SHE SAID HE SAID

In the summer of 1957, John Lennon joined the Liverpool College of Art.
Two new and important people came into his life at art college.
The first was Stuart Sutcliffe, who later became the Beatles' bassist until 1961.

(Stuart Sutcliffe) was very spotty with horn-rimmed glasses and, just like John's, they were taped up at the edges. As a student, he was precisely the opposite of John, because he was working himself to death, totally dedicated. He wasn't eating properly and didn't have much to do with girls. His work was all-important to him.

CYNTHIA LENNON

The second person was Cynthia Powell, a girl from Hoylake.
At first, Cynthia had no interest in John at all when she first met him
but she very soon felt in love with him.

I thought he was just horrible. My first memory of ever looking at him properly was in a lecture theater when I saw Helen Anderson sitting behind him stroking his hair. It awoke something in me. I thought it was dislike at first. Then I realized it was jealousy. But I never had any contact with him, apart from him stealing things from me, like rulers and brushed. He looked awful in those days as well. He had this long tweed overcoat which belonged to his Uncle George and his hair all greased back. I didn't fancy him at all. He was scruffy. But I didn't get a chance to know him, anyway. I wasn't one of his crowd. I was so respectable, or I thought I was.

CYNTHIA LENNON

She was a right Hoylake runt. Dead snobby. We used to poke fun at her and mock her, me and my mate Jeff Mohamed.'Quiet please,'we'd shout. 'No dirty jokes. It's Cynthia and Phyllis.' She was another one of the Hoylake crowd. I wasn't in with them. I used to hang around with the other loudmouths.

JOHN LENNON

On lettering days, (John Lennon) always arrived late, anything up to half an hour. He looked a mess. He had scruffy black trousers, quiffed hair with a slight DA at the back, and it was an attempt to look like a teddy boy. But often, even though he was late, he'd have a screwed-up drawing under his arm to present to the teacher. And it would get him off the hook, in a way. Arthur Ballard (the teacher) would hold it up to the class and say: 'Now look, this is the kind of original idea and inspiration we're looking for.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Cynthia was so quiet. A completely different type from us. She came from over the water, the posh part, from a middle-class area. She wore a twin set. She was very nice, but I just couldn't see her suiting John. He used to go on about her, telling us how marvelous she was. I just couldn't see it. I left college for a year, and when I was away I heard they were going strong. I thought that would settle him down, calm him a bit, but it didn't turn out that way at all. John and Cynthia had their first proper conversation in a lettering class they were both in. They found they were both shortsighted.

THELMA PICKLES(a friend of John's)

It was after that I found myself getting into the class early, so that I sit next to him. I used to hang around outside afterwards, hoping to bump into him.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Bloody hell-she's fantastic-just like Brigitte Bardot. Helen Anderson,

HELEN ANDERSON (a friend of John's)

It was a class dance when he asked to go with him but she said "no".
She finally went and since then she became his big love.

We had a class dance. I was pissed and asked her to dance. Jeff Mohamed had been having me on, saying, 'Cynthia likes you, you know.' As we danced I asked her to come out to a party the next day. She said she couldn't. She was engaged.

JOHN LENNON

I was. Well, almost. I'd been going out with the same boy for three years and was about to get engaged. John got annoyed when I said no. So he said come and have a drink afterwards at the Crack. I said no at first, then I went. I wanted to really, all the time.

CYNTHIA LENNON

I was triumphant. Having picked her up. We had a drink then went back to Stu's flat, buying fish and chips on the way.

CYNTHIA LENNON

The character of John made Cyn be afraid about his future.

(John) gave off this feeling that he was already battling through life, even at eighteen. Whenever he was going anywhere or doing anyhting, he walked like lightning, as if he was being shot from an arrow. It was a kind of panic. He would look round as if someone was chasing him. He staggered, quickly, as though he believed that if he moved quickly, people might miss him.

CYNTHIA LENNON

(John Lennon) had a strange fascination for many of the girls..He wasn't the sort of chap you'd swoon over. What concerned me, and drew me to him at first, was that he was so lazy about his work. He didn't give a damn and I got worried, being a conscientious type, that he would get into trouble and get kicked out of college...I cared more about his future and his work than he did. I saw in John so much talent, as an artist, but if he got chucked out of college, which was likely, where would he go? I was a lot older than him, mentally.

CYNTHIA LENNON

They began to date every day and John decided to take her
home and make clear to aunt Mimi that he fell in love with her
but Mimi was worrying about their relationship.

When John first took me home, I suppose Mimi looked on it as a childhood romance, nothing serious. We were about eighteen and no aunt would expect her nephew to be seriously involved at that age. The more (the relationship) drifted on for months, the greater I could see Mimi worrying and looking concerned...

CYNTHIA LENNON

When John went to Hamburg with the other Beatles he will miss
his lovely girlfriend and he'll send her romantic letters

The love and warmth of (John's) letters (from Hamburg) made me feel wonderful and miserable at the same time.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Postman, postman, don't be slow, I'm in love with Cyn so go, man, go. (What John Lennon would write to Cynthia on the envelopes of letters he sent from Hamburg to her)

JOHN LENNON

The two began going out every night after that and would go to the pictures instead of lectures. In 1962, the Beatles were beginning to make it big in Liverpool and girls were coming to their houses, asking if they were home.
The boys were also being noticed and followed around town.
In August of that year, Cynthia discovered that she was pregnant.

