Yoko Ono Admitted Cynthia Lennon Had to Be 'Strong' to Deal With John Lennon
Yoko Ono said she had a great deal of respect for Cynthia Lennon. She shared why she thought Cynthia was a strong person.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon began a relationship while he was still married to his first wife, Cynthia Lennon. The affair, of course, did nothing good for the relationship between the two women. When Ono first met Cynthia, though, she said she liked her a great deal. She recognized an innate strength in her that had to be present in order to put up with Lennon.
Cynthia met Ono before she realized she was having an affair with her husband. Ono said Cynthia’s poise impressed her.
“The first time I met her at Kenwood — I thought she was very quiet and sensitive — a nice lady,” Ono said in the book All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines. “She had a nice figure and my feeling was in Liverpool, when he went to art school, I think she was like a different class of chick, you know, rather elegant and graceful, and I think that’s probably what impressed John.”
Ono believed Cynthia’s intelligence had helped her win Lennon over. She also believed that Cynthia’s strength helped her stay in the relationship. “She was a strong lady,” Ono said, adding, “She had to be strong to be with John. He wasn’t a Goody Two-shoes. He was already complex and a boy with a chip on his shoulder.” Yoko Ono could tell John and Cynthia Lennon’s marriage was in a bad place.
Before Cynthia discovered the affair, Ono said Lennon often complained to her about his wife. While this made her uncomfortable — she knew he shouldn’t be talking about his wife that way to her — she developed deep feelings for him.
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
