‘John Lennon’s Other Love’: The third woman in Lennon’s life has a different version of his ‘lost weekend’ | Culture

When John Lennon broke up with his first wife, Cynthia Powell, it was because she came back from a trip to Greece to find Yoko Ono having breakfast with him, both in their pajamas, ignoring her. When Lennon first split up with Yoko Ono, it was because of having sex under the same roof with other women: on one occasion, Ono burst into the room but they did not stop. The lost weekend, as the 18-month period between 1973 and 1975 was called when Lennon left the Dakota building in New York and lived with May Pang, who had been his personal assistant and producer, a period during which both were under Yoko’s remote surveillance.

The Japanese artist herself had asked May to go with him, and to behave as her partner in all respects, because she did not see him capable of taking care of himself. The official version, or the black legend, says that in October 1973, when he moved to Los Angeles with May, John hit rock bottom. That this period was marked by alcohol and drug abuse, by his desire to destroy hotel rooms and apartments as the end of a party with his clique, by rude and arrogant behavior at public events (he was thrown out by security) from the club The Trobadour).

May has another version of that time, which she tells in the documentary John Lennon’s other love (The Lost Weekend: A Love Story), of 2022, Now available on Movistar+. It is not the first time that she tells her story (this same feature film includes interviews that she gave in the eighties, and she wrote two books of memoirs), but a film does reconstruct that year and a half with this detail. She had grown up in Spanish Harlem in a Chinese family; at 22 years old she established a relationship with Lennon and Ono, who had settled in New York after the breakup of The Beatles. At first she collaborated in the production of the experimental films that they made; Yoko later offered her a stable job as John’s assistant. She could not believe what he asked her at the time of the separation, but she was serious: the lost weekend With May it was something agreed upon by the marriage, so John was quick to kiss her before setting off on the trip (and Yoko, for her part, had her affair with musician David Spinozza).

The documentary does tell of some of the excesses that John experienced in California, but it limits and relativizes them. What May wants to make known is that they were truly in love, that they were a stable couple who had a social life and had bright moments. She admits to a couple of violent incidents with him (John) He later admitted that he had abused his partners (He had been a bit of a jerk in the past and had shown remorse for it). May managed to get him to settle down in the spring of 1974, before settling back in New York, not in the Dakota, but in another apartment for the two of them. So if Yoko had sent her off with a man who was a victim of his impulses and addictions, May would return him sober and responsible. Not only that: alongside May, John rekindles his relationship with his son Julian, after three years of not being interested in him. He contacts some of his colleagues: Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Ringo. And he meets up with Paul McCartney again for an improvised session with Stevie Wonder and Harry Nilsson, among others. The recording is called A Toot and a Snore in ’74 and it is not part of any official discography, but the pirated version went around the world. Besides having a good time, Paul sent John a message from Yoko: she was willing to consider his return.

Both Julian (live) and Paul (delayed, he looks young) speak in the documentary to confirm that their relationship with John was reestablished during that strange period. Lennon was even open to a Beatles comeback (he was not very consistent in his positions: on other occasions he ruled it out completely). He also collaborated with Elton John, with whom he wrote a song that was his only number one without The Beatles: Whatever Gets You Through the NightNo, the single of Imagine (He didn’t make it in 1971). Elton brought him on stage to perform three songs together at Madison Square Garden: it was the Liverpool man’s last massive concert. It was also a fruitful period for Lennon’s solo career: he released the album Walls and Bridges and finished another of versions, Rock and Roll, which was difficult to get off the ground because the project was being directed by producer Phil Spector, who was as brilliant as he was psychopathic.

Without May Pang being too hostile, because she measures her words, Yoko Ono is left as the villain of the story. A person so manipulative that she even wanted to choose her (ex?) husband’s lover, and who during the separation contacted her daily. A very revealing moment is that, after a fight, May left just when John was going to receive a visit from Cynthia and Julian in New York. But Yoko called May to order her to return to him: she couldn’t leave him alone when he was reunited with his ex-wife and son, he wasn’t ready. And she obeyed. In the same documentary it is said that during the previous years Yoko forced May to intercept the calls that Julian made to his father, who did everything possible to block this father-son relationship. The assistant not only greased that subsequent reunion, but also made a lasting friendship with Cynthia. But the portrait of John Lennon that emerges from here is very bitter, that of a perpetual adolescent, with little autonomy, overwhelmed by his character, with a tendency to go wild and an enormous emotional dependence.

May says that she and John were looking at houses to make a home when, in February 1975, Yoko Ono decided to end the lost weekend“Yoko lets me come home,” John told May. “What lets you?” May replied. The rest is known: John returned to the Dakota and became, in his own words, a househusband. He had his second son, Sean, and devoted himself to raising him. He put his career on hold until 1980, when the couple published Double Fantasythree weeks before he was murdered in the doorway of his home on December 8 by Marc Chapman. It is not so well known that May claims that she and John had secret encounters until his death, that they never stopped being in touch or intimate.

May Pang does not want to go down in rock history as the othermuch less as a mistress on demand, but as the third stable partner that John had in his life, cut short prematurely, and as one of his closest collaborators in one of his greatest creative moments. The official story, despite herself, is still managed by Yoko Ono.