PRESS
When watching the new documentary The Lost Weekend: A Love Story — about the stranger-than-fiction romance between John Lennon and his former assistant, May Pang — through the modern lens of the recent #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, it’s almost impossible not to see it as a workplace HR nightmare. “There's no two ways about it, yeah. But we're looking at the time period, which is the ‘70s, which was not the same as we are now,” Pang chuckles wryly, speaking to Yahoo Entertainment via Zoom from her home in Harlem, where she grew up as the feisty daughter of Chinese immigrants. “People would be telling you that isn't the right thing, and you would just walk out and say, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Pang, who’d been a Beatles fanatic as a child (although, ironically, Ringo Starr had been her favorite Fab), was only 19 — a decade younger than Lennon, and 17 years younger than Lennon’s soon-to-be-estranged wife, Yoko Ono — when she began working for the couple. And she was only 22 years old when Ono allegedly came to her with an indecent proposal. By Pang’s account in the film, “Yoko walked into my office and said, ‘John and I are not getting along, and I know he's going to start seeing other people. And I want you to go out with him, as I think he needs someone nice like you.’” (Representatives for Ono did not respond to Yahoo’s request for comment.)
‘People will find out’: May Pang on her time with John Lennon and Yoko Ono
In a new documentary, the woman who went from assistant to lover of the ex-Beatle talks about her side of a misunderstood story
Smack in the middle of the 1970s, John Lennon experienced what he famously called a “lost weekend”, echoing the title of a classic 1945 movie about an out-of-control alcoholic. Given that description, people naturally viewed that “weekend” – which actually lasted 18 months and which coincided with Lennon’s separation from Yoko Ono – as a period of great excess and deep regret. Yet, according to May Pang, who was Lennon’s 22-year-old live-in lover during that time, that was anything but the case. “He was getting to hang out with his friends and have a lot of fun,” she said. “And, because I was 10 years younger, we were getting to do all the things young couples do.”
Pang insists that the ex-Beatle only used the term “lost weekend” to refer to that time because he was tired of the press constantly asking him about two high-profile incidents in 1974 in which he was tossed from an Los Angeles club for being inebriated and verbally abusive. “He would sarcastically say to them: ‘Hey it was a drunken weekend, OK?’” Pang said. “People don’t understand that the phrase wasn’t about our relationship.”
Regardless, the term became so resonant that a new documentary centered on that period – The Lost Weekend: A Love Story – devotes half its title to it. The multiple meanings in the title mirror the sparring narratives that have long clouded this era in the ex-Beatle’s life. At various times, Lennon, Ono and Pang have given their versions of the story to the press. Thirty years ago, Pang wrote a book, Loving John, that detailed hers, asserting her relationship with Lennon wasn’t just a passing fling or fluke, as characterized by some, but a deep and abiding love. Even so, she believes that many people remain unaware of the extent of her involvement. “Whenever I would tell people about it, they would say: ‘You should write a book,” Pang said. “I told them: ‘I did!!’”
May Pang had a whirlwind, 18-month romance with John Lennon in the 1970s during a break in his marriage to Yoko Ono
BY RACHEL DESANTIS FEBRUARY 27, 2023 10:00 AM
May Pang's whirlwind romance with John Lennon is the stuff of rock 'n' roll lore — and in a new documentary, she's ready to peel back the curtain on their so-called "lost weekend."
PEOPLE is exclusively premiering the trailer for The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, which will tell the tale of a young Pang's 18-month relationship with the former Beatle during his marriage to Yoko Ono.
Pang, 72, was just 19 years old when she landed a job at Apple Records, and before long, she was working as the personal assistant to Lennon and Ono, 90.
An old interview clip of Ono featured in the trailer sees the artist call Pang "a very good assistant," and Pang explains that her job was "taking care of everything, working in the studio, doing clothes, doing the publicity."
EXCLUSIVE I’m kvelling, kids.
I’ve had the honor of knowing May Pang for a long time. She’s a great lady, a survivor in rock and roll and life.
Her story about her time with John Lennon has been told in bits and pieces over the years in interviews and books she’s published. But finally there’s a documentary and it’s mind blowing, lovely, funny, touching, and poignant. Every Beatles and Lennon fan will want to see it, own it, live in it.
Three directors — Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman, Stuart Samuels — are responsible for “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story.” The film quickly covers May’s early life, then cuts to her working for Apple Records, Allen Klein, and finally John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This is before they lived in the Dakota.
