People will find out’: May Pang on her time with John Lennon in a new interview with The Guardian

By editorial board on April 5, 2023

Pang worked for the couple on a number of projects. The couple later moved back to New York City. Lennon and Ono reunited in 1975, although he and Pang remained close up until his death.

You can read the interview on The Guardian Here

May Pang Aims to Set Record Straight About John Lennon Affair in ‘The Lost Weekend,’ Premiering at Tribeca
“John was drinking, but that was overblown in retrospect,” says Pang, who'd like to remind the world that the ex-Beatle had a major career renaissance during their time together in the mid-'70s.

In the summer of 1973, John Lennon and Yoko Ono decided to put their relationship on hiatus. In order to - among other things - prevent her husband from completely coming out of his orbit, Yoko convinced her personal secretary, May Pang, to become the companion of the former Beatle.

At the Tribeca Film Festival,held in New York between the next 8 and 19 June, a documentary will be presented - entitled "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story" - focusing on the relationship between Lennon and Pang: made with "an incredible quantity of archival material, rare home recordings and manuscripts "by the artist himself, the work - the introductory notes promise - leads" on a deeply emotional journey through the 18 months that would have shaped his life and invigorated one of the greatest figures of History of music".

May Pang tells: Inside John Lennon's 'Lost Weekend' COLIN BERTRAM /john-lennon-lost-weekend

Pang,71, gained fame in the early 1970s as John Lennon's girlfriend. They lived together in Los Angeles and New York from 1973 to early 1975, before the ex-Beatle reunited with wife Yoko Ono.
"Loving John," and "Instamatic Karma," a 140-page collection of private photos she took during her time with Lennon.
Beginning the summer of 1973 and lasting through early 1975, Lennon’s lost weekend marks the period of separation between himself and Ono. Four years into their marriage the cracks were beginning to show and Lennon moved out, embarking on an affair with the couple’s assistant May Pang. Lennon and Pang split their time between Pang’s New York City apartment and a house they rented in Los Angeles.
In 1971, Lennon and Yoko Ono hired Pang as their personal assistant. In 1973, she moved into The Dakota in New York City, where the couple lived.
One morning, Pang said, Ono came into her office and told her that she and Lennon were "not getting along." Ono told Pang he would start seeing someone new and suggested the two get together, she said.
"She looks at me and says, 'I know he likes you," Pang recalls. "I'm going, 'What? I'm not interested in him.'"
Pang has always maintained the relationship happened with Ono’s blessing. “The affair was not something that was hurtful to me,” Ono told The Telegraph in 2012. “I needed a rest. I needed space. May Pang was a very intelligent, attractive woman and extremely efficient. I thought they’d be OK.”
Lennon drank alcohol and did drugs in excess

Harry Nilsson and John Lennon
Away from Ono, Lennon began drinking heavily and abusing drugs. In L.A., he teamed with producer Phil Spector to record an album of rock standards that had inspired him. “The guys were all drinking — and John was being one of the guys,” Pang said to Uncut in 2009. “Everyone was as blitzed as he. One of the bass players got into a car wreck. We got kicked out of A&M [studios] when someone threw a bottle of liquor down the console.”

A more famous ejection happened when Lennon and his drinking buddy, singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, were tossed out of the Troubadour rock club in West Hollywood in March 1974 for heckling the Smothers Brothers.

“I got drunk and shouted,” Lennon reportedly recalled of the incident. “It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders — that’s brandy and milk, folks. I was with Harry Nilsson, who didn’t get as much [press] coverage as me, the bum. He encouraged me. I usually have someone there who says, ‘OK, Lennon. Shut up.’”
He reunited with Paul McCartney for a jam session

Pang was present during a jam session on March 28, 1974, that would be the last time Lennon would record with McCartney. Stevie Wonder was there. So was Lennon's drinking buddy, Harry Nilsson.
Starr had left for the night, Pang recalled, and McCartney sat in on drums and sang harmony while Lennon played guitar and sang lead.

John Lennon Lost Weekend
"It really warmed my heart to see that," she said. "The two talking — nothing about business, just as friends."
Despite the substance abuse, the period was a productive time in regards to music. Lennon completed three albums, Mind Games,

Walls and Bridges and Rock ‘n’ Roll, as well as producing LP’s for Nilsson and former bandmate Ringo Starr. Surprisingly, the single “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” from Walls and Bridges, was Lennon’s first solo number one hit in the U.S., featuring Elton John on piano and backing vocals.
But it was an impromptu jam session on March 28, 1974, that ignited rumors of a possible Beatles comeback.

Lennon was at Burbank Studios producing a single for Nilsson when McCartney and his wife Linda unexpectedly stopped by. “I jammed with Paul,” Lennon revealed in a later interview. “I did actually play with Paul. We did a lot of stuff in L.A., though there were 50 other people playing, all just watching me and Paul.”

The session is the only known instance of Lennon and McCartney playing together between the breakup of The Beatles in 1970 and Lennon’s murder in 1980. The tape of the session was released on the bootleg A Toot and a Snore in ‘74 but produced nothing musically substantial.
A subsequent reunion between the two was reportedly being discussed, with Lennon planning to meet McCartney in New Orleans where the latter, along with his band Wings, would be recording the album Venus and Mars in early 1975. In her memoir, Pang wrote that Lennon was open to the notion.

“He kept bringing up the trip, and each time he mentioned it he grew more enthusiastic,” she says in
Pang would remain in contact with Lennon until his death. She married record producer Tony Visconti in 1989 and the couple had two children. They divorced in 2000. In a 2015 interview, Pang referred to her split with Lennon, the end of the “lost weekend,” as a “gray zone.”

She recalled that at that time, early 1975, the couple were considering buying a home in the Hamptons, and then Lennon returned to Ono. Pang said remained romantically involved with Lennon for several years after their split and the last time she saw him was the winter of 1978-1979.

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People will find out’: May Pang on her time with John Lennon in a new interview with The Guardian

Pang worked for the couple on a number of projects. The couple later moved back to New York City. Lennon and Ono reunited in 1975, although he and Pang remained close up until his death.

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