Cynthia Lennon

Died: April 1, 2015.

Cynthia Lennon, who has died of cancer aged 75, was the first wife of John Lennon and an intimate witness to the Beatlemania that transformed her husband from a penniless musician she met at art school to one of the most famous men in the world.

She was also a witness to the less pleasant sides of John Lennon's personality. In her 2005 memoir, she revealed how he lashed out at her after seeing her dancing with Stuart Sutcliffe, his friend and the original bassist in The Beatles. She also believed Lennon behaved badly towards Julian, the son they had together, although she always recognised her husband's musical genius. He sang movingly about love, she said, but often wounded those close to him.

During the early days of the band's success, the fact that Cynthia and John were married at all was hidden away for fear it would damage his popularity (it was thought the fans preferred the idea that the foursome were "available"). Then, with the band were at their peak, Lennon dropped Cynthia entirely for Yoko Ono, which left Cynthia hurt and occasionally regretful of her involvement with Lennon. "If I'd known what falling for John Lennon would lead to," she once said, "I would have turned round and walked away."

The couple first met at Liverpool College of Art in 1957. Cynthia, who was born Cynthia Powell, was the daughter of a travelling salesman who lived in the gentle town of Hoylake on the Wirral; Lennon was a bit of bad boy who lived with his Aunt Mimi. In many ways, they were an unlikely match but they seemed to bond over the fact that both of them were too vain to wear glasses for their short-sightedness. His first Christmas card to her foreshadowed some of his most famous lyrics: "I love you, yes, yes, yes."

From the start, Cynthia was the more sensible of the pair. She worked hard towards her art teacher's diploma while John bunked off to play in a band in Hamburg. Then, in 1962, she fell pregnant. "I became pregnant because nobody told me how you did it, or rather what you did about it," she said.

Lennon immediately did the decent thing and the pair were married in August 1962, two weeks before The Beatles cut their first single Love Me Do. "I didn't marry a Beatle," Cynthia once said. "I married a broke student who played the guitar and ponced all my grant money off me for fags."

As the success of the band grew, Cynthia lived largely incognito. On one occasions, she was staying with her mother in Hoylake when the press were tipped off. "I was chased in and out of shops with the pram," said Cynthia. "My mum went out to face them and when they said 'Is that Cynthia, John's wife?' she said 'No, it's her twin sister'."

By the mid-60s, with The Beatles at the top of the charts, Cynthia was beginning to be sidelined by Lennon. On 25th August 1967, The Beatles, their wives and friends all gathered at Paddington station to head to Wales to meet the India guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. John and Cynthia were late and as their taxi drew up, John jumped out, leaving Cynthia to carry the bags. By the time she reached the barrier, the train was pulling away and she was left behind. She saw the incident as symbolic of what was happening to her marriage: John Lennon on the train, speeding into the future, with her left behind.

The final straw was when Lennon met Yoko Ono. One day in 1969, when Cynthia returned from Greece to her home in Surrey, she found John and Yoko in dressing gowns. Lennon acted as if nothing had happened and then went off to the United States to work with Paul McCartney. A few days later, Cynthia saw pictures of Lennon and Yoko Ono holding hands and realised her marriage was over. "There was no way I could talk to John," she said, "because he just closed the door."

In the years that followed, Cynthia wrote about her experiences in two memoirs, but would not be drawn on Yoko Ono. She once said that she didn't think a great deal about Yoko and tried not to dwell on her, but she was more honest about the ways she felt Lennon, who was murdered in 1980, had let down her and their son Julian. "He was cruel to me and awful to Julian," she said. "John was a funny, loving, charismatic man, but the drugs, the fame and Yoko changed him. He turned into a different person to the John I fell in love with."

In her 2005 memoirs, Cynthia also described the moment Lennon hit her. It happened at Liverpool Art College shortly after Lennon saw Cynthia dancing with Sutcliffe. In the book, Cynthia wrote: "Before I could speak, he raised his arm and hit me across the face, knocking my head into the pipes that ran down the wall behind me. It happened, but he didn't beat me up and give me a black eye. He slapped me."

In all, Cynthia spent ten years with Lennon and after the divorce worked in a number of different areas. She ran three restaurants, worked as a commercial artist and exhibited some of her portraits. In the 1990s, she also had a brief career as a recording artist with a cover version of Those Were The Days.

She married four times in all and had been living in Spain. She is survived by her son Julian. Her fourth husband, Noel Charles, died in 2013.