But then, famously, Yoko instructs May to take John, leave, and be his girlfriend. It’s 1972-73, and this period will go on until the beginning of 1975. In that time, John records and releases the “Rock and Roll” album and “Walls and Bridges,” he also produces Harry Nilsson‘s “Pussycats” album. He reunites with Ringo, and with Paul. He becomes friends with David Bowie and Elton John. He also has a period of debauchery with Nilsson that earns this time the moniker “The Lost Weekend.”
The documentary will premiere June 10th at the Tribeca Film Festival and then it will be shown somewhere depending on distribution. It’s a miracle of a film, beautifully made, with incredibly good production values. May narrates most of the film but there are interviews with many people who were around then including Julian Lennon. They have remained friends since he was a child, and Julian obviously adores her. He says nothing about Yoko, and indeed, Yoko is never disparaged. That’s not what this is about.
PHOTO: c. Ron Galella
MAY PANG AND JOHN LENNON'S LOST WEEKEND
JUNE 28, 2022
The Lost Weekend: A Love Story
Vortex. Love. Icon. These terms came to mind as I was glued to every detail of The Lost Weekend: A Love Story. This is not your ordinary documentary. Nor is it a reinvention of the same story.
Vortex: "A whirling mass….that sucks everything near it toward its center….drawing in… all that surrounds it..". There's no question that in the nearly 60 years since the onset of The Beatles, that anything and everything related has fascinated the masses to a seriously refined degree. Musicians. Historians. Producers. Engineers. Critics. You name it. Stories get told and retold over and over. The Beatle vortex is alive and well to this day. But imagine, if you can, what it might like to be THEM. Or THEIR families. Or THEIR love interests, dead center in that vortex???
As I watched May Pang tell HER story (and it's finally HER story, not years of retold heresay and diatribes), what struck me was this young, strong "anchor" thrown into the middle of chaos. Into the biggest vortex there is. As her childhood backstory is told, it becomes clear why she was so strong and resilient. Clear eyed at such a young age, she stitched Lennon's personal life together in a beautiful patchwork from the frayed pieces he inadvertently created (reunited with his son Julian, ex wife Cynthia, and McCartney). He was incredibly prolific and creative during this time, called "The Lost Weekend" (#9 Dream, Mind Games, Whatever Gets You Through the Night). Surprisingly, May's association with the Lennons goes WAY back further into the history of the Beatles than you might know, which is highlighted in this doc (like during the Imagine sessions). Even more complex was the situation in which May was thrown. Working for two bosses who, along with their own growing personal conflicts, eventually are giving conflicting orders to May. Micro vortex in the middle of a GIANT vortex.
by Martin Kielty Published: June 11, 2022
May Pang, who was John Lennon’s mistress during his notorious 18-month “long weekend” in the ‘70s, said the ex Beatle’s episode ended just before an almost certain reunion with Paul McCartney.n 1973, as Lennon’s marriage to Yoko Ono was collapsing, she put her husband and Pang together in the hope that an affair would resolve the situation. Lennon and Pang later moved from New York to Los Angeles where he established a reputation for drunken and outlandish behavior, before suddenly returning to Ono in early 1975.
By Michael Kaplan April 1, 2023 11:10am
May Pang was almost the Yoko Ono of Yoko Ono’s marriage.
The then-22-year-old was working as an assistant to Ono and John Lennon when, at Ono’s own request, she reluctantly became Lennon’s girlfriend in 1973.
As Pang remembers Ono putting it, “He needs someone nice, like you.”
But Ono was likely not expecting things to go as well as they did, or for Pang to almost break up her marriage to the former Beatle.
Looking back, Pang — a lifelong Beatles fan and subject of the new documentary “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” in theaters April 13 — told The Post, “It’s almost surreal. In one way, Yoko took advantage because I was naïve. But she also gave me a gift. John and I fell in love.”
Beyond the expected sexual liaisons, their time together included gunplay, stoned-out jam sessions, Paul McCartney playing spy for Yoko, drunken carousing through the nightclubs of Hollywood, and at least one house trashing.
May Pang was just 22 years old when she reluctantly became John Lennon’s girlfriend — at the request of his wife Yoko Ono.
The couple’s former assistant, who found herself in the middle of an 18-month romance with the "Imagine" singer, is telling her story in a new documentary, "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story." The film, which made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022, features rarely heard home recordings and a candid interview with Lennon’s eldest son, Julian.
In it, Pang aims to set the record straight on her story, one that has become part of rock mythology since Lennon died in 1980. A spokesperson for Ono, 90, indicated to Fox News Digital that there would be no response at this time regarding Pang's documentary.
