“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.”
May Pang, 2023
May has been mentioned quite a bit before and will be after so I won't cram everything in this post. This is about May (like a biography) and her relationship with John.... and Yoko. Her relationships with Cynthia and Julian will have their own independent post(s).
I couldn't really find much about May's childhood other than bits and pieces from her book Loving John and some interviews.
May Fung Yee Pang was born on October 24, 1950 to Mr. and Linda Lim Pang in Manhattan, New York City, New York. She was raised in a strict upbringing in Spanish Harlem while her parents ran an industrial business, OK Laundry. She has an older sister who was originally left behind in China when her parents immigrated from Taison; her father first left for America in 1935 before sending for his wife in 1947. Since Mr. Pang did not want daughters, the sister stayed and, because he desperately wanted a son, Linda adopted a 10 year old boy named Peter before immigrating to America. When May was born (and was the first child born in America), her father refused to visit the hospital. When May was 2 months old, she was scalded on the ironing board by Peter and was raised in a domestic violent household. No wonder May doesn't dwell on her childhood... May was very close to her mother - as a child, Linda really wanted to go to school but wasn't allowed so she worked in the rice paddy fields until the Japanese raided and occupied in her village. Linda in 2021. Meanwhile, May was estranged from her father for most of her life despite her parents remained married.
“She was a real warrior, My father was more afraid of her than the other way around. I aligned myself with her.”
May Pang, 2023
Linda and her baby daughter, May, in New York
"My parents arrived in the US and I was their first child to be born in America, in 1950. We lived in Spanish Harlem where they owned a laundry business, and I asked my mother why we didn't live in Chinatown, where our community had gathered. She said it was 'too dirty' – that was her line, but she was really saying that she wanted more. I wasn't easily accepted in Harlem, and sometimes that was painful but living there opened my eyes up to other people, and other ideas. My upbringing was totally different to my older sister, who came over from Hong Kong when she was 23 and entered a semi-arranged marriage with a husband who had a place in Chinatown which she never left. That life was not going to be for me."
May Pang, 2024
“I was born to Chinese immigrant parents, who came from Taiwan. My father arrived in America first and sent for my mother. It was a very poor background and my parents worked in a laundry in Harlem. I have a brother and a sister, but I was the only one born in America. It was hard because I wasn’t accepted as either American or Chinese. I didn’t feel I was Chinese as I was born out of the homeland, and all the other relatives made fun of me. I went to China in 1984 and I was introduced as ‘the one who was born over there’.”
May Pang, 2007
“Music was my savior.”
May Pang, 2023
"We had a TV set and from an early age I realised that there was all of this amazing music coming out of there thanks to shows like American Bandstand. My father used to get crazy about it; when he was home we had the sound of Chinese operas all over the house, but I wanted to listen to songs that would shape my life and mean so much to me. This music made me feel less alone; my mother had put me into Catholic school because it was the best education but I wasn't Catholic and people who were like me, Chinese people, were at least a mile, two miles away."
May Pang, 2024
"I first saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, which was the show to watch. I was 13, 14 and had heard of them, and I wanted to see why they were so special. Suddenly, there they were, and everything was so different about them; their singing, their look, their personalities. I was gobsmacked and wanted to hear more so I went out and bought what records I could get my hands on – to this day I still have those original discs."
May Pang, 2024
“I was definitely an innocent. All I cared about at the time was work. It just so happened I was working with a famous rock star. But I was eager to learn the music business. The music was what got me to where I was. I used to study the liner notes to learn about the songwriters and producers. The lyrics moved me. I once told Dick Clark that American Bandstand helped me get through my childhood as a girl in a Chinese family, which was not particularly welcomed. The music took me to the next level.”
May Pang, 2022
May was educated at Saint Michael Academy, a Catholic school - despite not being Catholic but because her mother believed it offered better education. May didn't like school and dropped out soon after starting her first freshman year in New York City Community College. She decided to go out and find herself a job, applying everywhere. She applied at ABKCO (Allen & Betty Klein Company) Music & Records and got a job as an office floater (doing various jobs like secretary, receptionist, switchboard operator, typist, file clerk, clerical work) and spent 16 months working there. In December of 1970, May met John Lennon and Yoko Ono; the following day she was assigned to work with them, mainly based in New York. She helped capture flies for Yoko's art film, Fly, and assisted John on his own art film, Erection. In June of 1971, May went to England for 10 days, staying at Tittenhurst Park while John and Yoko were recording Imagine. During her stay, May met Julian and he took her on a fast golf cart ride round the property.
