Lennon Letter To First Wife Cynthia Headed To Auction
A famous letter John Lennon wrote to his first wife, Cynthia, during 1976 goes up for auction today (August 9).
The letter — dated November 15, 1976 and addressed as “an open letter to Cynthia Twist” (her remarried name at the time) — was Lennon’s response to a revealing interview Cynthia gave to a women’s magazine. Lennon sent the letter to the U.K. Daily Mail and asked that it be “printed without any edits. I think it only fair to me and your readers to present my side of the story.”
RR Auctions, which is holding the sale, expects the letter to sell for as much as $25,000.
The full text of the letter says:
“As you and I well know, our marriage was over long before the advent of L.S.D. or Yoko Ono. . . and that’s reality! Your memory is impaired to say the least. Your version of our first L.S.D. trip is rather vague, and you seem to have forgotten subsequent trips altogether! You also seem to have forgotten that only two years ago, while I was separated from Yoko, you suddenly brought Julian to see me in Los Angeles after three years of silence. During this visit, you hardly allowed me to be alone with him for one moment. You even asked me to remarry you and/or give you another child, ‘for [their son] Julian’s sake’! I politely told you no, and that, anyway, I was still in love with Yoko, (which I thought was very ‘down to earth’). There were no detectives sent to Italy. Our mutual friend Alex Mardas went to Bassanini’s Hotel to see how you were, as you said you were too ill to come home. Finally, I don’t blame you for wanting to get away from your ‘Beatle’ past. But if you are serious about it, you should try to avoid talking to and posing for magazines and newspapers! We did have some good years, so dwell on them for a change, and, as Dylan says, it was ‘A Simple Twist of Fate!’ Love & good luck to the three of you, from the three of us.”
Cynthia died during 2015 from cancer at the age of 75.
Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.