I didn't know if John would want to get married. I didn't want to tie him down.

CYNTHIA LENNON

I was a bit shocked when she told me. But I said yes. We'll have to get married. I didn't fight it.

JOHN LENNON

The day after Cynthia told John she was going to have a baby, they were married at Mount Pleasant Registry Office in Liverpool. Their parents did not attend the wedding, just like at John's parents' wedding many years before. John, Paul and George were all wearing black for the ceremony.

There was a drill going on all the time outside. I couldn't hear a word the bloke was saying. Then we went across the road and had a chicken dinner. I can't remember any presents. We never went in for them. Brian Epstein was the best man at the wedding and insisted that the marriage be kept quiet.

JOHN LENNON

I thought it would be goodbye to the group, getting married, because everbody said it would be. We went mad keeping it secret. I did feel embarrassed being married. Walking about, being married. It was like walking about with odd socks on, your fly open.

JOHN LENNON

John Charles Julian Lennon was born on April 8, 1963, at Sefton General Hospital in Liverpool. Julian was named after John's mother Julia.

When I was pushing Julian in his pram round Woolton people would come up to me and say are you Cynthia Lennon. I'd say no.

CYNTHIA LENNON

By the time John started taking LSD the marriage was in trouble
and it it seemed that nothing will be the same again.

I knew then (when John Lennon starting using LSD) that our marriage was in trouble. We had lost communication. John was on another planet.

CYNTHIA LENNON

(LSD) seemed to be all right for (John), although I was totally against it. It opened the floodgates of his mind and he seemed to escape from the imprisonment of fame. Tensions, and bad tempers, were replaced by understanding and love as his message.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Once (John Lennon) became famous, he was like a national institution, not easy to be picked off for flings, well, easy maybe, but he had to be careful about it, be careful who knew.

CYNTHIA LENNON

As the Beatles began to tour more and more, John began to see less of Cynthia, but he said many times during their marrriage that he loved her very, very much.

Her name is Cyn and I miss her very very much.

JOHN LENNON

Although John loved Cyn soooo much he had love affairs with other women.

I had blind faith (that John Lennon would not have an extramarital affair). I couldn't imagine John being involved with another woman. And even if he had, I would have ignored it because he always came back. Whatever John did outside our marriage, he didn't flaunt anything. So when I learned later about the temptations he had succumbed to, I had the satisfaction of knowing he had protected me at the time, just like he had since we first met.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Strangely, it was a very loving moment (when John Lennon told Cynthia he had numerous affairs). I was in tears, not of anger or shock, but tears of happiness that he could tell me, that we'd once again got close enough for him to get rid of it, talk it through and put it on a different level. Perhaps it would have been better if I'd been able to be a bit more aggressive. But I was so happy that at last he felt he could open his heart and tell me what was on his mind...When John told me he'd had all these affairs, I felt as though we were being brought together again. He'd been leading his life as a musician and pop star and I'd led mine as a wife and mother. Conversation had become very thin on the ground. He was doing so many thing I wasn't involved in.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Their divorce was very painful for Cyn but she will always
be friendly with the second wife of John.

(Yoko was) not my cup of tea... I think John and I were a great partnership. Yoko was the catalyst who created the breakup in the end

CYNTHIA LENNON

A fight between Yoko and me is a publicist's dream. If there's a cat fight, it will be manufactured.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Americans are obsessed with (Yoko Ono).Everywhere I go people ask, 'So, what's Yoko really like?' I don't even know the woman. The last time I talked with her was when I picked up the phone shortly after John had been killed. She was calling to arrange funeral plans with Julian. Yoko and I are not kindred spirits. We are very different people who just happened to love the same man.

CYNTHIA LENNON

The divorce and the break-up of the band caused many problems
and she had to go on. She had a little kid too and wanted to give him
all the support and love she had.

It wasn't successful. It taught me that you can't step back into the past. Too many dramatic things had happened to all of them and the break-up of the very first Beatle marriage came home to them. They were all shell-shocked after they'd been there a while. Tight, nervous, everybody watching everyone else." (describing a party she had thrown after the Beatles' and her marriage to John in which the former Beatles came.)

CYNTHIA LENNON

The first five years, even though John was on tour, he always came back to Julian and, of course, after the divorce John moved to America and he didn't see him for a while, but there was constant contact...always constant. There were phone calls. There were presents. There was as much as John could do at the time. I think that in many interviews that Julian's had all that comes across is love, and he had a marvelous relationship even though it was at a distance. You know, John was in the States, and Julian was at home with me. It was difficult at first following the divorce, but slowly it built up and it was really building up beautifully before he lost his father. It's a great tragedy because they would have been great pals, and they would have jammed together and had a wonderful time.

CYNTHIA LENNON

Cynthia did a very fine job of bringing (Julian) up.

Yoko Ono

There was nothing basically wrong with my marriage to Cyn. It was just like an amber light. It wasn't on go and it wasn't on stop. I suppose that me being away so much during the early years of our marriage, I never did feel like the average married man.

JOHN LENNON

I think it's important, very important to say that Julian is very much Cynthia and John's child. There's a lot of her warmth in Julian too. (Cynthia's) a very warm person, and I think that Julian has a lot of his mother's warmth and his father's talent...

TONY KING