The BEATLES
Lovers !
by Oliver Bennet
In the 1950s, the four lads who
would become the Beatles were just typical teenagers. Len Garry of John
Lennon's group the Quarrymen recalls Lennon and McCartney as ordinary
young men, courting "birds", in a world where heavy petting could lead
to betrothal.
 Cynthia Powell, the first Beatle wife, was similarly Bardot-ised by
Lennon. She and John met at Liverpool Art College and married when the
Beatles were on the cusp of fame. "When John and I fell in love we were
students," she recalls. "I was 19 and John was 18. As the Beatles were
gaining popularity, Paul, Ringo and George did not have regular
girlfriends." When the Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, the
legend "Sorry girls, he's married!" flashed up over Lennon's TV image.
For McCartney, it was the 17-year-old actress Jane Asher, whom he met
in 1963, who gave expression to his search for status. In 1964, Harrison
met the model and his future wife Pattie Boyd on the set of A Hard Day's
Night.
Then, in 1965, Ringo married a Cavern regular, Maureen Cox, who was
18 and pregnant. The era of the "birds" was over, and their romantic
lives, which their manager Brian Epstein had assiduously kept secret,
emerged.
Boyd and Asher were southerners to Cox and Powell's Scouse, but they
all shared one great quality: independence. "The first wives didn't set
foot into Beatles territory," says Tony Bramwell, the band's ex-road
manager. "They shopped, looked after children, did their thing." Powell
recalls the solidarity of the four women, and a "mix that worked
beautifully... a fascinating blend of personalities.
Two from the north and two from the south, plus four tightly knit
characters/musicians/comedians." Asher prefigured McCartney's position
as the culturally pioneering Beatle, and as with art, so with women:
McCartney was engaged to Asher, but still dated singer Julie Felix and
model Maggie McGivern. After Asher, McCartney saw a string of bohemian
lovers, including Francie Schwartz, who, at 23, went to see the Beatles
on the grounds of making a movie, and ended up singing "na-na" on Hey
Jude.
In 1967, Pattie Boyd influenced the Beatles' spiritual direction
after she suggested they went to a lecture by the guru Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi. But Harrison's second wife, Olivia Trinidad Arias, was his
strength and his abiding love.
In 1999 she bravely fought with an intruder who stabbed Harrison in
their Henley home, and she was at his side when he died from cancer two
years later. |
