The Beatles Weddings: John & Cynthia
August 23 1962 Mount Pleasant Register Office, Liverpool
“There’s only one thing for it Cyn — we’ll have to get married”
The Romance
John and Cynthia met in September 1957, at Liverpool College of Art, where they were both in their second year. John was 17 and Cynthia a year older.
I’d seen John around the college but had never spoken to him: we moved in completely different circles. I was surprised to see him in the lettering class — he didn’t seem the type for the painstaking, detailed work involved. He hadn’t even brought any equipment.
Lennon, a reluctant and disruptive student, had been banished to the lettering (calligraphy) class when all his other lecturers refused to teach him. He wasn’t about to turn over a new leaf, (‘most of the time he did no work at all’) and ‘did his best to disrupt the class’.
His appearance was equally unpromising:
With his teddy-boy look — DA (duck’s arse) haircut, narrow drainpipe trousers and a battered old coat that was too big for him — he was very different from the clean-cut boys I was used to.
There also appeared to be a social divide, which Lennon, with his reputation for ‘caustic wit’ evidently exploited:
I had always…{been} anxious to please and do well, but John was the opposite: he was aggressive, sarcastic and rebellious … I was terrified he might turn on me and he soon did, calling me ‘Miss Prim’ and taking the mickey out of my smart clothes and posh accent.
In fact John, despite this early cultivation of his image as a working class outsider, came from a similar suburban background. Perhaps they were also drawn together by having recently experienced devastating bereavement.
A mutual friend told me that his mother had been killed in a car accident at the end of the previous term. I missed my father {who had died around the same time} desperately so I felt for him.
After months of flirting, the romance finally got off the ground at the end of year college party.
While we were dancing to Chuck Berry John Shouted. ‘Do you fancy going out with me?’
‘I’m sorry but I’m engaged to this fellow in Holylake’. The moment I said it I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me — I knew I sounded stuck-up and prim.
‘I didn’t ask you to fucking marry me, did I’ John shot back.
This exchange established the tone of the eight year relationship that would follow. John boorish/playful, Cynthia self-doubting and hopelessly in love. That night their physical relationship began in room ‘with no curtains, a mattress on the on the floor and clothes, art materials, empty cigarette packets and books scattered around it’ borrowed from John’s friend Stuart Suctliffe.
In her memoir, Cynthia concedes that they were ‘an unlikely couple’ but insists that ‘from the outset we had made a deep connection’. Aunt Mimi saw things differently. From their first meeting — a genteel afternoon tea at Chez Mendip, it was clear that Cyn was never going to pass the audition.
I was sure that Mimi hadn’t liked me … later I grasped that it wasn’t personal. Mimi didn’t think any girl was good enough for her boy.
The ‘sharply observant’ Mimi, she may also have correctly intuited that John needed a more strong-willed partner to check his wilder tendencies. She would later grudgingly accept that Yoko was ‘a sensible girl’ in this regard.
Less defensible was Mimi’s flagrant social snobbery. While her nephew endlessly teased Cyn about her poshness, Aunt Mimi described her as ‘a gangster’s moll’. Again there was an unintended kernel of truth in this description of the dynamic between the young lovers.
…There was an air of danger about John and he could terrify me. I lived on a knife edge.
Lennon alludes to the nature of this ‘danger’ in Hunter Davies’s official biography of The Beatles, published in 1968.
“I was in sort of a blind rage for two years. I was either drunk or fighting. It had been the same with other girl friends I’d had. There was something the matter with me.”
More accurately he was ‘drunk and fighting’ — and the fighting often arose from a pathological jealousy. An early example came after John had watched Cynthia dance with their friend, Stuart Suctliffe. He slapped her so hard that she hit her against a wall. This lead to a three month break in their relationship but the pattern of violence continued.
