Cynthia Lennon, the first wife of The Beatles star John, has died at the age of 75. The mother of the iconic musician's first child, Julian, passed away peacefully at her home in Mallorca Spain with her family by her side. According to a memorial on the website of her son, Cynthia lost her battle with cancer.
Born Cynthia Powell in 1939, the former student met John Lennon while both attending the Liverpool College of Art in the late 1950s. They spent their college years teasing each other until she discovered the singer took a liking to her when she decided to grow her hair and dye it blonde like Brigitte Bardot.
"It was just an instant attraction...something about him that was for me," she once told interviewer Gary James. "I was fascinated to the point where I wanted to know who he was, what he was, where he'd come from and what had made him into who he was at that time, which we all found out later on. That was it really. It was an attraction that I couldn't help."
Cynthia Lennon dies, aged 75 (WENN)
They married in 1962 after Cynthia fell pregnant but just four years later they were divorced. A little over a year after she remarried Italian hotelier Roberto Bessanini, although they would later divorce in 1973. She then married businessman John Twist until they ended their marriage in 1983.
Yoko Ono has released a statement on her own website, writing: 'I'm very saddened by Cynthia's death. She was a great person and a wonderful mother to Julian. She had such a strong zest for life and I felt proud how we two women stood firm in the Beatles family. Please join me in sending love and support to Julian at this very sad time.”
She wrote two books chronicling her marriage to The Beatle, 1978's A Twist of Lennon and 2005's John.
"To survive in life, there are so many different areas," she said in 1995. "There's the tragic side, and there's the positive side. And I always hopefully look on the positive side of it. I enjoy and probably have had one of the most fantastic lives that you could choose."
