'I deserve a terrible punishment': how the fate of the Beatles wives
'01.02.2019'
Source: Rambler
Everyone knows the widow of John Lennon Yoko Ono. But, as the musician himself once noted, no one knows what she does. We fill this gap and talk about the life partners of other participants in the Beatles. What they experienced and how they now look.
Of the four "Beatles" two long gone, like Rambler with reference to Anews. John Lennon was shot dead in December of 1980 by a former fan of the group who became a religious fanatic for the famous saying: "We are more popular than Jesus." The musician was 40 years old, his killer Mark Chapman was 25. He confessed to the crime and received 20 years in prison. The term expired on 2000, but Chapman remains behind bars, he has already been denied 10 release.
George Harrison died in November of 2001 for lung cancer that had metastasized to the brain. He was 58 years old.
Two other "Beatles" Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr continue to delight with solo works, release new songs and periodically collaborate, participating in each other's recordings and concerts. Semi 76 years, Ringo - 78.
The fate of the wives of musicians deserve a separate story.
Yoko Ono
Lennon's scandalous widow 18 February will be 86 years. For a long time, she was considered the culprit of the Beatles collapse and the evil genius of John. Some fans of the group still hate her, suspecting almost of contract murder of her husband (which, of course, is groundless nonsense).
Yoko's public image was so negative that her true contribution to Lennon's work was underreported and hidden. For example, only in 2017 was she officially recognized as the co-author of the famous song "Imagine" - the most successful single in his solo career.
A strange Japanese artist, whose performances and installations no one considered real art, appeared in Lennon's life in 1966. He was already a legend and a millionaire, besides married, had a son. Yoko began to pursue him literally, appearing everywhere, wherever he was, even in the Himalayas, where the Beatles went to meditate.
When asked by his wife why It constantly calls and comes to their home, Lennon replied that she only wanted money for her “avant-garde stuff.” But one morning, Cynthia returned from a trip and found a couple of drinking tea together, Yoko was in her robe. John calmly said to his wife: "Oh, hello."
Lennon and Ono got married on 1969 and turned their honeymoon into the famous bed action against the Vietnam War.
That year, which was the last for the group, Yoko particularly irritated the rest of the participants with her obsessive presence. According to one of the journalists, she even had a bed with a microphone in the studio, from where she could voice her remarks.
However, the musicians later denied that Ono had destroyed the group, its appearance only coincided with intensified internal contradictions. Today, Paul and Ringo are on friendly terms with the widow, despite past discord.
Surprisingly, even the former wife Cynthia (died in 2015 at the age of 75 years) and the eldest son of Lennon Julian, with whom she did not allow her father to communicate, reconciled with Yoko Ono after years.
After the death of John, it turned out that the guy was not even mentioned in the will. All rights to the multi-million dollar inheritance seized Yoko. Julian 16 has tried to sue his stepmother at the stepmother. According to the press, although unconfirmed, he eventually received about 20 million pounds.
Meanwhile, the Lennon and Yoko Ono family was not perfect either. They split up temporarily in 70, and John lived openly for a year and a half with Chinese-born 22-year-old mistress, Mae Pang. And Yoko herself persuaded her to engage with him.
These 18 months later the musician called the "lost weekend". However, it was thanks to May that he then resumed communication with Julian and began to build relationships with family and friends. He, on the contrary, ceased to see his wife and did not even answer her calls.
But one day Yoko, under some pretext, nevertheless achieved a meeting with Lennon, and after that he no longer returned to his mistress.
And after 5 years before her eyes, her husband got four shots in the back and died on the way to the hospital.
In 1982, the widow reflected in a conversation with the Washington Post: “After John left, I always think that I did this, which deserved such a terrible punishment. I dont know. If we did something wrong, then, probably, we were too absorbed in each other and our relations. ”
Years passed before Yoko Ono was considered a “talentless charlatan.” John Lennon once said: "My wife is the most famous and unknown artist: everyone knows her name, but no one knows what she does." Since then, she has received a number of awards for her contribution to art, the struggle for peace and human rights.
One of the art objects designed by Yoko Ono is the Imagine Peace Tower near Reykjavik. This is a Lennon memorial and a symbol of pacifism. Every year since the birth of the musician 9 in October to the day of death of December 8 from the white monument to the height of 4 km light rays are beating.
The widow keeps Lennon’s musical heritage and records songs herself, releases CDs, including with her son.
In October 2018, she released her cover of the song "Imagine" and a video based on her drawings and recordings.
