By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
May Pang’s love affair with John Lennon was the stuff of tabloid headlines, not to say ongoing chatter on social media. For her, all that is the stuff of myths.
Through her work, the documentary film “Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” memoirs and her photography, she’s tried to reclaim that story, and set the misconceptions straight. That period of Lennon’s life is referred to as “The Lost Weekend,” but that “weekend lasted years.”
Last week, River House Arts in Toledo hosted “Lost Weekend – The Photography of May Pang,” a two-day pop-up show of her intimate photos of Lennon, including his fellow Beatles. “I want John to be represented the right way,” Pang said. “There’s nothing here I would be ashamed of.”
The show offered local patrons the opportunity to purchase these photos as well as chat with the photographer.
Pang said that her friend Scott Segelbaum, who curates rock-themed art shows, had been encouraging her to exhibit the photos. “It took six years to get together,” she said. “So, he’s been after me all that time. Finally, it all came together earlier this year.”
She was busy, Pang said, finishing the documentary which made its premiere in April.
The photos come mostly from 1974 when she was Lennon’s lover. They show an intimate view of the rock star. We see him with his friends and with strangers. When Lennon visited Disneyland no one recognized him, she said. “He loved that.”
She captures Lennon sailing on Long Island Sound on a friend’s boat, and swimming.
She captures Lennon in tender moments with his son Julian. One of those photos was used on the cover of the younger Lennon latest album “Jude.”
Many viewers, Pang said, say that they had never seen Lennon’s smile.
They serve as a tonic for the image of Lennon at this time when as being out of control, drunk or addicted to heroin. That’s just one myth, Pang refuted. “I wasn’t into that stuff.” She helped steer him clear. She didn’t want him to be the clown.
Pang wanted to straighten out the story of how she and Lennon got together.
She first started working for Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1970 when she was working with agent Allen Klein, who was handling legal affairs for Apple Records, as the Beatles were in the process of dissolving.
Pang recalls an office manager saying Ono and Lennon were in New York to make two short films – “Fly” and “Up Your Legs Forever” and needed people to help them.
“I was so thrilled just to get out of the office,” she said.
She continued working for the couple.
One morning in 1973, Ono approached her and confessed she and Lennon were having marital problems.
“He’s going to start going out with other people,” she told Pang. She pointed out that Pang didn’t have a boyfriend and told her she should start seeing Lennon.
Pang was taken aback. “I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee.”
She wasn’t interested and told Ono so. She loved working for them. “I saw them as a couple. Why would I want to be sitting in the middle of that nonsense?”
Ono was insistent, as was Pang.
“You should,” Ono said and walked out of the room. This was typical of the Japanese artist. “What she wanted, she was trying to get,” Pang said.
“Here’s the myth and here’s the correction,” she continued. “It was not until John himself started chasing after me” that the affair blossomed, and even then, it took time.
Once after a day of work, they were in an elevator, and he kissed her. She responded: Why did you do that? She told him to stay on the other side of the elevator. Lennon told her he’d been wanting to kiss her all day. That had not been on her mind.
She was 22 and he was 32. But he was younger than his years, Pang said. As a Beatle he was “sequestered.” He wasn’t like a regular guy who was out and about. That stunted his emotional growth.”
Lennon didn’t force himself on her, and he was unaware, he later told Pang, that Ono wanted her to hook up with him.
They had bonded over their similar tastes. The first child born in America to a Chinese family, Pang grew up watching Fred Astaire movies and “American Bandstand.” They had similar tastes and their friendship “just jelled.”
Pang was curious about why Lennon was interested in her. So, they did start dating and lived together for 18 months.
This was right after the release of “Mind Games.”
That period included frequent ventures to California where Lennon worked with his former Beatle mate Ringo Starr and singer songwriter Harry Nilsson who collaboratd with him on “Walls and Bridges. There was also a legendary riotous jam, the last time Lennon and Paul McCartney played music together. Pang even joined in on tambourine. The next morning Pang snapped a picture of Lennon and McCartney – the last time the erstwhile songwriting team was photographed together.
Pang has a photo of Lennon pursuing the paperwork, considering whether to sign. And she has an image of him signing – his was the last name on the paperwork. McCartney’s was first, followed by George Harrison with Ringo’s signature on the right wedged in below Harrison’s bold signature.
But Lennon and Pang didn’t live in California, she said. They did rent a place in Santa Monica where Starr, Keith Moon, and Nilsson gathered and partied.
The home has been built by Louis B, Myer. Peter Lawford, an actor, brother-in-law to the Kennedys, and part of The Ratpack, had lived there. Lennon loved to imagine Marilyn Monroe in the rooms.
But they stayed rooted in New York City, Pang said. They would go west to work on projects and party, but always returned east. She has photos of Lennon walking on the path of music executive Morris Levy’s farm north of the city.
They were on the brink of buying a house in the Hamptons. They were planning to travel to New Orleans to see McCartney and his wife, Linda. Now Ono wanted her husband back. During the time they lived together she was a constant presence in their lives calling 10-15 times a day.
Ono knew Lennon wanted to quit smoking because it was interfering with his singing, and she told him she’d found a method that got her to quit. He was surprised the pack-a-day smoker had managed to quit. You have to come over right away, she said.
Lennon told Pang they’d go out when he came back. But she had an intuition that something was up.
He didn’t return.
The myth, she said, is that Ono called Lennon to come back, and he simply did. “That’s the fairy tale version,” Pang said.
She admitted it was emotionally hard on her, and some people said she should fight to get him back. “If he wanted to come back, he could call,” she said. “I didn’t want to force him. I didn’t want to be that person.”
They did stay in touch. The last time she talked with him was Labor Day 1980. He called out of the blue. He was in Cape Town, South Africa, for one of Ono’s East-meets-West projects. He wanted to find a time when they could get together. That would be difficult.
That was the last time Pang and Lennon talked. On Dec. 8 of that year John Lennon was murdered outside his New York apartment.
“I knew,” Pang said, “I still had his heart.”