"My father’s an atheist, my mother’s a Buddhist. But my mother put me into the Catholic school because it was the school that had the best training, you know? And in retrospect I was very happy with that rebelliousness, rebelling the fact that I had to go to mass every Sunday… and you better have that envelope ready because the nuns count out that envelope and say, where were you? I don’t see the envelope! on Monday. I remember these nuns. I went to co-ed to high school and then it was all, all girls. And they thought I was a little nuts. I always said, music saved me. The music saved my soul… it soothed me. People thought I was a little crazy because I love the Young Rascals. Because they were the big thing American-wise. I mean, The Beatles were up here. And even in my yearbook, I got these notes, good luck with The Rascals and the Beatles. You know what? I started laughing because I was friendly with both of them. I was friendly with The Rascals. Because they lived near where I lived in the city. And I went to the concert and I got to be friends with them. And, um, of course who would’ve thought that about The Beatles? I mean, literally I remember being in grammar school and talking about The Beatles! "
May Pang, 2024
“I always wanted to be in the music business, because music was really in my soul. It saved me from a lot of the strife. I met my girlfriend, who was waiting for me downstairs, ‘Do you know that Apple Records is here?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I looked in the directory, and sure enough, there was Allen Klein’s office and Apple Records. She says, ‘You’re nuts!’ I said, ‘What are they going to say to me? If they say no, I’m still where I am.’ So I went up and got off on the 41st floor. This woman looked at me and she goes, ‘Can I help you?’ I’m looking around, because I’m looking for anything about the Beatles. And I said I was looking for a job. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I don’t think anything’s here.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ And she’s looking at me again, saying, ‘Um, is there something that’s on your mind?’ I said, ‘I was wondering if the Beatles ever showed up here!’ She just chuckled. She happened to yell out, ‘This woman’s looking for a job!’ And they told me to come back after lunch,”
May Pang, 2023
“Music was my passion. 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.’”
May Pang, 2022
“He’s had a bad press. There is something of the gangster about him, sure, but he wasn’t a total gangster like some of the record moguls. He genuinely loved the music and he was a brilliant man who did a lot of good.because Apple was in such disarray before he came along and he renegotiated The Beatles’ contracts. I loved working for the music publishing side of his business and even now I love to see who wrote a particular song.”
May Pang, 2007
"They were like two magnets that were repelling against each other. You just don’t want to get in the middle of that.”
May Pang, 2023
In the Summer of 1971, John and Yoko moved permanently to the United States. They first went hotel hopping before settling at The Dakota in February of 1973 where May had her own office and became their full time assistant. By this time, John and Yoko weren't getting along. It was obvious to everyone but they kept their mouths shut. At one party, John got so drunk he had sex with another girl in the bedroom while Yoko was there - everyone heard them.
"There were many things. I'm what I call a 'moving on' kind of girl; there's a song on our new album about it. Rather than deal with problems in relationships, I've always moved on. That's why I'm one of the very few survivors as a woman, you know. Women tend to be more into men usually, but I wasn't... But when I met John, women to him were basically people around who were serving him. He had to open himself up and face me... and I had to see what he was going through. But I thought I had to move on again, because I was suffering being with John. The pressure from the public, being the one who broke up the Beatles and who made it impossible for them to get back together. My artwork suffered, too. I thought I wanted to be free from being Mrs. Lennon, so I thought it would be a good idea for him to go to L.A. and leave me alone for a while. I had put up with it for many years. Even early on, when John was a Beatle, we stayed in a room and John and I were in bed and the door was closed and all that, but we didn't lock the door and one of the Beatle assistants just walked in and talked to him as if I weren't there. It was mind-blowing. I was invisible. The people around John saw me as a terrible threat. I mean, I heard there were plans to kill me. Not the Beatles but the people around them. The society doesn't understand that the woman can be castrated, too. I felt castrated. Before, I was doing all right, thank you. My work might not have been selling much, I might have been poorer, but I had my pride. But the most humiliating thing is to be looked at as a parasite."
Yoko Ono, 1980
"When Yoko and I started doing stuff together, we would hold press conferences and announce our whatevers... we're going to wear bags or whatever. And before this one press conference, one Beatle assistant in the upper echelon of Beatle assistants leaned over to Yoko and said, You know, you don't have to work. You've got enough money, now that you're Mrs. Lennon.' And when she complained to me about it, I couldn't understand what she was talking about. 'But this guy,' I'd say, 'He's just good old Charley, or whatever. He's been with us 20 years...' The same kind of thing happened in the studio. She would say to an engineer, 'I'd like a little more treble, a little more bass,' or 'There's too much of whatever you're putting on,' and they'd look at me and say, 'What did you say, John?' Those days I didn't even notice it myself. Now I know what she's talking about. In Japan, when I ask for a cup of tea in Japanese, they look at Yoko and ask, 'He wants a cup of tea?' in Japanese."
John, 1980
"So a good few years of that kind of thing emasculated you. I had always been more macho than most guys I was with, in a sense. I had always been the breadwinner, because I always wanted to have the freedom and the control. Suddenly, I'm with somebody I can't possibly compete with on a level of earnings. Finally, I couldn't take it... or I decided not to take it any longer. I would have had the same difficulty even if I hadn't gotten involved with John. But John wasn't just John. He was also his group and the people around them. When I say John, it's not just John..."
Yoko Ono, 1980
"She don't suffer fools gladly, even if she's married to him."
