Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon’s former wife, dies; Julian Lennon posts loving YouTube tribute

In her new book, John, Cynthia Lennon tells a much different story, painting the picture of a young couple madly in love until drugs, fame and the spell of a formerly unknown artist named Yoko Ono tore them apart. I have read so many books and seen so many films, and it’s like we don’t really exist. We are like walk-on parts in his life, Cynthia Lennon told Good Morning America. We did spend 10 years together. Cynthia and John met in an art class in Liverpool in the 1950s. At first, Cynthia dismissed the would-be Beatle as not her type. That soon changed. You couldn’t resist being around him, Cynthia Lennon said. You couldn’t resist watching what he was up to. I mean, he was a total rebel. Everybody was amazed by him. Cynthia and John were married in 1962, but their relationship was sometimes rocky. On one occasion, she claims her husband struck her. He was a very jealous young man at the time, and he had a lot of pain inside, Cynthia Lennon said. He wanted to trust me and he thought by seeing me dancing with a friend of his that I was being disloyal or messing around. So he smacked me, but that was the only time.