Fifty years after what John Lennon dubbed his “Lost Weekend,” his affair with lover May Pang continues to break new grounds. Now 73, Pang is touring the country with a photo exhibition that offers an intimate glimpse into her time with the Beatles icon.
“I’m the closest they’re going to get to John Lennon,” Pang said during a recent gallery showing in Alexandria.
“What gives me pleasure is giving people the stories. And I’m able to give the stories because I was the one who was there.”
The affair began in 1973 when Pang, then a 22-year-old assistant to John and Yoko Ono, found herself in an unusual position.
According to Pang, Ono orchestrated the relationship, telling her, “John and I have not been getting along. He is going to start going out with other people. I think you will be good for him.”
Their relationship blossomed in Los Angeles, where Lennon had moved with Pang in September 1973.
“We fell in love with each other,” Pang recalled of their time together. However, Ono maintained a constant presence. “She’d call 20 times a day,” Pang said. “Sometimes it would be at 4 a.m. And the calls were over nothing.”
The period, far from being just the drug and alcohol-fueled spree often portrayed, was notably productive for Lennon, Pang claimed. “It was a happy time, it was a creative time,” Pang told gallery visitors, pointing to three albums Lennon completed during their time together.
The relationship ended abruptly when Lennon returned to Ono.
“John told me, ‘Yoko is allowing me to come back,'” Pang said. “I asked whose idea it was. He said ‘Nobody’s.’ That was the end. It hit me hard.”
However, according to Pang, their connection didn’t end there. She maintains they remained in contact, with their last conversation occurring just six months before Lennon’s death in December 1980.
Today, Pang continues to preserve memories of their time together.
“I have no closure with him,” Pang reflected. “How can I have closure when he says, ‘I have to find a way for us to be together’ and then he’s killed?”
Today in Rock History
October 24, 1950
May Pang was born in NYC, famously assisted John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and later had an 18-month relationship with Lennon during his "lost weekend" in 1973. pic.twitter.com/DYeloBB8O2— Rock History Live! (@KTrain939913) October 24, 2024