John, 1980
At this time, May was single - while she had a few casual boyfriends, including Pete Ham from Badfinger briefly in 1971 - she wasn't really looking to be in a romantic relationship. John and Yoko's needs took most of her time. However, one morning, Yoko came into May's office with a request:
“Yoko came to me at 9.30 in the morning – I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee – and she said, ‘May, I’ve got to talk to you. John and I are not getting along’, which I knew because the tension in the house was very thick. She said, ‘He is going to start going out with other people’, and my first thought was ‘Who will I be taking orders from? Him, her or this mystery person?’ She said, ‘I know you don’t have a boyfriend and I know you are not after John, but you need a boyfriend and you would be good for him.’ I said I didn’t think so, but she said, ‘You don’t want him to go out with somebody who is going to be nasty to him, do you?’ and I said, ‘Of course not’, and she said, ‘Well, you will be perfect’ and she walked out.”
May Pang, 2007
“‘You don’t have a boyfriend, right?’ I said: ‘Yes, but please go to someone else with this.’ Then she said: ‘You’re nice and you don’t want him to go out with somebody that’s not going to be nice to him, right?’ I said: ‘Of course not.’ So, she said: ‘You’re perfect.’ I said ‘no’ and she kept saying ‘yes’. Then she walked out the door. Later, John told me that she went to him after and said: ‘I fixed it for you.’”
May Pang, 2023
“Yes, Yoko did approach me, and I thought it was insane, 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.”
May Pang, 2022
“Yoko kept pushing, but I waited for John to make the first move. It was not something that I wanted. Afterwards, I’d say to him, ‘Where is this going?’ And he’d say, ‘I don’t know. I’m just tired of being pushed around. And ya know what? I’m just going for it.’ He wasn’t happy in his marriage, and it made life miserable for everyone working around them.”
May Pang, 2022
“He wasn’t jumping for joy. He didn’t want to, and I didn’t. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t have gone out with him.”
May Pang, 2023
“Yoko wanted me to be his girlfriend so she could control the relationship.”
May Pang, 2023
“I just wanted to treat him as a regular person. I didn’t want to be his mother, but I did act as his secretary, his personal assistant. I would answer the phones for him. Once we got together, I no longer worked for him. But I wanted to help him with everyday stuff. I wanted it to be just me and him.”
May Pang, 2022
By November of 1973, John and May started their affair and, out of the blue, went to Los Angeles (Yoko didn't send them there as it's believed). However, I think May got overwhelmed as she briefly broke up with John and went back to New York. She went to see and spend time with Yoko. By the third day, May was informed about Julian's pending visit (more about this in another post) and went back to John that night. At first they stayed at lawyer Harold Seider's apartment before going to Peter Lawford's home (where John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe allegedly had their trysts) with Ringo, Keith Moon, and Harry Nilsson living together.
"We were separated in the early Seventies. She kicked me out. Suddenly, I was on a raft alone in the middle of the universe. Well, at first, I thought, Whoopee, whoopee! You know, bachelor life! Whoopee! And then I woke up one day and I thought, What is this? I want to go home! But she wouldn't let me come home. That's why it was 18 months apart instead of six months. We were talking all the time on the phone and I would say, 'I don't like this, I'm getting in trouble and I'd like to come home, please.' And she would say, 'You're not ready to come home.' So what do you say? OK, back to the bottle. She has her ways. Whether they be mystical or practical. When she said it's not ready, it ain't ready. I was just trying to hide what I felt in the bottle. I was just insane. It was the lost weekend that lasted 18 months. I've never drunk so much in my life. I tried to drown myself in the bottle and I was with the heaviest drinkers in the business. Such as Harry Nilsson, Bobby Keyes, Keith Moon. We couldn't pull ourselves out. We were trying to kill ourselves. I think Harry might still be trying, poor bugger... God bless you, Harry, wherever you are... but, Jesus, you know, I had to get away from that, because somebody was going to die. Well, Keith did. It was like, who's going to die first? Unfortunately, Keith was the one. For me, it was because of being apart. I couldn't stand it. They had their own reasons, and it was, Let's all drown ourselves together. From where I was sitting, it looked like that. Let's kill ourselves but do it like Errol Flynn, you know, the macho, male way. It's embarrassing for me to think about that period, because I made a big fool of myself... but maybe it was a good lesson for me. I wrote 'Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out' during that time. That's how I felt. It exactly expresses the whole period. For some reason, I always imagined Sinatra singing that one. I don't know why. It's kind of a Sinatraesque song, really. He would do a perfect job with it. Are you listening, Frank? You need a song that isn't a piece of nothing. Here's the one for you, the horn arrangement and everything's made for you. But don't ask me to produce it."
John, 1980
"Yoko kicked me out! She literally kicked me out! I said, 'Okay, okay, I'm going... bachelor free!' I've been married all my life, and I thought, 'Woohoo! Yippee!' But it was God awful."
