May Pang signs posters and talks with visitors at her gallery exhibit in Alexandria. Va., on Friday
Now 73, May is retelling her version of the story that began in 1973. All these years later, Pang is traveling the country exhibiting photos she took of John Lennon, a tour that last weekend reached Northern Virginia, where fans lined up for her autograph and a look at images.
Here was a picture of Lennon with a bowl of hot and sour soup in the Manhattan apartment they shared in 1974; here was another of John playfully sticking out his tongue; here he was at Disney World, “a face in the crowd,” as Pang titled the image, a few months before he left her to return to Ono.
“I’m the closest they’re going to get to John Lennon,” Pang said as she signed photos for buyers. “What gives me pleasure is giving people the stories. And I’m able to give the stories because I was the one who was there.”
Her memoir, “Loving John,” was published in 1983, three years after Lennon’s murder, followed by “Instamatic Karma,” a 2008 collection of her Lennon photos. In 2022, Pang was the subject of “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” a documentary in which she declares: “I was 23 and my first boyfriend was John Lennon.”
And now there’s her traveling photo show, which arrived this past weekend at the Nepenthe Gallery and Frame Shop, tucked in an Alexandria strip mall behind an Exxon station and a pet food store.
Yes, the money she makes from the exhibit is part of the incentive, Pang said, sitting at a table with a stack of “Lost Weekend” posters she signed. May, who grew up in Spanish Harlem and lives in Queens, also said her aim is to correct the “misconception” that Lennon “didn’t care about me and it wasn’t a real relationship,” a narrative that, over time, she has blamed Ono and her allies for perpetuating. “If this was you and someone took your story, how would you feel?”
May Pang told the gallery crowd that Lennon, during his solo career, was the happiest and most creative while with her. He completed three albums in that period, including “Mind Games,” which was reissued this month, traveled regularly with Pang between New York and Los Angeles, and hung out with friends she refers to as “Elton” (John), “Mick” (Jagger), “Harry” (Nilsson), and “Paul and Linda” (McCartney).
Her photos, May said, are evidence that the period was not the booze-fueled spree depicted by biographers and even John himself when he told Playboy in 1980 that he had “never drunk so much in my life” and that “somebody was going to die” if he did not return to Ono.
“It was a happy time, it was a creative time,” Pang told the crowd at her opening. Many praised her for sharing her past.
“Thank you for bringing this to the world,” Fran Redding, 81, told Pang as she gazed at her wall of photos, including one of John’s signature just after he signed his name on papers dissolving the Beatles. There was also a shot Pang took that she says is the “last known photograph” of Lennon and McCartney together.
Mark Plotkin, 69, Pang’s friend who turned out for the opening, recalled accompanying her to the 2002 George Harrison memorial concert in London. Following the show, Pang led him to an “after-after party,” where he heard someone say in a familiar British voice, “Oh my God, May Pang!”. “There was Paul McCartney with all these people around him, and it was like the Red Sea parted and he gave her a big hug,” Plotkin said.
“There was Paul McCartney with all these people around him, and it was like the Red Sea parted and he gave her a big hug,” Plotkin said. “She was the ultimate rock queen.”
A few feet away, Margaret Lusterman, 61, a retired federal worker, said the photos made her contemplate the anguish she imagines Pang suffered when Lennon went back to Ono. “To be dumped by a lover and it was so public — that must have been so hurtful,” Lusterman said. “It’s not like she got any alimony.”
Ono remained in constant contact, calling Lennon and Pang numerous times daily, and telling Pang at one point that Lennon should return to her. Not long after, Pang tearfully recalled in the documentary, Lennon announced that “Yoko has allowed me to come home.” Only days before, Pang said, she and Lennon had been making plans to buy a house in Montauk, N.Y., and fly to New Orleans to visit Paul McCartney. Suddenly, he was back with Ono.
For all of the photographs of them together in public, John rarely, if ever, spoke at length about Pang during interviews, though he identified her as “production coordinator” on his solo albums, as well as “Mother Superior” in the credits on his 1975 “Rock ’n’ Roll” album.
“It’s hard to say it’s a good time, a fun time, a productive time when you’re sitting next to your wife,” Pang said, explaining why Lennon may not have mentioned her during the joint Playboy interview he and Ono gave when he spoke of his “lost weekend.”
After Lennon left, Pang said they remained in contact, sometimes meeting up secretly. Nine years after Lennon’s death, she married record producer Tony Visconti and had two children before they divorced in 2000. She still has mementos from their time together, including a drawing he made of her in which she is tall enough to reach the clouds.
At the gallery in Alexandria, Pang offered to answer anyone’s questions.
...Do you ever talk to Yoko?
No, she said when asked about her relationship with Ono, she has not spoken to Lennon’s widow in years. Yes, she said, Lennon and McCartney could very well have written more songs together.
As for a query about the complexities of her relationships with Lennon and Ono, Pang said, “You’ll have to see the movie.”
The next day, she was back signing more prints and posters while a trailer for the documentary played in a corner on an unceasing loop.
“My name is May Pang,” the audio repeated all day, “and this is my story.”
A woman who drove from Charlottesville thanked her for helping Lennon spend time with Julian. A Smithsonian research fellow said he was “gobsmacked” to meet her.
A mother and daughter slid into the chairs across from her. Now it was Pang who had a question.
“How old are you?” she asked the daughter.
Twenty-four.
“All this happened by the time I was 24,” Pang said. “I grew up faster than I wanted to. Enjoy yourself.”
Then she uncapped her pen and signed another poster.
washingtonpost
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