"It’s hard to believe, but it is 50 years now since my relationship with John began," the 72-year-old told Fox News Digital. "There was so much of my own story being told by other people that had no idea. It got the best of me after a while. It was my life, and everybody else is telling it. Many people still think I only spent a weekend with him. They didn't know the truth."
Pang, the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, grew up in New York City’s Spanish Harlem during the ‘60s, when she discovered her first love – rock ‘n’ roll. In the film, Pang admitted her favorite Beatle as a teen was Ringo Starr, noting she "was partial to blue eyes."
In 1969, the 19-year-old scored a gig as an office assistant for Apple Records, the Fab Four’s label. In 1970, Lennon and Ono relocated from London to New York. Pang, eager to escape the mundane office life, began working as the couple's personal assistant.
May Pang's 18-month romance with John Lennon is the subject of a new documentary called The Last Weekend, out April 13
By Rachel DeSantis Published on April 5, 2023 02:55 PM
When John Lennon first began dating May Pang, he hadn't seen his son Julian in several years.
But with Pang's encouragement, the father-son relationship began to heal, something Pang remains proud of, she tells PEOPLE in this week's issue.
"He hadn't seen [first wife] Cynthia in years," Pang, 72, recalls. "[But] I said, 'I'll be there to help guide this along.' And he was so appreciative."
Pang was the personal secretary to Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono when she first met the young Julian at the couple's Tittenhurst Park estate in England. As she explains in her new documentary The Lost Weekend (out in theaters April 13), the two forged a fast bond, playing together in golf carts.
By the time Pang started dating Lennon in 1973, she took things a step further, convincing the former Beatle to invite Julian and his mother Cynthia to visit for the first time in years. When Pang and Lennon — whose 18-month romance he later dubbed his "lost weekend" — moved in together in 1974, they made sure their Manhattan abode had a bedroom set aside for Julian.
"When Dad was with May, he always seemed very happy and youthful," says Julian, 60. "She brought a light to our relationship."
by Roy Trakin June 9, 2022
May Fung Lee Pang will be 72 in October, but was barely out of her teens when she boldly entered Apple’s New York offices, lied about being able to type, and secured a job at the Beatles’ multimedia company. She would soon become famous for a much more intimate tie to the group than that, as her very public 18-month affair with John Lennon in the mid-’70s is still a subject of great fascination to his fans, 50 years later.
“Music was my passion,” explains the Spanish Harlem-born author and subject of the upcoming documentary, “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival for a sold-out show on June 10. “It was something I loved. I had no real abilities,” she admits of getting her start at Apple, “but answering the phone was easy enough. My mother used to tell me, ‘You have a mouth. You speak English. Go for it.’”
She’s still going for it with her involvement in the new documentary, which captures the whirlwind affair between a 22-year-old Pang and John Lennon that began when Yoko Ono tried to set them up during a period of turmoil in their marriage. The pair headed to Los Angeles for what has become known as “The Lost Weekend” for the former Beatle’s drunken escapades with his pals Alice Cooper, Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon and Micky Dolenz, collectively known as the Hollywood Vampires, their hangout upstairs at the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset Blvd. next to the Roxy.
Pang, who was plucked from that Apple job by Ono herself to serve as her and Lennon’s personal assistant before May’s fling with Lennon, insists the phrase “Lost Weekend” doesn’t do justice to the pair’s year-and-a-half affair.
“Yes, Yoko did approach me, and I thought it was insane,” she says about being Lennon’s lover. “I told her I wasn’t interested at all. They were having problems in their marriage; they actually weren’t talking to each other. But John spontaneously decided to go to L.A. on his own and asked me to go with him. Yoko wasn’t even aware we had gone until after we left.”
Although May has written a pair of books about her relationship with Lennon — including 1983’s “Loving John: The Untold Story” and 2008’s “Instamatic Karma: Photographs by John Lennon” — she has hesitated until now to participate in a documentary, finally agreeing to work with a trio of producer-directors in Eve Brandstein (best known as the casting director for “This Is Spinal Tap”), Richard Kaufman (“Real Life: The Musical”) and Stuart Samuels (docs on Bob Marley and Midnight Movies).
“People have been taking my narrative and talking about my life as if they knew everything about me, and they didn’t,” she explains. “I decided it was time to reclaim my own history. It’s my version. I figured, if there was going to be a film about my life, I should be involved. Who better to tell the story than me? I lived it. These are my memories. No one experienced it like I did. Why should I let somebody else talk about my time with John? He understood better than anybody. He used to say to me, ‘May, it’s your opinion. It’s your life. Just be aware that people are going to be talking about you. And they are going to lie about it.’”