In the Seventies Lennon admitted he had been a ‘hitter’ and appeared genuinely remorseful. But there was a lot of ugly behaviour that didn’t make it into the lyric of Jealous Guy
I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry if I made you cry. I’m just a jealous guy
By 1962 John and Cynthia had been together for four years. During the last two of those years there had been long periods in which John was playing away (in every sense). While his career was in the ascendant, Cynthia’s had stalled. Once a star art student she was now reluctant teacher trainee.
In July she learned that she had failed her final teaching exam. Later the same day came even more calamitous news.
I discovered I was pregnant. Amazing as it sounds now, John and I had never used contraception.. we honestly thought it would never happen to us. Until it did.
Filled with dread, she put off informing John for several days.
Eventually I plucked up all my courage and told him…he went pale and I saw the fear in his eyes. For a couple of minutes we were both silent. I watched him as I waited for a response. Would he walk out on me? Then he spoke: ‘There’s only one for it, Cyn. We’ll have to get married.’
A ‘discreet wedding’
The next day John informed Brian Epstein of his plan. Understandably, Bryan, who had only managed The Beatles manager since the previous November, did not punch the air in celebration.
‘This could prove difficult,’ he said. ‘We have a record contract and an image to maintain.’
Traditional show-business wisdom was that pop stars needed to have at least the appearance of availability. Even steady girlfriends were frowned upon.
‘Are you sure you still want to go ahead?’
Lennon was sure. Nothing would change his mind.
‘In that case, congratulations!’ said Brian, with admirable good grace. ‘I will make the arrangements. But you understand that we need to keep these arrangements discreet.
John understood perfectly
Happy News?
Over at 251 Menlove Avenue the news received a hostile reception.
John’s next task was the one he dreaded. Mimi, predictably was furious. She screamed, raged and threatened to never to speak to him him again if he went though with it
Meanwhile, Cynthia delayed telling her own family. Her mother, who now lived in Canada, was over on a visit. Fearing disapproval, Cynthia waited until her final day of her mother’s stay before finally confessing to her situation.
When I told her about my pregnancy her only concern was for me. She felt terrible that she was leaving the next day and couldn’t stay to look after me.
This concern was understandable. What comes through from Cynthia’s account in the pathos of her situation. She has no bridesmaid because best friend is away on holiday. She cannot afford a new dress, so chooses the best one available in her wardrobe.
She prepares for the wedding alone
The wedding guests
The Powell family is represented by Cynthia’s brother, Tony, and her sister in law. They have to leave early to return to work.
On the Lennon side of the aisle, Aunt Mimi leads a complete boycott.
John does, however, have George and Paul with him. Ringo, the recent usurper of Pete Best, does not attend. In fact news of Best’s sacking is published in the Mersey Echo on the same day.
Brian, who has known John for less than a year, is the unlikely best man.
The Ceremony
Our wedding was an odd mixture of the comically funny and the downright bizarre
As the ceremony began, a workman in the street outside, ‘started up a pneumatic drill’. This continued throughout their vows — ‘the noise was ear splitting- we had to shout!’
The drilling was so loud that when the registrar asked for the bridegroom, George stepped forward. The ‘dour, solemn’ official was not amused.
Cynthia describes her wedding with great affection and generosity of spirit. She is particularly appreciative of Brian Epstein, who collects her in a chauffeur driven car and shows kindness and consideration throughout the day. She defends John against the charge that he was a sullen and reluctant bridegroom.
There are, however, portents of trouble to come. The other Beatles are dressed in ‘alarmingly dark suits’ for example while ‘the weather was awful … the sky overcast and grey…it might have rained at an moment.” Even the impromptu lunch they are treated to by Bryan is at the Reece Cafe — the same venue used by Fred and Julia Lennon at the start of their ill-fated marriage.
In keeping with the low-key, no-frills character of the day, celebrations ended long before the sun went down. John went off to play with The Beatles to play at the a gig at the Riverpark Ballroom in Chester. His new bride waited up for him for him a flat that Bryan had thoughtfully provided.
There was no honeymoon.
Quotes all from John by Cynthia Lennon (2005) and The Beatles Official Biography by Hunter Davies (1968). Other sources include Lennon by Phillip Norman
