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John
By Cynthia Lennon
I started reading “John” with a gracious heart and an open mind. I’d thought how wonderful that Cynthia was going to tell her love story. I’d always been a big fan of the first Beatles wives club.
It’s clear by her own account that early on their marriage was doomed and maybe wouldn’t have happened if Brian Epstein weren’t a master publicist trying to save the Beatle reputation during a period in history that wouldn’t have been so forgiving of an unwed pregnancy. Cynthia tries throughout most of the book to make a case that John loved her, but there wasn’t any evidence of that love by his disintegrating behavior toward her. From the beginning of their marriage, he left her alone, or with his aunt, in unforgiving conditions. Brian Epstein seemed a better husband to her, and when he died, so did the publicity glue that kept her and John together.
The beginning of the book has a genuine sweetness about it—written in a child like cadence with interesting tidbits about the Beatles. But this book digs deeply into Lennon’s apparent cruelty toward her and Julian, John's violence, and his inability to control his own destiny, even to the end.
Cynthia uses the book as platform to speak against Yoko Ono and all her evil deeds, how she pursued John, and took control of his mind and money—quite a feat for anyone. To read this book you’d think she’d given John a lobotomy! He couldn’t go to the bathroom without Yoko!
Apart from Paul, and then only briefly, the rest of the Beatle clan abandoned Cynthia, just like John did. She blamed this development on John’s “power” over them, yet continued her tirad that Yoko had solid control over John—that every single nano aspect of his life was handled by her. None of the other three Beatles liked Yoko. If anything, they would have embraced Cynthia as a show against Yoko.
Cynthia takes no accountability in the failed relationship with John leaving me to wonder about what she left out of the book, especially given that she went on to marry three more men.
Finally, and ultimately the saddest part of the book for me is when she attempts to make the case that John wasn’t a loving father to Sean in his final years (redeeming himself as a good father in the end since he wasn’t there for Julian), but was in fact not there for either son. According to her account, John was a drug addled violent hermit, and whatever lucent moments he had prior to his murder, were precious few. After his murder, she depicts Yoko as a macabre kook who'd forced Julian to touch the “still warm” urn holding his father’s ashes.
There are some redeeming qualities to this book but if you’re looking for any of them to come from John or Yoko, you’d best pass on this one.
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