John, 1980
"But people had the misconception that she controlled everything: Whatever she said he did. It really wasn’t like that. And that’s the line in the press: Yoko sent us to LA. She didn’t know he even went to LA! John just happened to be talking to his lawyer, who at the time lived in LA. And he decided, 'This evening, May and I will be on that plane with you.' I’m standing there going, What? We’re leaving somewhere? So it was my first time ever being in first class! But I didn’t know we were leaving. So I had to run home, make the reservation, run home, get it together, come back, and then leave with everybody. We were in LA for a few days before we even told anyone we were there. But it’s one of those misconceptions that’s out there."
May Pang, 2024
"John wasn’t into many drugs, although he would have coke if he was offered some. There was a lot of drink, but that was down to Harry Nilsson. He had shown John Brandy Alexanders: that is, brandy with cream – and when you shake it up, it tastes like a milk shake. There were a couple of nights where we ran into problems. We got thrown out of the Troubadour one night and something else happened another night, and the press kept bringing them up. It was Harry who started the trouble, but it made better copy when you read it was John. In fact, he was telling Harry to stop.”
May Pang, 2007
"The stories were all so exaggerated, but... We were all in a restaurant, drinking, not eating, as usual at those gatherings, and I happened to go take a pee and there was a brand-new fresh Kotex, not Tampax, on the toilet. You know the old trick where you put a penny on your forehead and it sticks? I was a little high and I just picked it up and slapped it on and it stayed, you see. I walked out of the bathroom and I had a Kotex on my head. Big deal. Everybody went 'Ha-ha-ha' and it fell off, but the press blew it up."
John, 1980
Believe it or not, John was incredibly active in music. He wanted to do a classic rock and roll album and enlisted Phil Spector to do the producing. Unfortunately, he was the the midst of divorce and custody battle with wife Ronnie Spector and behaved more erratically and dangerous than before. At one point, the Rock & Roll album had to be shelved (it was eventually released in 1975) so John focused on another album with his own original material he'd written called Walls & Bridges as well as collaborating with Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Elton John, and David Bowie. May was with him throughout, even providing background vocals on some songs like #9 Dream by whispering John's name.
John and May also did some bit of traveling besides going back and forth of Los Angeles and New York; they went to Colorado and Las Vegas, including West Palm Beach with Julian and where John signed the documents officially disbanding The Beatles. Through it all, John and Yoko kept in touch - especially Yoko.
“She never stopped calling us. She says that John called her. It’s the other way around. She called us all the time. It was the first phone call in the morning, and she called not once, not twice, but sometimes ten times a day, about nothing, for no reason. I know that she told somebody she thought that our relationship was only going to be a two-week fling, and when she realized it wasn’t going to be a two-week fling, she was panic-struck. Yoko called John and asked for a divorce. He agreed, and she didn’t expect that. … But she then said the stars weren’t right.”
May Pang, 2023
“She’d call 20 times a day. Sometimes it would be at 4 a.m. And the calls were over nothing. She would say, ‘I just went for aencouragementd say, ‘And?’ But there would be no and. John was not responding as Yoko wanted. She called on Paul to see what was happening with us. She told Paul, ‘Oh, I don’t mind John coming home.’ John never knew, but Yoko sent Paul to check us out.”
May Pang, 2023
“I felt awful, and I told John that, Yoko was calling 10-15 times a day wanting to know what was going on. Little did I know, she was cheating on him at the same time. I had no idea, and neither did John. We found out together.
May Pang, 2022
Yoko was seeing David Spinozza. But aside from both affairs, Yoko went to London and saw Paul and Linda McCartney in March of 1974. She had concerns over the trouble-making John was causing in Los Angeles (and thought May was doing a poor job keeping John in check) so they went to Los Angeles to see for themselves.
“I sat him down and said, ‘I feel like a matchmaker here, but Yoko still loves you. Do you still love her?’ And his guard came down and he said, ‘Yes. But I don’t know what to do.’ So I said, ‘Well, Yoko came to see us in London. So, we’ve talked to her and she does still love you, but you’re going to have to work your arse off to win her back.’ … John did just that, and not long after, Sean was born.”
Paul McCartney, 2025
Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here! In June of 1974, John was tired of Los Angeles and wanted to go back to New York. There was a month where John and May were separated and they decided to get a place for themselves. May's apartment was too small, especially if Julian would be coming to visit so John and May found an apartment in the Upper East Side.
"John said excitedly, 'We've got to get a place for ourselves, because when Julian comes, we've got to have a place for him to stay.' At the end of June, the musicians went home thrilled, and we moved out of the Pierre hotel and back to my apartment. 'I want Julian to be able to stay with us when he comes over. So we have to find something with two rooms for him. I know you like this place, Fung Yee, so do I, but the time has come to find a bigger apartment right now,' said John after we unpacked."
