John Lennon's First Wife Cynthia Lennon Dead at 75

RIP; getting caught up in the swirl of Beatlemania and being married to an admittedly-abusive husband led to a difficult life for the original Mrs. Lennon:

Cynthia Lennon, then Cynthia Powell, met John Lennon in the early ’60s in college. In 1962, the two married when she became pregnant with Julian Lennon. They eventually divorced in 1968. Cynthia Lennon remarried several times.

John Lennon memorably went on to marry Yoko Ono, and Ono remained his wife until he was murdered by a crazed fan in 1980.

Julian Lennon told FOX411 last year, ahead of the Beatles’ 50th anniversary, that he grew up living with his mom as his father traveled the world as a member of the Fab Four.

“Anyone must remember that dad left when I was 3 years old,” Julian Lennon said. “Mom and I lived out of the limelight. We lived a totally different life.”

In her autobiography, Cynthia Lennon described being mistreated by her famous ex at times. But in a 2005 interview with “Good Morning America” she recalled his charisma as well.

“You couldn’t resist being around him,” she said. “You couldn’t resist watching what he was up to. I mean, he was a total rebel. Everybody was amazed by him.”

In other news from pop culture, Joni Mitchell’s Website posted yesterday evening that the 71-year old singer-songwriter “was found unconscious in her home this afternoon. She regained consciousness on the ambulance ride to an L.A. area hospital” after a 911 call. This news shouldn’t be much of a shock to those who read articles on Mitchell’s difficult health issues and fraught mental state last fall:

‘Morgellons is constantly morphing. There are times when it’s directly attacking the nervous system, as if you’re being bitten by fleas and lice. It’s all in the tissue and it’s not a hallucination. It was eating me alive, sucking the juices out. I’ve been sick all my life’.

Mitchell broke off friendships feeling she was wasting her time with some people she calls ‘deadwood’.

She lost her drive and doesn’t follow projects through to conclusion. She’s forgetful and can’t remember what she just said, Marom writes.

If she’s out walking and has a thought she wants to remember but no notebook, she won’t remember when she gets home.

‘There’s a lot of lethargy with my illness. I’m fatigued’, she laments. And the medicines she was taking gave her brain fog, adding: ‘My creative energy went into survival and into furnishing the interior of the house [in British Columbia]‘.

While “currently in intensive care undergoing tests,” fortunately, the New York Times reported early this morning that “Mitchell is and is awake and in good spirits.”

Kathy Shaidle spots the comment of the day regarding her treatment: