Smack in the mid 1970s, John Lennon experienced what he called a “lost weekend”, echoing the title of a classic 1945 film about an out-of-control alcoholic. Given this description, people understandably considered this “weekend” – which actually lasted 18 months and coincided with Lennon’s split from Yoko Ono – as a time of great excess and deep regret. . Yet, according to May Pang, who was Lennon’s 22-year-old lover at the time, that was anything but. “He was starting to hang out with his friends and have a lot of fun,” she said. “And, because I was 10 years younger, we were doing everything young couples do.”

Pang insists the ex-Beatle only used the term “lost weekend” to refer to this era because he was tired of being constantly asked by the press about two high-profile incidents in 1974 at the during which he was kicked out of a Los Angeles club for being drunk and verbally abusive. “He was sarcastically telling them, ‘Hey, it was a drunken weekend, okay? ‘” Pang said. “People don’t understand that the sentence wasn’t about our relationship.”

Anyway, the term has become so resonant that a new documentary centered on this period – The Lost Weekend: A Love Story – devotes half of its title to it. The multiple meanings of the title reflect the training narratives that have long clouded this time in the ex-Beatle’s life. On several occasions, Lennon, Ono and Pang gave their side of the story to the press. Thirty years ago, Pang wrote a book, Loving John, which detailed his own, saying that his relationship with Lennon was not just a passing fling or a fluke, as some characterize it, but a deep and sustainable. Even so, she thinks many people are unaware of the extent of her involvement. “Every time I would tell people about it, they would say, ‘You should write a book,'” Pang said. “I told them, ‘I did it!!'”

Another factor that led her to sanction the new documentary is the cultural moment we find ourselves in right now. Parts of Pang’s story dovetail perfectly with today’s sensitivity to the consequences of workplace sexual harassment. His unique background could be considered an HR department’s worst nightmare. The Guardian contacted Ono’s representative for his reaction to Pang’s version of events. Through him, she declined to comment.

Most dedicated music fans have long known this side of the story: Back in the early 70s, when Pang was working as the iconic rock couple’s assistant, Ono made it clear that she didn’t just want her underling to do his work, but also that he becomes Lennon’s lover. “She was asking me that but, at the same time, she said, ‘You will be!‘” Pang said.

Due to his youth and position, many saw Pang as a particularly weak target for Ono’s agenda. But talking to him via Zoom from his home in Queens and understanding his background complicates that view. Born and raised in Spanish Harlem, Pang has the accent, wit and confidence of a classic New Yorker. “The men I’ve dated have told me I’m stronger than most women,” she laughed. “I had my own mentality.”

It was clear from childhood. Pang’s parents, who had an unhappy arranged marriage, were Chinese immigrants who, before coming to America, endured the Japanese invasion of their country that killed millions. Her father, a traditional Chinese at the time, was not interested in a girl, but her mother provided her with an assertive role model. “She was a real warrior,” Pang said. “My father was more afraid of her than the other way around. I lined up with her.

Pang’s provocative nature made her a natural rock’n’roll fan. “Music was my saviour,” she said.

In 1970, she used her chutzpah to bluff her way into a job at the office of Allen Klein, whose management office represented Apple Records and all of the Beatles except Paul. The first time she saw Lennon and Ono in the office, she was a little surprised. “They looked like they hadn’t had a bath in months,” she said.

Pang thinks Ono chose her as the couple’s personal assistant because she was efficient. “I was able to do whatever they asked me to do,” she said.

Mainly, Pang said, it was Ono who gave the orders and there were a lot of them. When Ono was creating his avant-garde film Fly – which consists entirely of the title insect crawling on a naked woman’s body – it fell to Pang to find and catch the buzzing creatures in the depths of a freezing winter. At New York. For another Ono film, Pang had to ask both ordinary people and celebrities to show their legs on camera for peace. Despite her love of Beatles music, Pang says she had no fantasies about Lennon at that time. For the record, she says, her favorite Beatle was Ringo. Initially, it was a plus for Ono. “Anyone she felt was making a play for John, they were gone,” she said.

However, while working at their home office in the Dakota building, Pang immediately felt a chill between her bosses. “They were like two magnets repelling each other,” she said. “You just don’t want to get in the middle of this.”

This became impossible from one day in 1973 when Ono came to Pang and told him that she and Lennon did not get along and that she believed he was going to start seeing other women. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, are there going to be more people involved now?’ Pang recalls.

She never imagined that She would be the other person until, she says, Ono asks her, “‘You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?’ I said, “Yes, but please go see someone else with this.” Then she said, “You’re nice and you don’t want him dating someone who’s not going to be nice to him, do you?” I said, ‘Of course not.’ So she said, ‘You’re perfect.’ I said “no” and she kept saying “yes”. Then she walked through the door. Later, John told me that she went to see him afterwards and said, “I fixed it for you.”

Pang claims that Lennon was not initially on board. “He wasn’t jumping for joy,” she said. “He didn’t want to, and I didn’t.”

After a while, however, she said Lennon warmed up and made a pass. “If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gone out with him,” Pang said.

The sex between them sealed the deal. Soon after, things heated up to the point that when Lennon moved to Los Angeles for an extended period, Pang became his full-time lover. Ono approved the move, Pang claims, because she wanted to have her own affair with another musician. “We didn’t know that at the time,” Pang said. “But the only way that would happen was if John wasn’t there.”

The new couple’s time in Los Angeles resurrected Lennon’s lighter side, she said, both personally and creatively. He cut the Rock’n’Roll album, which featured covers of rock songs that had influenced him, bringing him nostalgic joy and relieving the pressure of having to write new material. Free from both the demands of Beatlemania and his tensions with Ono, Pang said Lennon “had to do normal things. I took him by bus. I took him to the parks.

She also helped him reconnect to his life before Ono came into the picture. According to Pang, whenever a call came to the Dakota from Lennon’s estranged young son Julian, Ono would ask him to tell him that his father was unavailable. She also told him not to tell Lennon about the calls. Now that Lennon was alone with her in Los Angeles, Pang encouraged the ex-Beatle to reconnect with her son. “He hadn’t seen his father for so long,” she said. “There were so many things he missed.”

She thinks Lennon’s guilt over the estrangement made him awkward with Julian at first. “I should coax her out,” Pang said. ” And it worked. He really enjoyed Julian’s company.

Pang said she also helped reconnect Lennon with Julian’s mother, his first wife, Cynthia. In the documentary, Julian appears as Pang’s greatest ally and witness. Not that everything was perfect in that time period. Lennon drank to excess, although Pang said he did not use heavy drugs, as has often been reported. Additionally, she said Ono had become jealous over time and started “calling a million times a day,” Pang said. “It was for nothing. She said, “I just wanted you to know that I went around the block.”

Additionally, she stated that Lennon would side with Pang in defiance of Ono. “She wasn’t used to that,” she said.

Eventually, Lennon found out about Ono’s alleged affair and, says Pang, instead of being jealous, he said, “Oh, good!”

In 1975, Lennon and Pang moved back to New York but lived in their own apartment away from Dakota. Although the ex-Beatle eventually returned to her life with Ono, for complex reasons described in the documentary, Pang maintains that it came as a total surprise to her. “We were going to buy a house!” she says. She also stated that she continued to see him and be intimate with him until his death. “For someone who’s not meant to be a part of their life, I was in their life,” she said.

In this regard, Pang believes that Lennon’s characterization of his final years with Ono as a time of domestic bliss was a fabrication he used to promote his reunion album with her, Double Fantasy. “He understood what it took to make it work in the media,” she said.

Pang said the last time she spoke with Ono was a call she made to him after Lennon got back to her. “I said, ‘Congratulations. You have recovered John. You should be very happy now. His answer interested me a lot. She said, “Happy? I don’t know if I will ever be happy. To me, it didn’t feel like someone warmly inviting that person back into their life.

When Pang talks about Ono, whether in our interview or in the documentary, she paints a consistent image of her as manipulative and controlling, but she is careful never to portray her directly that way. “I see no reason to do so,” she said. “She’s doing pretty well on the merits of how she presents herself.”

Still, the image it suggests of Ono fits the character that many Beatles fans believed decades ago. Pang freely admits that during this time and afterwards, Ono endured a high degree of sexism and racism from the public, which fueled this cruel view of her. In the years since, however, Ono’s image has improved dramatically, a development that may actually end up making some people less, rather than more, sympathetic to Pang’s story today. Even so, Pang seems eager to come to terms at this point in her life, as the proud 72-year-old mother of two grown children by her ex-husband, producer Tony Visconti. “People will find the missing piece of the story,” she said. “They read about it from other people. Now they will see him as he was.