May Pang, 1983 from her book Loving John
"But it was good fun. We just enjoyed each other’s company. We did things together. We were in New York, and he said, 'What do you think we should do today?' I said, 'You know what? You wanted to see New York.' I took him on a bus ride. He looked at me and he goes, 'We’re getting on a city bus?!' I said, absolutely. You wanna see what I do? You wanna see what other people do? So we got on a bus where we lived at that point, uh, at my studio apartment. And I’m talking about a tiny little apartment—but he loved it because it was cozy. It wasn’t, you know, massive like the Dakota. And so we got up and we went on the bus on Lexington Avenue, went down. There was hardly anybody on the bus where we got on and as we kept going, people were getting on. Now it was getting crowded. And you hear start, you start hearing people going, is that John Lennon? Is that John? Is that John Lennon sitting there? And John would look at me and he goes, 'It’s the nose.'”
May Pang, 2024
John refused to meet May's mother - probably felt shamed that he was still a married man whose living with her daughter in sin. However, he did love her cooking. When she would come to visit, John would hide.
“I said, ‘I’m hungry. Mom, can you make fried rice?’ She made the best fried rice and she says, ‘fine’, cos she lived close by. So then my mom comes to the door and she says, ‘Everything OK?’ John’s still saying he’s not ready to meet her, so he’s in the other room. Mom just says, ‘Here it is’ and walks away. Later, when we were not quote ‘together’, me and John were in the apartment, eating Chinese food, and John says, ‘I really wish now that I’d met your mom!’ I was glad he mentioned it to me. That he thought about it. My mom offered unconditional love, which is something John didn’t get from his family. He lost his mom. His dad was not around for years, then all of a sudden was saying in the newspapers, ‘My son doesn’t care for me!’ John was so conflicted about his own personal life. It’s what he and Yoko had in common.”
May Pang, 2023
By January of 1975, things were going well with John and May: they were looking into buying a house in Montauk and John was considering writing songs with Paul again. They were thinking about joining Paul, Linda, and Wings to New Orleans while they were working on Venus & Mars.
“I was in New Orleans. It was really an amazing moment to me, because it’s 49 years ago I was supposed to be doing this trip with John, to the month. Because Paul and Linda came over and said, ‘We’re thinking of doing our next album. We’re gonna be down in New Orleans.’ John said, ‘Oh really? That sounds good!’ After they left, a day or so later, he showed me his guitar and said, ‘Hey May, I gotta ask you something. What do you think if I wrote with Paul again?’ This is after they dissolved The Beatles officially. I said, ‘If you wanna write with him, I think it would be great.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Solo, you guys are good. But when the two of you put your heads together, that’s another story. That takes it to another level.’ And he just sort of went, ‘OK.’ Then a day or two later, he said, ‘We should go down to New Orleans.’ Paul and Linda had no idea we were thinking about doing that. Obviously, it didn’t happen. I knew that if we had gotten down there, they probably would have written, and John would probably have been on the record. John would have been there for it. Ten years later, I told it to Linda first, and she said, ‘You should tell Paul.’ I said, ‘No, you should tell him yourself,’ and she said, ‘You should tell him.’ Then she brought me over to Paul, and she says, ‘She’s got something to tell you.’ I told Paul we were thinking of visiting him, and he goes, ‘Oh, sure sure sure.’ I knew that he didn’t really believe me. But then about a year or so later, Derek Taylor, who was of course the PR guy for The Beatles, he was selling his stuff, and Paul saw a postcard. It was from John to Derek, and there was John saying, ‘Thinking of visiting the Macs in New Orleans.’ And he told me that. They would never have known that, and I just happened to say it. I always took to the background so nobody really thought of me, I never put myself out there, you know, ‘Hey, this is who I’m with.’ It’s only now that I talk about it, only because people have gotten my timing and things wrong."
May Pang, 2024
John did see his estranged wife on occasions. John did invite Yoko to the Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club showing at the Beacon Theatre on November 17, 1974 but he ignored her. Then on November 28th, John, May, and Yoko were at Elton John's concert at Madison Square Garden and John went onstage to perform three songs after losing a bet his song Whatever Gets You Thru the Night going to number one on the Billboard charts. John and Elton also performed Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and I Saw Her Standing There. It would be his last public performance. John and May invited Yoko but she complained the location of her ticket, so John was unsure if she was going to go. Yoko sent orchids to John and Elton and decided to attend after all; they saw each other backstage after the show.
“In January 1975, after visiting Mick and Bianca Jagger at Andy Warhol’s house in Montauk, we found a house to buy there. I think Yoko got wind of how close we became. If we bought the house, it would have been the end.”
May Pang, 2023
"It wasn’t a weekend. I mean, there was Los Angeles. We had Julian over, we went to West Palm Beach and Disney World. We met George Harrison, and then we went to the Elton John concert. People say that John and Yoko reconnected at that concert, but that’s not true. They didn’t reconnect until 1975.”
May Pang, 2024
“I had a strange feeling, a premonition that something was not going the right way.”
May Pang, 2022
In February of 1975, things changed....
“He headed it for the door and I knew it was not good. John told me, ‘Yoko is allowing me to come back.’ I asked whose idea it was. He said ‘Nobody’s.’ That was the end. It hit me hard.”
