Already seated for the Beatles biopics and they won't even be hitting theaters for years (2028, to be exact). But until then, it's time to become armchair experts in—what else?—the Fab Four's extremely dramatic love lives. And when it comes to John Lennon there's a lot to discuss, and content warning...not all of it's great!
Cynthia Lennon: 1957 to 1968
John and Cynthia met when they were both at art school, and their relationship was extremely fraught. Cynthia said John was physically violent towards her once at the beginning of their relationship, and was "verbally cutting and unkind" throughout their time together.
The couple married in 1962 when Cynthia was pregnant, and went on to welcome their son Julian. Sadly, Cynthia was told to keep her pregnancy—and their marriage—secret to protect John's image among fans.
"If the lead, the main man in the group was found to be married, then it might take away from that particular success, so I walked around pregnant for quite a long time, hiding it," she said. "I was asked many times if I was John's wife, and I had to refuse and say, 'No, no, I'm somebody else.'"
The couple ended their relationship amid mutual accusations of infidelity, and they had an extremely acrimonious divorce in 1968. In fact, Cynthia came home one day to find her husband with Yoko Ono. "She'd been staying the night with John, and I came home and they were there, which was sort of curtains for our marriage as far as all of us were concerned, really," Cynthia recalled. "I knew there was not a thing I could do about it. Any more than I could do about John taking drugs at the time. There was no way I could have stopped him."
Yoko Ono: 1968 to 1980
John and Yoko met at a gallery and connected over their love for art. John told Rolling Stone, “I called her over, it was the middle of the night and [Cynthia] was away, and I thought, ‘Well, now's the time, if I'm gonna get to know her anymore.’ She came to the house and I didn't know what to do, so we went upstairs to my studio and I played her all the tapes that I'd made, all this far-out stuff, some comedy stuff, and some electronic music. She was suitably impressed and then she said, 'Well let's make one ourselves,' so we made [the experimental album] Two Virgins. It was midnight when we started Two Virgins, it was dawn when we finished, and then we made love at dawn. It was very beautiful.”
Once John and Cynthia got divorced, he and Yoko married in 1969 and welcomed their son Sean in 1975. She was repeatedly accused of being the reason the Beatles broke up, which John defended her against, saying “She didn’t split the Beatles. Because how could one girl split the Beatles, or one woman? The Beatles were drifting apart on their own.”
They remained together (with some hiccups) until John was killed in 1980. Yoko said on The Andrew Marr Show in 2010, “We were partners, and I feel that we are still partners We’re together, still."
May Pang: 1973
John and Yoko met May in 1970 and hired her as a personal assistant. Her 1973 affair with John was actually set up by Yoko during a period of separation between her and John. Here's her recollection of the conversation they had: “‘You don’t have a boyfriend, right?’ I said: ‘Yes, but please go to someone else with this.’ Then she said: ‘You’re nice and you don’t want him to go out with somebody that’s not going to be nice to him, right?’ I said: ‘Of course not.’ So, she said: ‘You’re perfect.’ I said ‘no’ and she kept saying ‘yes’. Then she walked out the door. Later, John told me that she went to him after and said: ‘I fixed it for you.’”
Welp, that's all—we'll go ahead and update this with casting information once more is known about the Beatles biopics!
