May Pang on her 18-month love affair with John Lennon: ‘Yoko has erased me’
The last time John Lennon’s one-time lover May Pang was visited by his ghost, it was while she was watching an episode of Law & Order. “But when you talk about stuff like this, people think you’re imagining it or are a little crazy,” the 73-year-old says. “So I don’t ever talk about it.”
For someone so savvy, Pang is astonishingly innocent. Or maybe it’s the other way round. She grew up loving The Beatles and met Lennon in 1970, when she was 22 (he was 10 years older). A receptionist for Allen Klein, she was – a year later – working as a personal assistant for both Lennon and his avant-garde artist wife Yoko Ono while they lived at New York’s Dakota Building. Lennon and Ono were having problems in their marriage; it’s a matter of record that Ono decided Pang would be a useful distraction. Having encouraged Lennon to make a move on Pang, she ordered Pang to comply. Pang had her doubts, but was too junior (and, once Lennon kissed her, dazzled) to demur.
A new documentary on the pair’s relationship – titled – explores what happened next. Pang and Lennon lived together in LA and New York. They spent time with , and who’d been kept at arm’s length by Ono. They also hung out with Paul, George and Ringo and did ordinary boyfriend and girlfriend stuff (if being taught to play guitar by a musical legend counts as ordinary).