May Pang, 2023
“Yoko called up when she got wind that he wanted to quit smoking, ‘Oh, my God, I found this great method. It’s under hypnosis.’ And you know when you get a weird feeling when somebody says something like that? She was so insistent on the day that he had to go to meet the hypnotist. And I remember before he left, John saying to me, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back. We’ll go out to dinner; make a reservation.'”
May Pang, 2023
“John’s going, ‘Yoko’s allowed me to come home.’ And I said, ‘Really? So where does that leave us?’ He goes, ‘It’s because she thinks it’s better for my immigration,' I just looked at a guy that I did not recognize at that moment. We had already told lawyers that we were interested in buying a house out in Montauk. So everything just stopped. Everything halted.”
May Pang, 2023
“She said to him that he needed to live at the Dakota because of his immigration status. That was his weak spot: he wanted to live in America. He said, ‘We don’t want the government to say, ‘You’re running all over the place’. So I said to him, ‘What happens to us?’ He goes, ‘Nothing, I can still see you!” And I said, ‘That doesn’t make sense to me.’ I didn’t accept it, but I had to accept it, if you know what I mean.”
May Pang, 2023
"It slowly started to dawn on me that John was not the trouble at all. John was a fine person. It was society that had become too much. We laugh about it now, but we started dating again. I wanted to be sure. I'm thankful that he was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we could save our marriage, not because we didn't love each other but because it was getting too much for me. Nothing would have changed if I had come back as Mrs. Lennon again. It was good for me to do the business and regain my pride about what I could do. And it was good to know what he needed, the role reversal that was so good for him."
Yoko Ono, 1980
"And we learned that it's better for the family if we are both working for the family, she doing the business and me playing mother and wife. We reordered our priorities. The number-one priority is her and the family. Everything else revolves around that."
John, 1980
"I understand why he did it, I’d worked at the Dakota, remember? He wasn’t happy about saying it. He was just appeasing Yoko.”
May Pang, 2023
"It's a hard realization. These days, the society prefers single people. The encouragement are to divorce or separate or be single or gay... whatever. Corporations want singles-- they work harder if they don't have family ties. They don't have to worry about being home in the evenings or on the weekends. There's not much room for emotions about family or personal relationships. You know, the whole thing they say to women approaching 30 that if you don't have a baby in the next few years, you're going to be in trouble, you'll never be a mother, so you'll never be fulfilled in that way and so instead of the society discouraging children, since they are important for society, it should encourage them. It's the responsibility of everybody. But it is hard. A woman has to deny what she has, her womb, if she wants to make it. It seems that only the privileged classes can have families. Nowadays, maybe it's only the McCartneys and the Lennons or something."
Yoko Ono, 1980
“I said: ‘Congratulations. You got John back. You should be very happy now.’ Her response was very interesting to me. She said: “Happy? I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy.’ To me, that didn’t sound like somebody warmly inviting that person back into their life.”
May Pang, 2023
John informed May at Yoko was pregnant at a coffee shop. May resumed her job as John and Yoko's assistant but instead of working at The Dakota, she worked at the Capitol building and found a new apartment in the same area in the Upper East Side. But midway in 1975, May quit her job. She did freelance jobs and discovered she had been blacklisted from record labels until she got a job as an assistant to the President at Island Records in 1977. At first, John kept in touch with May until Sean was born in October of 1975 but in December John, Yoko, and May saw each other at Ashley's. John started calling May again, and they continued on their affair, this time more discretion. They would have their trysts at the home of Richard and Cynthia Ross in Home.
"It was devastating. I learned it was the same way for John. Even though he was back at the house with Yoko, he was still calling me. He just wanted to make sure I was alright. If anyone knew John, they knew he was not the type of person to do that. Once you were gone that was it, but that’s not how it was with us."
May Pang, 2014
“But I didn’t press it, I just wanted to be sure he was okay. And I would always ask: ‘Are you talking to Julian?’ Because to me that was very important. If nothing else, I wanted to make sure that he and his son were still in contact.”
May Pang, 2023
“If Sean wanted to have a conversation with me, if he wanted to reach out, I would be here, absolutely. I’m not opposed to him. When it comes to the situation between his mother and myself, he’s an innocent party.”
May Pang, 2023
May and Yoko saw each other twice in 1977: the first at the Plaza Hotel in the elevator for a meeting - May was invited to join Hilary Gerrard and Neil Aspinall. The second and final (until many years later) meeting was at a party hosted by Rod Stewart when John and Yoko arrived with Peter and Lorraine Boyle after they had just gotten married. In December of 1977, John and May ended their affair; it wasn't until a year later (December of 1978) that she heard from John again while Yoko was on a business trip to London for a meeting with Apple Corps. May had gotten a new job at ABC Radio.
“He called me from South Africa, from Cape Town, in 1980, and he just wanted to talk. He said, ‘I’m trying to figure out a way to come so that we can get together.’ He just told me how much he missed me.”
