May Pang tells the real story behind John Lennon's 'lost weekend' and working for Yoko Ono

May Pang was working on the sessions for John Lennon’s “Mind Games” album in mid-1973 when Yoko Ono approached the 22-year-old they’d hired as their personal assistant to suggest that Pang become the former Beatle's lover, even offering to set it up.

As Pang recalls the conversation, Ono told her she and Lennon planned to separate and she felt Pang would be a suitable companion, someone she could trust to treat her husband well.

“When Yoko comes to ask me that,” Pang says, “I'm looking at her like, 'What?! Are you crazy?!’ I said I wasn't interested.”

Ono persisted.

“And you’re thinking, 'Why is she asking me?’” Pang says. “He could go out with anybody else. It’s not something I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about work. I was much happier with that.”

How John Lennon's relationship with May Pang started

Lennon wasn’t into the idea either, Pang says. Not at first.

“But Yoko was pushing so hard that he thought, 'Let me see if she wants to go out with me,’” Pang says.

“That's basically what it came down to. I'm just looking at him, like, 'What are you doing?' Not realizing what was happening. I didn't want to know.”

It took a while to get over the awkwardness of having Ono be the one to set the wheels of their relationship in motion.

“We would just work and he would bring me coffee,” she recalls. “He was just being a gentleman. So it was more a buildup.

"And remember, I had been working for them for three years. I basically knew him. So the awkwardness was just that we had to think about that for a second. I said I wasn't interested. He said, 'I don't know where we're going, but here I am.'”

It wasn’t long before he’d charmed his way into her life. In October 1973, when Lennon left New York to hang out in Los Angeles promoting “Mind Games,” Pang was by his side.

“How many people wouldn't have wanted to go out with John Lennon?” she says.

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John Lennon and May Pang's 'lost weekend' lasted 18 months

Their relationship lasted more than 18 months.

That stretch of Lennon’s life has taken on a mythic stature through the years as the Lost Weekend, an image largely based on two nights of debauchery with drinking buddy Harry Nilsson at the Troubadour, a Hollywood nightclub from which he and Nilsson got themselves ejected in 1974.

“People were asking John a lot about, 'Oh, you're always drunk and hanging out,’” Pang says.

“And it wasn't true. The press had picked up on a couple incidents and ran with it. But as I always say, who's gonna make the better copy? It's not Harry Nilsson. Somehow it always falls on John. And when people started asking, he goes 'Oh, it was like the lost weekend.'”

Lennon loved old movies, Pang says, and was referencing a Billy Wilder film from 1945 with Ray Milland as an alcoholic writer.

“He said to me, 'I know they're gonna look at it as our relationship,” Pang says. “He said, 'You know that isn't true, but they're gonna make up their minds and say that that's the way it was.’

"So that's how it started. But when people start to realize what he actually did during that time period, all of a sudden, the lost weekend wasn't a lost weekend.”

John Lennon made a lot of music in his time with May Pang

Those 18 months were awash in creative endeavors. Lennon made three solo albums: “Mind Games,” “Walls and Bridges” and an album of early rock ‘n’ roll and R&B songs he cherished, aptly titled “Rock 'N’ Roll” (a “very chaotic” session, as Pang recalls, with producer Phil Spector).

He also showed up on a lot of other people’s records.

In addition to contributing a classic song called "I'm the Greatest," which he also played on, to “Ringo," he produced the Nilsson album “Pussy Cats,” performed with Elton John at Madison Square Garden after topping Billboard’s Hot 100 with “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” contributed the title track to Ringo Starr’s “Goodnight Vienna” album and co-wrote and appeared on Dave Bowie’s first release to top the Hot 100, “Fame.”

“People don't understand, if somebody was drunk all the time, they wouldn't be able to work,” Pang says. “And we did a lot of work in that time period. I'm not saying he wasn't drunk at all. But what the press covered was only, like, two or three incidents out of a year and a half.”

How to see May Pang's photos of John Lennon in metro Phoenix

Pang has done her best to set the record straight.

In 1983, she wrote about their time together in a memoir titled “Loving John.” In 2008, St. Martin’s Press published a book of her photographs called “Instamatic Karma” in honor of the classic Lennon single “Instant Karma.” There's a recent documentary about their relationship called "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story.”

Now, she’s headed to Scottsdale for a limited-run exhibition of her candid photographs of life with Lennon at Anticus Gallery. It runs Friday-Sunday, Nov. 3-5, with a ticketed opening reception on Thursday, Nov. 2.

Among the highlights are the last known photograph of Lennon and Paul McCartney together as well as the only known photo of Lennon signing the contract to legally dissolve the Beatles partnership.

Pang says Lennon was excited to spend time with other musicians in the 18 months they were together, mentioning Nilsson, Starr, the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz and Alice Cooper by name.