Olivia Harrison
Harrison's widow 70 years. She is a film producer and philanthropist, collaborating with renowned director Martin Scorsese. Her documentaries about her husband's work have earned the highest awards in the field of music and television.
At one time, she, like Yoko Ono, witnessed the terrible attack on George. Fortunately, she managed to save her husband. In December, a psychopath, a former heroin addict who considered the Beatles to be sorcerers and messengers of hell, broke into the mansion of 1999 and began to strike the musician blow by blow with a kitchen knife. Olivia could barely beat him with the help of a fireplace and a table lamp.
Harrison received many injuries, he had to remove part of the lung. But the assailant escaped the charge of attempted murder, since he was recognized as temporarily insane. And in 2002, he was completely released from the asylum as “perfectly healthy,” and he quietly got to work with people.
Ex-wife Patty Boyd
Olivia and George met after the collapse of the Beatles, he was still married to the British model Patti Boyd. Thanks to her relationship with Harrison, she became the most popular symbol of 60's and an icon of rock and roll, but she also had a chance to know the other side of the frantic Beatlemania.
“It was a real horror. Once we went to a concert with friends, and George warned us to have time to leave before the last song. But anyway, these girls followed us, pushed me, pulled my hair and expressed hatred in every possible way the whole long way down the corridor, ”she told 2018 in an interview with Harper's Bazaar.
Their marriage broke up for many reasons, but the main thing was regular betrayal of George. Before the second marriage, he managed to have an affair, even with then-wife Ringo Starr Maureen.
Patty later married another legendary musician, Eric Clapton. Their marriage also fell apart years later, but it was her that his famous songs “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight” are dedicated to.
Barbara Bah
Ringo Starr's drummer is also married to the model. They have been together for almost 40 years. Barbara, like Patti, is now also considered an icon of the 60's. She was on the covers of many magazines, but in the midst of Beatlemania did not personally know anyone from the Liverpool Four. Just in those years she lived in Italy with her first husband, a distinguished Italian businessman.
Fate brought her to Ringo only in 1980 in filming. In total, she has about 30 films, but most of all she is known for the role of “Bond girl” - Russian spy Ani in the film with Roger Moore “The Spy Who Loved Me”.
As the press now says, all 80-e passed for a couple in a "drunken stupor." They flew from place to place, rented huge villas with a rich bar and went into the lead. Ringo later admitted that he often drank 16 bottles of wine a day. Looking at the photos from his speeches of those years, he does not remember half.
But these problems are long gone. Now Barbara is 71 year. Together with her friend and former colleague Patty Boyle, she is engaged in charity projects.
Maureen Starkey's Ex-Wife
(Starkey - Ringo Starr's surname from birth)
The first wife Maureen at one time did not cope with Ringo's alcoholism, as well as his betrayals. Although, as already mentioned, she herself was not a saint - at some point she became George Harrison's mistress. So, apparently, her teenage fan dreams came true, because at first she defended the longest queues in order to at least glance at idols.
Maureen gave birth to three children from Ringo. In 1994, all in the same “fatal” December, she died of leukemia. She was 48 years old.
Nancy Shevell
In contrast to the current wife of Paul McCartney, the two previous friends are much more familiar. They are almost as famous as Yoko Ono.
The first is Linda’s loyal friend, the mother of three children, including the recognized fashion designer Stella McCartney. The couple was inseparable 30 years, until the death of Linda from breast cancer in 1998-m.
The second is the notorious former model with amputated leg Heather Mills. (In 1993, she was hit by a police motorcycle, her leg had to be amputated below the knee and replaced with a prosthesis).
This relationship became famous mainly because of the dirty divorce when Heather tried to sue 125 millions of pounds, telling the court how perfect she was and how she tolerated her rogue husband and the hatred of his daughter Stella. She accused the latter of destroying their marriage. The court did not like her behavior, Mills eventually received a sum of 100 times smaller and in anger poured a jug of water on the head of a female lawyer McCartney.
The third wife of a musician is younger than 17: he is 76, she is 59. At one time, friends advised Nancy: "Remember what Heather was doing, and do exactly the opposite." Obviously, the advice came in handy, a complete idyll reigns in their relationship for 7 for years. British newspapers literally have nothing to write about Nancy, except to admire how young she looks and how good her figure in a bathing suit.
Nancy is the only Beatle woman who has nothing to do with creative bohemia. Her field of activity is cargo management. According to the press, in 90, she, like Linda McCartney, was diagnosed with breast cancer, from which she, fortunately, managed to recover.