May Pang, 2023
“Calls would be sudden. The last one was on Memorial Day Weekend 1980. He called from Cape Town and said, ‘We have to find a way for us to get together.’"
May Pang, 2023
"Looking back I feel love for each person I was involved with, but John was the first person I ever lived with. He definitely made an impression. Even though we were not together in the last five years, he stayed in touch with me. Not many people realize that. He called me a lot. Our relationship really did not end, even though there was a forced ending to it. He would still call me. He even called me from South Africa the year he died, just to talk."
May Pang, 2014
"I just thought about it and decided, 'OK, I’m going to call him.' I got on the phone and just came right out and asked him. He was gracious enough to say ‘Of course.’ I was glad he was willing to talk. I was with John when he and Cynthia finally met in person for the first time since he left her for Yoko, and I was grateful they got to have closure.
May Pang, 2023
But on the late night of December 8, 1980, her world changed dramatically....
“I was at a friend’s house and heard on the radio that John was shot, I went cold and called a friend to make sure I heard it correctly. I next heard that he was dead. I dropped the phone and screamed. I later spent a lot of time crying by myself and spoke with him spiritually. I’d say, ‘I can’t believe you’re not here.’ We never had closure, and I don’t have closure to this day. Jerry [Rubin] told me Yoko was surprised my relationship with John lasted more than two weeks. Her plan was for it to really be a lost weekend. But it wasn’t that. She did not expect us to fall in love.”
May Pang, 2023
“There’s no closure with me and John. That’s the bottom line to that.”
May Pang, 2023
“Let’s put it this way. My time with John might have been short, but everything during it was monumental, I was there when he jammed with Paul for the last time. I played tambourine with Mal Evans. We saw UFOs together.”
May Pang, 2022
“For a person who is not supposed to be in his life, I was in his life.”
May Pang, 2023
“For one, people say it was only a weekend. When the reality is I knew him for ten years. I started working for him in December 1970, and he died in December 1980. It’s ten years to the month!”
May Pang, 2024
Pregnant May with her husband Tony Visconti
After John's death, May worked for United Artist Publishing and started a relationship with Tony Visconti, who she met while with John in 1974. They married in 1989 and in 1991, Tony and May moved to Rockland County and had two children, Sebastian (July 1, 1989) and Lara (June 6, 1991). Tony and May divorced in 2000 and remained friends.
"I originally met him when John and I were together; we were introduced to David Bowie by Elizabeth Taylor at a party and met Tony after that. 10 years later, there was a new music seminar and Tony was one of the speakers on a panel. I went along, and thought, 'I remember him,' and we chatted and went to dinner, and hung out for a couple of days. I didn't see him again until I was in London for something, and by pure chance I was in the Groucho club with a girlfriend who was producing a commercial and having a meeting there. I was sitting waiting for her, making a list of people to catch up with. I looked through my address book and thought, 'Oh, Tony, I haven't talked to him in four years,' and I wrote down his name. Just as I did that, he walked into the Club. My girlfriend saw the look on my face, like, 'Oh, my God, what just happened? I just wrote his name. And there he appeared.' So that's how it started. We married in 1989 and The Beatles' In My Life was played at our wedding. We were together for over a decade and had two children. Neither of them went into the music business – one is in alarm tech and the other is a visual designer – but they can both sing!"
May Pang, 2024
"That's tough. Or husband, let's put it that way. The terrible thing about it is, I didn't talk about it at home when I was married. But, I'm not married now. So, it's something I can talk about freely. But, that was a big part of my life. I had spent ten years knowing John and working for him. So, it's quite interesting.""
May Pang
“They’re in that millennial age where it doesn’t faze them. I know my daughter was a little into Bowie because she was a glam-rock girl.”
May Pang, 2024
In October 2006, May was in Reykjavik, Iceland the same time as Yoko who was there for the lighting ceremony of the Imagine Peace Lighthouse Tower in honor of John's birthday.
"Well, if you count perfunctory hellos, we have spoken a couple of times. I did see her and Sean at Julian’s exhibition. Everyone was cordial. I also saw Yoko in, of all places, Reykjavik, Iceland on John’s birthday a few years ago. One of John’s cosmic jokes, no doubt."
May Pang, 2011
“She was nice as I was leaving. She was still waving and smiling.”
