John Lennon married his first wife Cynthia Lennon in 1962, shortly before they welcomed their son, but the pair were divorced in 1968. Just a year later, he tied the knot with Yoko Ono. In an interview with Howard Stern last year, The Beatles star Paul McCartney shed some light on the differences between Cynthia and Yoko as he spoke out on the band’s split, his feud with John and his former bandmate’s wives.
Paul told the interviewer Cynthia wasn’t the type of “strong woman” John was into, saying: “John loved strong women. His mother had been a strong woman, his auntie, who brought him up, was a strong woman.
“Bless her, but his first wife wasn’t,” he continued. “She once said to me, ‘All I want is a guy who wants a pipe and slippers. Come home and do that…’”
“And I thought, ooh, that’s not John.”
Implicitly comparing Cynthia to Yoko, The Beatles star moved on to the relationship which followed John’s split from his first wife.
“And so, John had met up with Yoko,” he recalled. “And even though we thought, oh God, bit intrusive — she used to sit in on the recording sessions and we’d never had anything like that.
“But looking back on it you think, the guy was totally in love with her and you’ve just got to respect that. So, we did and I do,” he concluded.
Paul also told Howard categorically that John was the one who broke The Beatles up and spoke of how glad he was to have reconciled following the feud which followed before his friend was shot and killed in 1980.
John’s first wife Cynthia was born in Blackpool to Liverpudlian parents in 1939.
In as letter addressed to Cynthia, which resurfaced and went to auction with RR Auction in 2017, John disputed accusations that Yoko or, as Cynthia has commented, L.S.D. were the catalyst for their split.
“As you and I well know, our marriage was over long before the advent of L.S.D. or Yoko Ono… and that’s a reality!” he wrote.
He told her he didn’t blame her for trying to remove herself from the world around The Beatles, but said she “should try to avoid talking to and posing for magazines and newspapers”.
John and Yoko were famously head-over-heels for each other, with the latter speaking in interviews about how they disappeared into each other in their relationship.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses though, as John embarked on an 18-month affair with their assistant May Pang in 1973.
Yoko was fully aware of the affair, during which The Beatles star moved out of the New York home they shared and into a place in LA with May.
Less than two years later, however, he returned to Yoko and they welcomed their son Sean shortly afterwards.
John was tragically shot and killed outside his Manhattan home at the age of 40 in 1980.
