“It was Yoko Ono who asked me to have a relationship with John Lennon,” says May Pang in The Lost Weekend: a Love Storya documentary that arrives in American cinemas on April 13, fifty years later. That period between 1973 and 1975, which lasted 18 months and coincided with a separation between Lennon and Ono, has been dubbed “the lost weekend”. (title of a 1945 film by Billy Wilder about an alcoholic writer), so many think it was a phase of excesses and regrets. May, then 22, tells a different story. «In a certain sense, Yoko took advantage of me, because I was naïve. But he also gave me a gift: John and I and he fell in love».
Born in Harlem to Chinese parents, rejected by her father who didn’t want a girl, Pang had a rebellious soul and a passion for rock’n’roll. With a spirit of initiative, she got hired by Apple Records and then was chosen by Yoko as the couple’s personal assistant (she had to hunt for flies for the film “Fly” in which they fly on the naked body of a heroin addicted woman). She knows she wasn’t Lennon’s only love. “He loved Cynthia, he loved Yoko, but he loved me too.” We meet her in the Chelsea neighborhood, New York, at the presentation of an exhibition of photos of her that she took of him between New York and Los Angeles: in one of them, he had stolen her clothes to wear them. Today you are a lady with lilac-dyed hair, who patiently answers the questions of all the curious and all Beatles fans, who — for today — here in New York I’m standing in line for you.
“He came to my office. I had been working for them for three years. And she began: “John and I don’t get along.” Everyone who worked with them knew about it, but we didn’t talk about it, they were our bosses. “He’ll start seeing other people.” And then he added, “You don’t have a boyfriend, right?” I looked up and replied: “It’s not something that interests me”. But she: “I think you would be perfect”. I said no, she insisted. Then she got up and walked away. And I just stood there in tears. But I didn’t start dating him because she asked me to. It was he who courted me. Later John told me that Yoko had also gone to see him: “It’s all sorted out. You can go out with May.” But John was as shocked as I was. At first he didn’t want to.’
She claims that Yoko wanted to have an affair with another musician. In the end what did she expect?
“She once told someone she was surprised our relationship lasted so long, she thought it would be over in two weeks.”
Why did you decide to return to this story today?
“Over the years people have started rewriting my story, despite my book, Loving Johnfrom 1983. My friend Eve Brandstein, one of the directors with Richard Kaufman and Stuart Samuels, had asked me to make a documentary 25 years ago, but I said no. Six years ago we talked about it again: I was ready».
“I’m not saying he didn’t use it, but not constantly. Everyone says: he was always drunk and it’s not true. I only drank Coca-Cola. And we often forget that that was John’s most productive period after the Beatles: he was happy, he reunited with his “brothers”, collaborated with Elton John, Bowie, Harry Nilsson, wrote continuously (these were the years of Mind Games, Walls and Bridgeswith singles Whatever Gets You Through the Night, Rock’n’Roll, ndr).
She says Yoko avoided passing her son Julian’s phone calls to John.
“I was very worried about Julian. I know what it feels like, because my father didn’t want me. I also helped Julian’s mother, Cynthia, recover a dialogue with John.’
Eventually, however, he returned to Yoko. Did the control and security of a mother figure matter?
“Perhaps. He didn’t see it that way, but others could sense it. She was 17 years older than me. John said the reason was that he was afraid they would refuse him a green card to stay in the United States: Yoko had told him so. For me it was a shock: we were about to buy a house together».
The last time they spoke, Pang said to Yoko, “Congratulations, you got John back, you should be happy.”. She replied, “Happy? I don’t think I ever will be.” Pang married Tony Visconti, one of rock music’s foremost producers. «An Italian – he says -. We had a production company and two children that I’m proud of.”