Bizarre Beatles history: Yoko Ono asked me to sleep with John Lennon. But then we fell in love – and that’s when she wanted him back! May Pang tells her story about her 18 month romance with the rock singer
Young, hip and working for a New York record company, she was already living the dream. But when May Pang was asked to become personal assistant to John Lennon and his second wife Yoko, the pretty 21-year-old couldn’t believe her luck.
It was 1971. May, a lifelong Beatles fan, threw herself into her new role, diligently managing the couple’s office and revelling in more interesting assignments, such as supervising wardrobe for the couple’s music video Imagine.
She also found herself in bizarre situations, usually at the behest of the eccentric Yoko — like the time she had to capture hundreds of live flies for one of the Japanese-born activist’s avant-garde films, or when she sat inside a black sack on a U.S. chat show as a stunt while Lennon and Yoko spoke earnestly about racism beside her.
Rather more disturbing requests came her way, too. Yoko showed her assistant sketches she’d made of a dress that would expose the breasts and vagina and told the startled May that she would be expected to model it. Thankfully for May, that moment never came to pass.
But such inappropriateness didn’t end there. Three years after she first met the couple, the marriage hit a rough patch after Lennon strayed. Yoko’s extraordinary solution to her husband’s philandering was this: the malleable May should be her husband’s new girlfriend. Lennon was ten years older than May. Yoko, meanwhile, was 17 years her senior.
When May Pang was asked to become personal assistant to John Lennon and his second wife Yoko, the pretty 21-year-old couldn’t believe her luck
John Lennon and May Pang in New York City on October 17, 1974
To modern ears, as May admits today in an exclusive interview with the Mail, it sounds like horrifying sexual manipulation of a young female employee. ‘Yoko came into my office one day and said, since I didn’t have a boyfriend, I’d be the perfect person for John,’ she recalls. ‘There had never been any flirting between me and John, and I was taken aback. But she said: ‘You’ll be nice to him. You don’t want him to go out with anybody who isn’t nice, do you?’
‘When she walked out I sat there, tearing up, because I didn’t understand what was happening. I loved my job and didn’t want to lose it.’
An empowered young woman today would, perhaps, have been more likely to tell Yoko to push off. Or call in lawyers. Back in the early 1970s, however, Yoko’s badgering worked.
Then, as May puts it, ‘John charmed the pants off me’, after Lennon began to pursue his assistant with his wife’s blessing and she and the former Beatle became lovers.
But rather than it being the short fling Yoko envisaged, with her assistant reporting back to her, May says she and Lennon developed a genuine, loving relationship. Ultimately, Lennon was to return to Yoko and famously described the 18 months spent with May as his ‘Lost Weekend’, a reference to a 1945 Billy Wilder film about alcoholics.
Then, in 1980, five years after the former Beatle had second son Sean with Yoko, Lennon was murdered by a crazed fan.
His time with May has been dismissed as a period of excess and debauchery, a lost interlude in his artistic legacy, with May painted as nothing more than a distracting dolly bird.
John Lennon with Yoko Ono and May Pang (left)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono making peace signs
John Lennon poses for a photo with his wife Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon in 1977 in New York City
Fifty years later, however, May is telling her side of the story in a TV documentary called The Lost Weekend; A Love Story, released this month. Told by May herself, its revelations up-end the common perception of the affair.
‘Over the years I got fed up with people thinking they know my story. There have been so many exaggerations and embellishments . . . I wanted to set the record straight,’ she says.
It’s clear the events of that time remain fresh in her mind as we talk in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she is touring with an exhibition of photos she took of Lennon during their romance. She tells me of her initial doubts about their affair — before admitting ‘desire’ just overtook her.
It also becomes apparent that May doesn’t just think she was worryingly manipulated by Yoko, but that Lennon was equally dominated and coerced along with her.
Yet still, she and Lennon shared a happy love affair. Pictures of the couple show May as a waifish youngster, constantly at his side. Now 73, she sports a lavender-dyed hairstyle. With her big smile and vivacious manner, one can see why May would have been refreshingly different to dour Yoko.
