Cynthia Lennon interviewed by Anthony Wilson. Granada, 1984.

for to julian in 1984. for julian's mother cynthia lennon it's all very familiar having married john in 1962 she saw the amazing rise of the beatles at first hand now with julian's growing success cynthia lennon follows her son's progress as she followed john's isn't it in a strange way more of a hindrance being the son of john lennon that there are certain things he does in his music which will automatically remind people of of the father and in a way get in the way of of him perhaps i don't see why i mean if julian's got the talent and he writes good music and people accept him for what he is not who he is i don't see why but it's not going to be terribly difficult to be accepted for who he is that's going to be a fight extremely difficult extremely difficult but he's had it all his life i mean he's had hassles all his life because of who he was or who he is you know the son of and you're different than i am but he isn't different he's an ordinary lad and and he's working his way up the ladder and if he's successful great wonderful if he isn't at least he's given it a try i mean julian loved his dad and he is following in the same line as his father but that's purely natural it's because he is his father's son julian's father john developed his musical talents in the late 50s particularly during his art school days both john and cynthia were students here at the liverpool college of art what sent me was because i loved art and that was the sort of life i wanted it was an exciting life i i went there quite innocently because i'd been wearing a school uniform in the junior art school for years and my mother's a great knitter so i used to wear a lot of twin sets and things you see so i was a pretty ordinary ordinarily dressed girl at the time and of course when i went to our college it was fantastic absolutely wonderful so although it wasn't your world you soon began to enjoy it i loved it i integrated beautifully after the first two years took about two years and then you integrated with one of your fellow pupils didn't you what first attracted you to john well i like rebels and individuals in life you see and john was a rebel and an individual and a very enigmatic i just couldn't resist him i knew there were easier men in the world in fact i was going out with a very easy boring man at the time you know sort of almost planned marriage and building societies and saving up for marriage now and john just just lifted me away from all this and the excitement of college of meeting individuals new people growing up and john just was topped it all for me he was just the most outrageous character i'd ever come across and i loved him for it who had to make the first move did the woman have to catch or did he propose well they say what is it a woman chases a man until he catches her well i suppose in a way it was a similar sort of situation when john first met me i'd gone through all the gamut of changing hair styles and growing it and changing it to red and goodness knows how many other colors and when i met john he influenced me because he did love he loved french film stars he loved the accent and and the mystery of bridget bardo and you know not your down-to-earth liverpool girl so the closest i could get to it was to grow my hair longer so i slowly gradually went from red to blonde and that's how i evolved as the nearest i could get to brigitte bardot for john and tide skirts and black stockings and all that business i think i remember seeing pictures of that sort of stuff what was it like when it all took off i think you the word somewhere is used i that you use the word joy about the best moments of it that's a very strong word joy was it that much fun oh yes yes looking back on films of the old days the very early days it was such a tremendous experience the joy of that experience i mean nobody very few people have gone through that experience before and appreciated it and been in the center of it was frightening it was just overwhelming we didn't have time to think about whether it was going to stop or carry on or it was just like it's just something that went on and on and on and got better and better and bigger and bigger and being in the center of it you just got swept along by it those wonderful days the roller coaster of beetle mania if you had to say one thing what was the best i suppose oh i think the first trip to america when i was allowed to go with them when i was always in the background and i was always protected but to experience that the sound when we arrived in america at the airport we all thought there were screaming jets you know the noise as we got off the plane there's a tremendous screaming and shouting and we thought it was another jet alongside us when we got out this incredible noise of thousands and thousands of fans oh just it's just so hard to describe the lack of space feeling of imprisonment the fact that you couldn't go out on your own you couldn't go for a walk hand in hand down by the river you know without constantly being constantly besieged by fans hello by the press by the fans oh hello yeah quick speak up the news just constantly as a pop star of course in those days john lennon was not meant to be married oh no it was disastrous i mean as far as the fans were concerned definitely not meant to be married did your wife enjoy it over there yeah she loved it don't how long was it a secret oh about 12 months maybe 18 months during the time that i was pregnant you know that it was all very quiet did you feel resentment about that not really not really now again perhaps i should in retrospect i should i should have been a totally different sort of character during the whole time but you know at the time i was i was concerned about the baby to come i was happy that we were married and i was quite happy to keep a low profile for the sake of the boys [Music] [Music] [Music] if that was what was supposed to be and that was what brian thought would be the best then i was quite happy to go along with it did you ever feel that you were a rival to brian or that brian was a rival to you i didn't feel a rival to brian maybe on brian's side he felt that i was a rival to him because he did have a great love for john john and i were very close and very tight-knit we had been going out together for three years before we were married and we had quite a very strong understanding brian was there as a manager but he was astonished that in the last all through you seem to have been practical and understanding and allowing in a way that the modern age feminist would object to that you should have fought for your rights how would you answer that kind of person who would say that to you why didn't you fight for more of this and more of his time and so on and so forth what would you say to them i think sometimes fighting can can go against you i think you can only be yourself in these matters you've got to be true to yourself all along and i feel as though i've been true to myself no matter what's happened i could have fought i could have battled before the divorce from john but i knew that that wouldn't do any good because people have their own lives to lead their own fate i'm a great fatalist and john had his life to travel on and i had my life to travel on and we met for a short time it was 10 years but during that 10 years they were wonderful years now if i had tried i'd been aggressive about the old business it wouldn't have altered a thing it would have caused bad feeling and i'm quite happy as i am now you know i have really no regrets about it did you not then as you saw the breakup coming you say somewhere that you saw it coming for two or three months you say you didn't fight then even it was a hard battle to fight because at that time john was was taking a lot of drugs so i wasn't talking to a rational person during that period in fact the whole business of losing brian at a very crucial time i think that that really upset everybody and threw everybody in different directions and then of course when yoko came along that was another great break in in the whole situation but i couldn't no i don't think you alter the course of fate i couldn't have altered the course of john's fate the split with you came shortly before the split with paul didn't it i mean in in in some way you both have the same experience of john is that correct yes yes i think um paul and john were a great partnership and i think john and i were a great partnership but there are occasions in life when partnerships have to break up to go on to form new partnerships and it did happen at that particular time and it was again not coincidence necessarily it just happened brian's death the complete crash of apple really because it was chaotic a lot of freeloaders a lot of money lost and you know a very difficult time all totally lost they're all lost in their own way and of course there's always a catalyst in life and i think yoko was the catalyst in that particular time that created the breakup in money it says you've got 100 000 divorce settlements most people go that's not much you'd like to buy a house out of that as well it doesn't seem a lot did it seem a lot to you at the time yes i kept visualizing a football stadium with a hundred thousand people in and imagine each one as a pound note and i thought that's a hell of a lot of money because i wasn't aware of the amount of money that was you know 100 000 pounds was a lot of money to me and in a way what john's comment about what it's like when in the pools sin was quite true because only a few years ago say five or six years ago it was you would win the pools at 75 000 pounds and it for a lot of people it would set them up for life but under the circumstances it was a bit rough really it's clear how you must have felt about yoko then can i ask you how you feel about yoko ono today very difficult question again um she's not my cup of tea as a as a person and i can only say that i can only leave it at that i don't want to get into any deep discussions about yoko but have you met yes we met years ago but not not not since they left for america i haven't haven't seen yoga it is said that the breakup which was obviously so difficult for you was also terribly difficult for julian all that attention at the center of the world as it were to the age of seven and then suddenly for him too the divorce it was a traumatic change for julie and i had terrible problems with julian for about three years following that for only following the divorce and the breakup he went through tremendously difficult emotional problems how did your life change in the 70s your life has it's been up and down hasn't it is that a good question constantly up and down i have many highs and many lows but but never dull that's for sure but uh i married an italian in 1970 1970 and which was a bit disastrous because it was a rebound marriage and not very successful are you married again yes and that wasn't successful no but you see i wasn't the sort of girl that would mess around you know i had the freedom i was i was a free lady but i also had a son and i believe in marriage and and especially for the children and of course instead of messing around and having affairs i got married instead you see much to maya but that leaves you with the figures of um of three marriages three divorces now yeah after many turbulent years and having moved 20 times in 20 years cynthia is now settled in a new home in the lake district her passion for art is still with her she works as a textile designer and artist for cynthia life is quieter now you have although you have moved a lot in your life since the the beatles days you remain cynthia lennon why did you keep the name i do now yes because i'm i'm not married to anyone in particular at the moment i'm i'm a free agent and i feel for julian's sake and for my sake because lennon was always my name and it's been natural to me to be called lennon and i've always been called cynthia lennon so it seems the natural thing to be i mean what's in a name anyway it does seem that on occasions john was aggressive selfish a little cruel and yet you never have a hard word to say about him you always defend him why because i depend defend the truth you know and i knew the man and i knew the truth of the man and the heart of the man during my time with him why should i say something that i don't believe in he was wonderful with me for many years i mean i mean it's impossible for somebody to be wonderful all the time i sense that you never really stopped loving john did you no it's very hard to ask the question but when the shooting happened you know your feelings you knew total devastation i've never experienced anything like it in my life before it's very very hard it was a terrible experience for myself for julian for everyone who is close to john for all his fans it was an experience i'll never get over because i relive it constantly even though i wasn't there at the time because the person that i loved for so many years you know went through such a horrendous death i had the idea of a violent death occurred to you before john was threatened and he was terrified at the time we were both terrified but we didn't believe that it would ever happen it was almost as though it was a premonition in those days that something was going to happen to him in fact i mean i can't say any more about that let's end the interview with a question that's the old desert island disc question i'm sure you've been asked it before but uh you got one song one song and no copy of the bible or anything what song would you take away from your life the pop music with the beatles with john lennon which particular which particular track the one that's followed me all over the years and i think i mentioned it before is the longer minding road purely because it's i mean there are so many i mean it's so difficult i know it's a pool song but there are many john songs as well but as far as i'm concerned and how i felt over the years and as i've moved on in this life as how life has been to me or treated me it's always been the long and winding road you

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