Lennon's first wife tells all in new book

Cynthia Lennon claims John once hit her while they were dating, and used LSD. Picture / Herald file

NEW YORK - John Lennon's first wife Cynthia says she and her son were "airbrushed" from the Beatles' story and wants to set things straight in a book that reveals he once hit her and ruined their marriage with drugs.

"I'm a great believer in justice in life and I think there has to be two sides," she told Reuters in an interview about her new book "John," which hits bookstores on September 27.

It is one of a clutch of books to be published ahead of the 25th anniversary of Lennon's murder on December 8, 1980, including one edited by his widow, Yoko Ono, that will be a collection of tributes and anecdotes by friends and celebrities.

It also comes hot on the heels of a Broadway musical produced under Ono's guidance that was criticized as one-sided and that will close this month after a mere six-week run. Reviewers said the show was more about John's life with Ono than his life as a Beatle.

Cynthia Lennon rejects the idea that her book is a retaliatory blow.

"(When) I read about the battle of the widows, I thought 'I'm not John's widow, Yoko is John's widow,'" she said, adding that she does not harbor any bitterness toward Ono.

The woman who met Lennon at art school in Liverpool said that while countless books had told the story of the Fab Four who revolutionized popular music in the sixties, not many have been written by those involved.

"The fans deserve it," she said. "They should have a true perspective on what's going on from everybody who was connected," she said by telephone from her home in Spain.

In the book, she describes the early days of the Beatles, from Liverpool to Hamburg, and how her marriage was kept secret because the band's manager, Brian Epstein, thought it did not suit a Beatle's image to have a wife and baby in tow.

She also recounts how Lennon once hit her out of jealousy when they were dating, and how his use of the psychedelic drug LSD destroyed their marriage.

"It's the intimacy of the story that I have tried to portray," she said, adding that she feels like she and her son Julian, now 42, were "airbrushed" out of the story.

Much of the story of their 1962-1969 marriage she already told in her 1978 book "A Twist of Lennon." But the new book adds details of John's relationship with Julian after the divorce and the impact of his death in 1980.

There is also more about Ono, who married Lennon in 1969 and who controls his estate. Cynthia Lennon describes her growing suspicions about Ono's evolving love affair with John during the marriage, and how Lennon's grieving widow made clear his ex-wife was not welcome immediately after he was slain.

"It's not as though you're an old school friend of mine, Cynthia," she recalls Ono telling her when she suggested accompanying Julian to New York after Lennon was shot by John Chapman. Julian, a teen-ager at the time, went to New York without his mother.

The book, to be published by the Crown Books unit of Random House, also discusses the other woman in Lennon's life, May Pang, with whom he lived during a break from Ono. Pang has written her own book called "John Lennon: The Lost Weekend."

Now 66 and with her fourth husband, Cynthia Lennon makes no apologies for selling letters and memorabilia after the divorce, saying: "It did pay a lot of bills."

And while the book discusses her divorce settlement and money problems, she says she does not dwell on such things.

"Money was never of any importance to me because I married a budding Beatle, but I fell in love with an art student."

She said writing the book was painful but she wanted to add her piece to the "jigsaw puzzle" of the Beatles' legend.

"I think about this as the Bible," she joked, recalling Lennon's famous declaration that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

- REUTERS