The New York-born daughter of a Chinese laundry owner, May had landed a job at the Beatles’ label Apple Records in 1969, aged 19. She was assigned to Lennon and Yoko on one of their visits to the U.S. The Beatles disbanded a year later. Lennon then left Britain in 1971 to begin a new life in New York, encouraged by Yoko.
The couple took over a floor of the elegant St. Regis Hotel as office and residence, and invited May to work for them exclusively.
‘I got on very well with John, who was professional and easy-going,’ recalls May, ‘but Yoko was tough and wanted things done right away. I was staying at the St. Regis and she came into my bedroom at 2am in her nightgown to wake me up and make me write down things she wanted me to do first thing in the morning . . . it was something to do with lyrics and bongos for a Jerry Lewis telethon.
‘She had a huge ego. Yoko would tell people she was the songwriter in the family and used to say people didn’t give her enough credit — that they would ignore her and go to John, and that infuriated her. She felt she was John’s equal; that she was as talented as he was.’
Why on earth, I ask, did May go along with her boss’s proposition that she sleep with her husband?
John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono hold a bed-in for peace in room 902, the presidential suite at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam, on March 25, 1969
Yoko Ono at Heathrow Airport wearing a straw hat
May grimaces and says she should have told Yoko to ‘take a running leap’.
‘I was a naive young kid and I didn’t know who to talk to. I wasn’t sure if she was making a fool of me. Why would John Lennon, who could go out with any woman in the world, even be remotely interested in me? I hoped it was just one of Yoko’s crazy things she’d forget about. It kept me awake at night. I was thinking: ‘Why am I being put in this situation?’
May only acquiesced when it became clear Lennon was attracted to her after he kissed her in a lift on their way to a studio. ‘Desire overcame the guilt and awkwardness,’ she shrugs.
When they had sex for the first time — in her apartment several days after the first kiss — the by now 22-year-old May, confused and emotional, burst into tears. I was saying, ‘Where are we?’ and ‘Why are you doing this?’ John said he didn’t know any more than I did, but that we should just go with it.
‘The next day he wrote a song for me [Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird Of Paradox)]. I was taken aback that I’d affected him so much he would go home and write a song. I also felt he was trapped in this situation as well.’
May would sleep with Lennon at her apartment then turn up to work for Yoko every day at The Dakota Apartments, where the couple had moved. ‘Yoko would know the evenings that John slept with me, but didn’t want details. She wasn’t concerned. She didn’t treat me differently,’ says May. Before long, the extraordinary situation imploded. Lennon and May decided to go to Los Angeles on impulse without telling Yoko, who promptly cut off May’s paycheck — but still called her and her husband multiple times a day to hear of their escapades.
May, who didn’t drink or take drugs, was there on the wild nights when Lennon partied a little too hard with fellow musicians Keith Moon, Alice Cooper and others.
On one occasion, the couple had lunch with friends, including the teen pop star David Cassidy.
May inadvertently ordered the same dish as Cassidy and Lennon drunkenly accused her of having a crush on him.
‘It was jealousy. And Yoko being Yoko and calling John a million times a day said: ‘Of course she wants to be with David rather than you,’ when John told her about it.
‘John got in a tizzy . . . it was Yoko trying to split us up, absolutely,’ recalls May.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono at Tittenhurst Park, their residence between 11/08/69 and 30/08/71, in Sunningdale, near Ascot in Berkshire
But the ‘Lost Weekend’ was also a productive time for Lennon. Yoko is often credited as the inspiration for his late experimental phase, but the documentary presents proof that May, too, galvanised his music. During his time with May he completed three albums — Mind Games, Walls And Bridges and Rock ‘n’ Roll — recorded with David Bowie, Elton John and Mick Jagger, and also produced songs for Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson.
‘John wasn’t a good drunk, but he wasn’t going out every night,’ argues May, who says tales of his carousing were overhyped. ‘John put out more solo albums and did more work during those 18 months than he did at any other time of his career, post-Beatles. You can’t do that if you’re constantly drunk or high. Fans think of the Lost Weekend as one of the worst periods of John’s life but, for most of it, he was happy and calm.
