May Pang on her 18-month love affair with John Lennon: ‘Yoko has erased me’
The last time John Lennon’s one-time lover May Pang was visited by his ghost, it was while she was watching an episode of Law & Order. “But when you talk about stuff like this, people think you’re imagining it or are a little crazy,” the 73-year-old says. “So I don’t ever talk about it.”
For someone so savvy, Pang is astonishingly innocent. Or maybe it’s the other way round. She grew up loving The Beatles and met Lennon in 1970, when she was 22 (he was 10 years older). A receptionist for Allen Klein, she was – a year later – working as a personal assistant for both Lennon and his avant-garde artist wife Yoko Ono while they lived at New York’s Dakota Building. Lennon and Ono were having problems in their marriage; it’s a matter of record that Ono decided Pang would be a useful distraction. Having encouraged Lennon to make a move on Pang, she ordered Pang to comply. Pang had her doubts, but was too junior (and, once Lennon kissed her, dazzled) to demur.
A new documentary on the pair’s relationship – titled The Lost Weekend: A Love Story – explores what happened next. Pang and Lennon lived together in LA and New York. They spent time with Lennon’s young son, Julian, who he had with his first wife, Cynthia Powell, and who’d been kept at arm’s length by Ono. They also hung out with Paul, George and Ringo and did ordinary boyfriend and girlfriend stuff (if being taught to play guitar by a musical legend counts as ordinary).
Over Zoom from her home in New York, Pang has the air of someone determined to age disgracefully: she’s wearing purple lipstick, has purple streaks in her grey hair and is given to naughty chuckles. She holds up her hands. “I don’t have the fingers for it, but John’s teaching me how to play ‘Ain’t that a shame’,” she says. “He said, ‘This is what my mum taught me, on the banjo.’ And I’m like, ‘Is this good? Cos it doesn’t sound good!’”
For both she and Lennon it was a genuinely creative period. He wrote a song about Pang, called “Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox)” on the album Walls and Bridges (which contains Lennon’s only solo No 1 US single, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night”). Pang helped produce the album and also provided backing vocals on the track “#9 Dream”. While they were in LA, Lennon drank like a fish, was frequently moody and could be violent. But, according to Pang, they had a blast on the whole.
Source: Charlotte O'Sullivan/independent.co.uk
