The musician John Lennon was many things — a songwriter, an activist and certainly not least, a Beatle. To his former companion, music executive May Pang, he was “complex.” Their whirlwind 18-month relationship in the early 1970s, while he was separated from his wife, Yoko Ono, became known to fans as “the lost weekend.” It’s the title of a documentary recounting Pang’s time with Lennon — and a gallery of her photographs immortalizing their love. Pang is in Missoula this week on her gallery tour. MTPR’s Austin Amestoy caught up with her.
Pang’s gallery, “The Lost Weekend — The Photography of May Pang” is open to the public at L.A. Design in Missoula Tuesday and Wednesday, July 14 and 15, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Austin Amestoy: We're in L.A. Design here in Missoula, and there are these black-framed pictures of John Lennon all over the walls here, most of them in black and white, and he seems to be kind of just relaxed in a lot of them. He's got those classic shades on in many of them, smoking cigarettes and others. They're very quiet and intimate, I would say.
Austin Amestoy: Lovely to meet you, I'm Austin.
May Pang: Hi. It's a pleasure.
Austin Amestoy: Welcome to our neck of the woods. Do you want to walk through the art first? Yeah, why don't we chat about some of the photos?
May Pang: Okay. All right.
Austin Amestoy: When you look at these photographs, do you remember yourself behind the camera in all of them or are some of the memories stronger than others?
May Pang: I do remember. I mean, you know, they just, memories just flood back. Every time I look at something I say, "Oh yeah, this is what was happening" and I just, all of a sudden, there's an offshoot to another memory. So it just keeps going.
Austin Amestoy: Do you get tired of it? Do you ever get tired talking about it?
May Pang: No. Never thought about it, you know. It just feels like it's an everyday thing. You know, it's like — would you get tired of talking about your mom and your dad and your, you know, your family or your best friend or your husband, wife, partners? so it's just natural for me. So the things that people have heard, and I'd rather have them corrected on some of the information than not.
Austin Amestoy: What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you've heard that have led you to be– because that's something you mentioned in the documentary as well, that you're very interested in making sure your side of the story is told. So what prompted that?
May Pang: I think when you start seeing, yes, the idea the first time around that Yoko was the one who was pushing it, but you know that she was sitting alone in the house — that's not exactly what happened. Yes, she did come and approach me to say, "Oh you should go start seeing John," but it wasn't because I was even closely– I worked for him — for both of them — for three years prior, so that was not even in the cards in my head. So when she approached me, I kept saying, "Something else is up, because I don't want be part of this."
But it was John who actually pursued me, not so much that Yoko was the one. In fact, Yoko kept saying, "You don't want to go with John?" I said no. And so this is why it was really that John was the one who said, OK, finally. He said, "Alright, if she's going to have this going and she wants me to go with me, I'm going to go for it." Because I asked him about that. And he said, it's because I finally, you know, he says, she was pushing.
Austin Amestoy: It was real.
May Pang: It was real. So I said okay.
Austin Amestoy: Here we are, you're touring John's photographs, and when you look up your Wikipedia page, it's very heavily about John. How do you feel about your legacy being so intertwined with his? And how have you sort of navigated that over the years?
May Pang: I think I'm honored to have even been part of that, you know, just being someone in the music business. Who wouldn't want to be with, you know, somebody, if you read about anybody that's even touched the Beatles or any one of them, that's a big part of their life. And in my case, it was a big, big part in my life, and yes, I'm proud of it, because when I worked with John on a lot of the stuff, it's during– in his solo career. We did more work than he'd ever done any other time in his solo career. So a lot of people are surprised that I was there.
Austin Amestoy: And you see yourself as a crucial part of the art that he was able to put into the world.
May Pang: Yeah, you know, at first I didn't even look at it that way, but other people have. And they said, "But you were there for this?" I said, yes. And you know and every time they say something, I said "Oh, I was there." And a lot of people had no idea that even in the last five years of his life, he was constantly calling me. So we were in touch all the time until the time he died.
Austin Amestoy: Do you miss him?
May Pang: Oh, absolutely. Every day of my life there's something about him. But I know in spirit that he's around somewhere. And he's watching over everyone. Because he was everything. He was everything rolled in. One minute, he was naive; he was too trusting sometimes. But he was also witty. He was clever. He was smart.
Austin Amestoy: Do you feel that these photographs tell that story of his complexity?
May Pang: I think it gives an idea of another side that no one's ever seen. Because my photos were not meant for the public, as it were, which they are now. But people have asked me, "Why do you do it now?" I said, "Because I want people to see the John that I knew, not the John that's manufactured like most of the photos that you see." He knew that even if it's in his home, you knew he was doing a photo session. This is not a photo section, this is home.
Austin Amestoy: They're authentic.
May Pang: Yeah.