According to "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story," a doc that just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival ... John had an affair in the 1970s with his assistant, May Pang.
The film, narrated by May and from her point of view, claims May initially met John and his wife Yoko when she was 19 years old and starting a job at The Beatles' music company in New York, Apple Records.
The story goes ... John and Yoko liked May so much they asked her to become their personal assistant, working for them for a few years until one morning in 1973 when Yoko allegedly insisted May go out with John.
The doc claims Yoko told May she was not getting along with her husband and feared John would start seeing other people ... with Yoko suggesting May get involved.
May was 22 and John was 32 when the alleged affair began ... and she claims John had previously told Yoko he found her sexually attractive, though she didn't have romantic feelings toward him when he first pursued her.
May Pang tells her version of what happened in 'The Lost Weekend,' which is billed as a love story with John Lennon. Sandy Kenyon has the story.
Tim Coffman FRI 14TH APR 2023 09.26 EST
In the leadup to the film The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, May Pang opened up about her long-term affair with John Lennon in the mid-1970s. Lennon coined the phrase ‘the lost weekend’ for his long separation from Yoko Ono when he moved to California and recorded the covers album Rock and Roll.
During the early stages of Lennon and Ono’s separation, Ono picked Pang to be Lennon’s girlfriend during his time in California. Pang had been an assistant for the Lennons until then and was asked by Ono to go out with her husband.
When talking about her relationship with Lennon, Pang mentioned she had little say in Ono’s plan, telling AOL, “I was not a willing participant. … It’s only later that you start seeing that there was a motive behind all this, on her side, of what was going on”.
Due to Lennon’s partying, Pang also mentioned Ono wanting a divorce, continuing, “John had to come back to New York for immigration purposes, and I heard they were going to meet in the lawyer’s office to go over things. She wanted to tell him at the lawyer’s office with other people that she wanted a divorce because she was afraid he was going to go off the deep end”.
After returning to New York in 1975, Lennon reunited with Ono and remained together after his murder in 1980. Pang did stay on good terms with Lennon, remembering, “Over the next five years, the man liked to make phone calls to me, talk to me, see if I’m OK. We never lost that contact. It became even more complicated as time went on”.
Pang also mentioned the possibility of her and Lennon reuniting when remembering her last memories of Lennon, saying, “I think if it would happen, it was going to happen — until, obviously, the universe ended it for me. It ended it for a lot of people, but it ended it for us in that way, because our relationship never died”.
Speaking about their time together, Pang mentioned moving forward past her relationship fracturing in 1980, remarking, “I don’t have closure. But I have to do something. I can’t sit there and mourn for the rest of my life on that. You have him in a special part of your life, in your heart, and then you say, “OK, just guide me to the next level”.
By Rachel DeSantis Published on April 5, 2023 10:00 AM
As a lifelong fan of the Beatles, May Pang was, in 1973, living what many would consider the dream. After working for John Lennon and Yoko Ono as their personal secretary, Pang had recently started dating the former Beatle amid a break in his marriage.
And yet, the beginning of their romance was not an idyll honeymoon stage, but one fraught with nerves for the then-23-year-old. As Pang, 72, reveals in her new documentary The Lost Weekend, she even shed tears the first time she and Lennon slept together.
"I didn't know where it was going to lead," she explains in this week's issue of PEOPLE. "I was like, 'What's going to happen?' I was very content in working. [But] he kept saying, 'I don't know where this is going to lead, but let's just do the jump.'"
And jump they did, embarking on a whirlwind 18-month romance from 1973 to 1975 that Lennon later dubbed his "lost weekend," a reference to the 1945 Billy Wilder film.
Allison Rapp Published: April 10, 2023
Yoko Ono walked into the office of her assistant, May Pang, one day in 1973 and explained that she and John Lennon weren't getting along. He intended to see other people, so Ono told Pang she'd like her to go out with him.
Pang, who was 22 and had been working as the couple's PA for a few years, was shocked. She staunchly resisted the idea at first but eventually became Lennon's lover when he was separated from Ono, a period that's come to be known as his "Lost Weekend."
In the new film The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, Pang is asked what happened that made her change her mind. "John," is her simple answer.