May Pang, 2023
"Well not weird because I know her so well. But it was weird because of all places: Reykjavík! I was doing a promotion thing with IcelandAir, where if you leave New York or whatever on your way to Europe, you have a chance to stay overnight in Iceland. I love Iceland. It’s like the best secret… but now we’ll be letting it out to everyone! But it was weird because I found out she was in town when I got off the plane, and sent her a note saying I was also in town, and she never responded. I only stayed overnight that one night. And the next morning I’m at the hotel restaurant having breakfast and my girlfriend comes over and sits down and says 'I just asked her what I should have.' I said, 'What are you talking about?' And she says, 'Yoko. She’s over there'. 'She’s here?!?' And I look over and Yoko’s at the same hotel buffet, walking around deciding what she’s going to eat, with two assistants carrying her food around. So I went over, and I’m standing on the other side of this long table saying, 'Yoko,' and she wouldn’t look up. You could hear a pin drop in that place—everyone was looking at us like one of us was about to jump across the table at the other! And the third time I say her name she finally looks up. I mean, normally when you hear your name being called you look up? So she looked at me and said, 'It’s May.' And I said, 'I just wanted to come over and say hello and wish you all the best for whatever your project is here.' And she said thank you and I just turned around and walked away. I mean, literally, you could hear the pin drop. So I sat back down and started to eat and I could see out of the corner of my eye that she’s wandering around the table again… and I know her. She’s looking for me. She finally spots me and she’s standing at the doorway between the two dining rooms. And she’s standing there waving at me. I’m wondering is she really waving at me now? There’s no one else here!And I wave back and she goes, 'How are you?' And now with a big smile I said, 'I’m fine. Thank you.' And I just went back to eating, ’cause I didn’t wanna have to do this again… I call it the take two. Just so everyone who missed it the first time could see. And I wasn’t about to do that. I’m looking at my breakfast! But I think seeing the story now, seeing the whole storyline, you could see the manipulation."
May Pang, 2024
May with her children, Sebastian and Lara
May last saw Yoko at Julian's photography exhibition (Timeless) in 2010. It was the first and only time that Cynthia, Julian, Yoko, Sean, and May were in the same room..No drama. I think Yoko and May kept their distance. Plus, Yoko seemed to have had a request....
“I was not allowed to be photographed anywhere near them. The other person who wasn’t allowed to be photographed was Pattie Boyd. We were just ignored.”
May Pang, 2023
Okay, I have to rebuttal that. There IS a picture of Pattie and Yoko having a conversation and there's quite a handful of pictures of Pattie at the event. There's also a video clip of Julian having a moment with Pattie while sitting with Noel.Charles. Pattie wasn't ignored. Although, granted, I haven't yet seen a photo of Cynthia and Pattie together there.... But, never know....
Anyway, back to May. To continue to make a living, May launched her own jewelry line of stainless steel Feng Shui jewelry and designed furniture. She also launched a photography career by exhibiting her photos of John during their time together.
"I've been doing some jewelry. I make the jewelry. It's on my website. Right now I'm in the process of finally thinking about my photos. Photos that I've had for years and maybe putting them together. So, that should be in the future. You read the book. People have no idea that I was with John for this length of time. And it's not a short amount of time either. When people talk, they say he was so down and out when he was in L.A. He was always drunk. We didn't only live in L.A. You know when people look at that picture with John and the New York City t-shirt, that was on my balcony! That's where we lived together. But, you don't know that because it's never referred to."
May Pang
"My mother, who was a little old lady from China, passed away a few years ago at the age of 97, liked to make jewelry. I took all her supplies and started making my own jewelry as a way to honor her. She had an amazing eye for these things. I inherited her vintage Swarovski beads. I am updating all her work to fit into the 2000’s. I’m sure she can see it all from heaven. I’m also working on some limited edition photos from my book, Instamatic Karma."
May Pang
“I was just taking photos of the moment, you know. You sort of say, ‘Oh, that’s a good shot.’ And that’s it! All these years, it had been in my storage underneath the bed. I’m still sleeping on the original bed, believe it or not, that John and I had. We had a captain’s bed. So, there’s the storage thing, here it is, and I just leave it there. It finally made its way up, and Scott, my business partner in all this, said, ‘You’ve gotta do something. People should see these.’ He was chasing me for six years to do this, and I said, ‘No, I’m not ready.’ It just happened to coincide with the movie, and that took three years. it all just came around at the same time, and it works. I’m just happy to see people, when they look at it, they get emotional. That to me was amazing. That they get emotional because they see the John that you could see through my eyes.”
May Pang, 2024
"This was all my love for taking photographs. That’s it. And I’ve been very honored by so many photographers that have come by and that are professionals by trade. And they all look at the photos and said, you know, you have an eye for some of these photos, it’s amazing the framing… I have no idea! I just took from what I saw! So I’m very, very honored when a professional photographer likes my photos."
May Pang, 2024
In 2022, May released her documentary, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story.
“People have been taking my narrative and talking about my life as if they knew everything about me, and they didn’t. 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.’”
May Pang, 2022
"I want people to know that the relationship that I had with John was a real one. It was not put together by Yoko Ono. It was really something that we worked at. We lived together. We shared so many things together. It was a real relationship in which we loved each other."
May Pang, 2023
“Let me put it this way, everybody says it’s unfair to her but it works both ways. If you go back in the past, she’s erased me, like I didn’t exist. It’s not her movie. I put in things that happened to me. And if it isn’t flattering to her, what am I supposed to do?”
May Pang, 2023
“It’s not necessarily every day that he comes to me. But it’s like Julian says, he knows his father’s thinking of him when he sees a white feather. We all have our little moments.”
May Pang, 2023