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In addition to playing up the tales of binge-drinking shenanigans, the Lost Weekend narrative makes Lennon’s time with Pang seem like a casual affair.

“And, for some people, that's what they wanted,” Pang says.

“That's one side of the story that makes it look like it was nothing. But then, when I put this exhibit out, people look at it and say they can't believe that's how he looked at that point, that he doesn't look like what the stories have been telling, that it was a lost weekend.”

She and Lennon were in love, she says.

“The relationship was a lot different than what the press had put out or what people thought,” she says.

How May Pang found herself in John and Yoko's inner circle

Pang was working at the Beatles’ label, Apple Records, when Lennon and Ono came into her life.

“They were making two short films,” she recalls. “And the next thing you know, I got a call from the office manager. He said 'They're working on some film and they need people. And you're it. You're one of the people that's working on it with them.' So I said, 'Oh, OK.'”

She worked on the avant-garde film projects, “Up Your Legs Forever” and “Fly” in December 1970.

“Then they went away,” she says.

“And every time they needed something, I kept getting the calls. Finally, at one point, they needed something to be brought to England. And I got a call to go over to England and work with them there. And that's how it started.”

That led to a permanent position as their personal assistant in 1971, when the couple moved from London to Manhattan.

The changing nature of Pang's relationship with Yoko Ono

Asked what her relationship with Ono had been like in the leadup to the conversation about becoming Lennon’s lover, Pang says, “Nothing. It was fine. I was doing all the work. I was helping out with the publicity with whatever project she was on. There was nothing unusual.”

That relationship with Ono did begin to change as Pang got closer to her husband.

“John wanted to have more time together,” Pang says. “So we left for LA.

"The myth has been that she sent us. She didn't send us. She was out of town. We left. And that was it. She had been busy doing press for her new album she had finished. So there was a lot of other things going on in her life. She was fine.”

Encouraging John Lennon to spend time with Julian and Cynthia

It was in Los Angeles that Pang says she encouraged Lennon to spend time with Julian, his son from his marriage to Cynthia Lennon.

“I thought it was time for him to see his son,” she says.

“He hadn't seen him in over three years and it was important. He was a 10-year-old kid. He'd been trying to reach John, and he wasn't able to get through. I said to him, 'You know, it's time.'”

Pang says she and Cynthia became close, a relationship Cynthia confirmed in her book, “John.”

“It was good,” she says.

“John at first balked at the idea of Cynthia bringing Julian. He hadn't seen Cynthia since their divorce. And I said, 'Listen, you haven't been with your son. And she has all the right to bring him over.' It gave them time to get closure on their relationship. So I was happy for that.”

Writing with Paul McCartney: The Beatles reunion that could've been

Pang says Lennon had also been planning a trip to New Orleans to do some writing with McCartney, an especially timely topic given the recent of the Beatles' haunting final single, "Now and Then.".

“This was after a visit by Paul and Linda at our place,” she says.

“They were constant visitors at our place in New York. Paul told us they were going to New Orleans. A few days later, John said, ‘I got to ask you. What do you think if I wrote with Paul again?' I said, 'I think it would be a fabulous idea.' He said, 'Why?' I said, 'Well, solo, you guys are good. But when the two of you got together, it was a team that you couldn't beat. He said, 'Yeah, you're right.'”

Does she think that writing session in New Orleans really would have happened?

“Absolutely,” Pang says.

Did John Lennon leave Yoko Ono for May Pang?

Pang was shocked when Lennon went back to his wife.

“There was a lot of other things happening,” Pang says.

“John and I were about to buy a house. To say what happened, I didn't know at the time, except that he said, 'She's allowed me to come home.' She thought it was better for immigration purposes, because that was still a factor in his life, that he didn't have his green card yet.”

Pang says she and Lennon stayed in touch until his murder in December 1980.

“We kept running into each other on different occasions,” Pang says. “And also, he would call me. So my relationship with him, in one sense, never ended.”

The last time May Pang saw Yoko Ono

As for her relationship with Ono?

“I didn't have any relationship with her after,” Pang says. “But I did run into her, I think it was 20 years later, in Iceland. I just happened to be there at the same time.”

They were even staying at the same hotel.

“And it’s funny because it was in the restaurant of the hotel, and you could hear a pin drop, it was so quiet, because they were all looking at us,” Pang says.

“And I mean, I said hello to her. It wasn't as if I wouldn't be friendly. I just went over and said hello and wished her well for whatever project she was working on.”

'The Lost Weekend — The Photography of May Pang' in Scottsdale

When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3-Sunday, Nov. 5. Opening ticketed private reception with live music 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2.

Where: Anticus, 3922 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale.

Admission: Free; opening reception is $100.

Details: 480-483-5663, anticus.com

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: John Lennon's lover May Pang: The real story behind 'the lost weekend'