My love for 'lost' Lennon
Apr 4 2005
How the woman Yoko asked to be a companion to John ended up having an affair with him.
Peter Grant
Liverpool Echo
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0...name_page.html
JOHN Lennon was close to only a few women in his lifetime. There was his beloved mum Julia, his two sisters Julia and Jacqueline, Aunt Mimi, Cynthia, Yoko ... and someone called 'me'.
May Pang is the 'me'. She is very clear about that fact, as she explains in a soft trans-Atlantic accent.
"I know," she says, "because I was there."
May first met John and Yoko Ono while working in music boss Alan Klein's office in New York in 1970.
Her first request from John and Yoko was to buy a prop for one of their first avant garde films - flies. They were to be used in the production simply entitled Fly.
"A Beatle wanting flies ..." May still laughs at the irony.
It was a bizarre introduction to John and Yoko's world, but events would soon turn more complicated. Working for one of the world's most famous couples shaped May Pang's life leding to an 18 month love affair with John, which gave John some unwelcome publicity.
Today, however, sitting in Liverpool's Hope Street Hotel - where Yoko Ono recently stayed in a suite on the floor above - May is delighted to be back in John's home town.
She was very touched to be given a small statue of John by the tourist information office on her arrival. The Beatles Story welcomed her like an old friend and visiting John Lennon Airport was another moving moment for the late Beatles' onetime girlfriend.
May has been to Liverpool before for Beatles conventions - even introducing the bands in some cases.
"I feel at home here," she says, looking out at the view of Liverpool.
It is a view her former lover John knew so well, taking in the Liverpool Art College, as well as local pubs such as Ye Cracke, and the music venues where he played his heart out before going to Hamburg and tightening up a skiffle band who, in his own words, were going to "make it very very big".
And John's love for the city wasn't the only thing that rubbed off on May - she has also picked up a nice line in Scouse.
May, 55, has been in Liverpool searching for a suitable venue for a planned photographic exhibition.
She has with her a contact sheet of photographs of John Lennon, a reflection of their time spent together. There are about 100 of them, but she is not showing them just yet.
"I feel like I am getting air- brushed out of the whole Lennon story," she says.
"In fact, there is a musical show in progress in New York about John and I saw the synopsis - there is not one reference to me at all - I'm airbrushed out again."
When the then New York-based John turned 33, Yoko sent him away from the Dakota Building in June 1973 with her then PA, May.
She was ordered to "look after him as his companion", as Yoko felt she and John "needed a break". May was a 23-year-old native New Yorker from the Spanish Harlem district. He was 10 years older, insecure and lost.
It turned into an affair that became known as the infamous "Lost Weekend", named after a film about a serial drinker. When John was photographed in bars with Harry Nilsson, he seemed to be having a hellraising time of it, drinking brandy Alexanders and, according to the papparazi, getting wasted.
May frowns when she recalls the period: "That lost weekend was a misleading quote used by John. He said he had to say something to the press and that summed
up the evenings he had enjoying himself after working hard. That was his most productive period in which he wrote his first number one, Whatever Gets You Through The Night, which was inspired by a certain Reverend he heard on the TV saying that very line.
"John was working hard at that time," says May.
"I was there with him organising and co-ordinating music projects such as his Walls and Bridges and Rock 'n' Roll albums. It is an expensive business and studio time has to be used by the hour.
"You can't do that amount of work if you are high on drink and drugs.
"He was very disciplined in the studio and would tell off anyone who turned up even 10 minutes late."
May, who sips a cola as we chat, says she herself was never one for the excessive life, but will sometimes have just one glass of wine.
When John eventually returned to Yoko in 1975, after their separation, May resettled in the Big Apple from Los Angeles.
She later became a professional manager of United Artists music business and worked on albums by Bob Marley and Robert Palmer.
"I would still see him. He would 'sneak out' from the Dakota and he would come to my apartment on the other side of town, my place on the East River. We would talk about this and that."
May has many fond memories - many of them recalled in her 1983 biography Loving John - the Untold Story, which is now out of print. She stands by the book but says she is hurt by accounts written - and still being written - by people who weren't there.
"I am either ignored or brushed out," she says.
"Many people write a load of rubbish. For example Cynthia - whom I am good friends with - and I refuse to read the book The Love You Make by Peter Brown. He wanted to interview me but I thought: 'No, why should I?' If anyone is going to tell my story, it will be me'.
"Now, in the age of the internet, Beatle and Lennon fans will be able to read this ECHO article right across the world. I am putting on record a time of my life."
She says she wasn't attracted to John when Yoko suggested that the two go off together. In fact, as a child, she was a Ringo Starr fan.
Says May: "I remember Yoko saying: 'May, can I have a word? You don't have a boyfriend, do you?'
"Then I am in a lift with John Lennon and this man - who is, after all, my boss - leans over and kisses me and I say 'hey, stand back'."
But their relationship grew and they became lovers.
"I didn't know what was going on at all. The Dakota had become a strange place. You could go days without seeing anyone. I could often hear the arguments."
Does May think that Yoko regretted pairing them together? Or was Yoko playing chess with them?
"I guess that's one way of looking at it. There are no two ways around it. I wouldn't have missed the experience for the world. I am proud of my work on the Mind Games album.
"When I was with him sharing his life we would have Mick Jagger or David Bowie dropping by. One day the buzzer went and it was Paul and Linda.
"John said: 'May, what do I do?' "I said: 'Let them in.' "But we had a lot of fun during that so called 'Lost Weekend' with people like Ringo, Keith Moon and Paul who dropped in the studio to play drums on a session. You don't forget things like that."
She says that John did talk about a possible Beatles reunion: "He would talk about it with Harry Nilsson. But the main thing he talked about was that he did want to write with Paul again. He talked about it a lot."
May says he did often refer to Liverpool: "He liked rivers and would talk about The Mersey. He wanted Aunt Mimi to come and stay and wanted me to fix it. It never happened, but I was like a little 'miss fixit' for him."
After the Lennon affair, May went on to marry producer Tony Visconti with whom she had two children before they split.
She also flirted with film and television, appearing in the movies Heartburn and Fatal Attraction. Today the self-termed "single mom" has her own brand of fashion jewellery called the May Pang Feng Shui Jewelry Collection and is working on a radio show called May Pang Remembers.
And this isn't the only Liverpool trip she will make this year: May is now planning a return to the city sometime in August. She hopes to attend the Beatles convention and she is also planning a photographic exhibition of her own photos and memories of John Lennon.
May says she still feels John's presence around her. So what does she think he would be doing now had he not been assassinated on that fateful night in 1980?
"When he was in the apartment he would have this huge yellow pad of paper and a pen and he would always have it around. He was so funny always jotting things down.
"I think he would have loved to have had a studio at home - one where he didn't have to leave the building but where he could go and make music.
am sure he would be doing that. I can still see that pad and his very clever ideas on paper.
"And, you know, I can see him walking in the park and signing autographs. He loved doing that for fans and you should have seen the reaction on their faces when it said: 'With Love from John'"
* FOR more information on May Pang and her jewellery log on to the website
www.maypang.com/
My love for 'lost' Lennon
-Mr. Tatman
Anabel Lennon
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