‘One of the things I’m most proud of is we had Julian over from England constantly. [Lennon’s first son, by his ex-wife Cynthia, who had not seen his father for three years and whose calls May had sometimes been instructed by Yoko not to be put through]. We got kittens — John named them Major and Minor. He ate well and slept well and saw a lot of his friends. I had an open-door policy . . . Paul and Linda [McCartney] came over, and Mick [Jagger] — we’d order beef curry.’
On Sundays, May would cook a full English breakfast of beans, bacon, potatoes and eggs. ‘One day he came in with black pudding and I couldn’t handle it,’ May laughs.
She called Cynthia, Lennon’s first wife who May was friendly with, for advice. ‘She said: ‘Just fry it up.’ So I did, and John was thrilled.’ It sounds idyllic but Lennon, on one drunken occasion, was rough with his girlfriend. ‘He’d been drinking and wanted to go out and drink some more with the boys, and I said I didn’t think it was a good idea. He grabbed the back of my hair and pushed me against the wall. People made out I was punched, but that did not happen. I wasn’t hurt at all. The next day, he apologised profusely.’
May was devastated when John announced in 1974 that he was going back to Yoko. She says they had been planning to buy a house in Montauk, a coastal town outside New York, and had hoped, after McCartney had reconciled with his estranged best friend, that the duo might even work together again.
But unbeknown to May, Yoko had asked McCartney to tell Lennon that she was willing to take him back. ‘[John] told me he was breaking up with me and he came to the flat to pick some things up.
‘He said he was moving back to The Dakota for immigration purposes [Lennon had been fighting with the authorities to stay in the U.S.] but that he’d be back.
Yoko Ono at the Costume Institute Gala Benefit, Celebrating ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on May 2, 2011
‘Yoko was calling frantically and telling John: ‘You have to come today.’ I called her after John left and said she must be happy. Yoko said: ‘Oh, I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy,’ then said she had to get off the phone to prepare for John’s arrival.’
Whenever May called The Dakota to speak to John, Yoko would answer and say he was asleep or in a therapy session to help him stop smoking. ‘She wasn’t going to give John the phone and there was no way I could get through to him,’ May recalls. ‘I felt awful. I knew in my heart what she was doing.’
Though she again briefly worked for the couple, May ultimately didn’t return to the music industry: ‘I feel I was blacklisted because record executives thought if they took me on, it might offend John and Yoko.’
She says she and Lennon continued their relationship, meeting occasionally and being intimate.
Then on December 8, 1980, Lennon was shot as he and Yoko returned to their apartment. Rushed to hospital, he was pronounced dead on arrival.
‘I heard the news on a friend’s radio and thought it must be a joke,’ says May. ‘I started to freak out and wanted to go home. When I got back the phone was ringing. It was Joan, Ringo’s secretary.
‘She said: ‘May, give me the number of the hospital,’ and I said: ‘It’s too late, he’s dead.’ She shrieked and said: ‘What’s wrong with your bloody country?’ Then she said: ‘I’ve got to get off the phone and call everybody.’
May says she then called David Bowie’s assistant, Coco. ‘I said: ‘Please tell David that John just got shot and he died.’ She said David was out on a date, but she’d find him. She said she didn’t want me to be alone and to come down to David’s place downtown. After I got there, David came in. He was in tears. The three of us watched the news all night and at daylight, I went home. There was a quiet in New York that I’d never experienced before.’
May went on to marry record producer Tony Visconti, who worked with McCartney and Bowie. The couple had two children, Sebastian and Lara, before divorcing in 2000.
Today, May is single. ‘All the men I’ve gone out with ask one question: ‘What was John like?’ she sighs. Then she adds: ‘John was the first love of my life. Hard to top. That’s definite.’
May had a chance encounter with Yoko at a hotel in Iceland in 2006 in a brief, but civil, greeting.
Today, May says she isn’t bitter about what happened to her and Lennon. ‘I try to be positive and now I see it as a gift. I’m happy with how I handled it. It’s Yoko who has to live with herself and what she did.’
n The Lost Weekend: A Love Story will premiere on the Icon Film Channel from November 20 and is available on Blu-ray, DVD and digital from December 18.
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