Even though Lennon struggled with his drinking, in the roughly 18 months he and Pang spent together, the former Beatle came into his own in a way he never had before. He collaborated with Ringo Starr and George Harrison on Starr's "I'm the Greatest," landed two hit singles on his 1974 album Walls and Bridges ("Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" and "#9 Dream), produced the Pussy Cats album for drinking buddy Harry Nilsson, co-wrote the No. 1 "Fame" with David Bowie and rekindled his relationship with his son, Julian.
In this "Everything Fab Four" conversation, the former rock exec opens up about being an eyewitness to rock history
By NICOLE MICHAEL
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 12, 2022 7:30PM (EST)
Photographer, jewelry designer and former music executive May Pang joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about falling in love with the music of the Beatles (and her subsequent relationship with one of them) on the latest episode of "Everything Fab Four," a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
Pang, the first of her Chinese family born in America on both her parents' sides, grew up in New York City's Spanish Harlem where she "didn't look like everybody else" in the neighborhood or at school. She laughs when Womack asks if she was raised in a musical household: "No. I don't think so. My father blared traditional Chinese music all the time — but it definitely wasn't my music."
As she grew up watching TV shows such as "American Bandstand," her mother was more supportive of her interest in popular music. But, as with millions of others, Pang's teenage heart was completely changed watching "The Ed Sullivan Show" on February 9, 1964. "I went into it thinking, 'I don't understand this group.' And then from their first note and just the way they looked, I was like 'Oh my God, this is it!' I was a convert."
PUBLISHED JUNE 10, 2022 3:00PM (EDT)
For time immemorial, the history books will no doubt couch John Lennon's story within the context of tragedy. His unfinished life, coming to a sudden and inexplicable end when he was scarcely 40 years old, necessitates that perspective.
Fortunately, we have been gifted with the new documentary "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story," which affords us with a window into 18 months of Lennon's life writ large on the public stage. The former Beatle's "Lost Weekend," a coinage that he drew from the 1945 film noir of the same name, marked an era of intense change, uncertainty and rootlessness for him. But as he told journalist Larry Kane, that period was also one of his "happiest," when he fell in love with a woman and made some of his finest music.
That woman was May Pang, Lennon and wife Yoko Ono's 22-year-old personal assistant. Co-produced and directed by Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman and Stuart Samuels, "The Lost Weekend," which premieres at Tribeca Film Festival this weekend, finds a pocket of bright light in Lennon's unfinished story, an era when he mined the simple joys out of living with Pang and reconnecting with his estranged 10-year-old son Julian, as well as with the other former Beatles.
Naturally, Pang narrates her own story, weaving together tales about her early years growing up in Spanish Harlem and her first brush with the music business in the offices of notorious New York City businessman Allen Klein. We witness 13-year-old May falling in love with the four lads from Liverpool and, later, her incredible good fortune in landing a plum job with John and Yoko in the early 1970s. And we observe Pang's obvious bewilderment when Ono suggests that the young woman take up with her husband as the famous couple's marriage fissures out of control.
To the filmmakers' extraordinary credit, no voices are left silent. Yoko is there, front and center, sharing her memories about the Lost Weekend and its inception. Members of the Lennons' inner circle are there, too, including Elton John, photographer Bob Gruen, and Apple Records' Tony King, among a host of others. In perhaps the documentary's most moving scenes, Julian speaks wistfully about life with May and his father during the Lost Weekend.
By TOM LEONARD 24 June 2022
May Pang was clearly up to a challenge. Fresh out of school at 19, she had talked her way into a coveted job at the New York offices of The Beatles' music company Apple Records.
She was outgoing and rebellious but also amenable, and John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono liked her so much they soon asked her to become their personal assistant.
The rock 'n' roll-mad daughter of Chinese immigrants from Spanish Harlem enjoyed every minute of her time with the couple — the union many believed broke up the Fab Four.
Pang was soon helping them in the recording studio, accompanying them to the UK and their country mansion at Tittenhurst Park, Ascot, and proving so engaging and photogenic that David Bailey shot her as part of a Lennon-Ono album cover.
Pang bought John and Yoko's groceries and answered the phone — and she also supplied backing vocals on some of their songs including the 1971 hit single Happy Christmas (War Is Over). Then, one morning in 1973, when she turned up for work at their home in Manhattan's Dakota building, it suddenly became a little more complicated.
'Yoko walked into my office and said: 'John and I are not getting along and I know he's going to start seeing other people. And I want you to go out with him as I think he needs someone nice like you',' says Pang in a new documentary film. Of course, it was the bed-hopping 1970s but Pang rapidly realised she was in way over her head.