders of Beatles manager Brian Epstein, the existence of both Cynthia and the child had to be kept secret from the growing legions of Beatles fans.

But that summer, when Beatlemania seized Britain following the huge success of She Loves You, reporters traced Cynthia and her infant son to Hoylake.

Cynthia was the only Beatles wife to accompany the group on their first US tour that spring.

As the wife of one of the most SHE LOVES YOU: Cynthia and John Lennon famous men in the world, she shared her husband’s hectic social life, but there were times when she struggled to control her insecurities — particularly concerning Lennon and other women.

In 1965 Lennon started taking copious amounts of LSD and, under its influence, began to bring home what Cynthia later described as “a ragged assortment of people he’d met through drugs”.

A crisis point came in August 1967 when the Beatles and their womenfolk caught a train to Bangor, north Wales, to meet the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Not knowing who she was, a policeman at Euston stopped Cynthia from boarding, and as the train pulled out Lennon leaned out of the window calling after her: “Tell them to let you on!” Cynthia, who broke down in tears, later reflected that the incident symbolised the direction her marriage was taking, with Lennon speeding into the future and she being left behind.

Their divorce in 1968 became acrimonious, with Lennon barking his final offer down the telephone. It was £75 000. “That’s like winning the pools,” he asserted, “so what are you moaning about? You’re not worth any more.” Cynthia eventually accepted £100 000, an annual payment of £2 400, the marital home at Kenwood and custody of Julian.

In her post-Lennon life, Cynthia ran her own bistro, worked as a television interviewer, and designed bed linen and paper products. She published two volumes of memoirs.

Cynthia remarried three times. She is survived by her son, Julian. —©