Artist Who Was Former Girlfriend of John Lennon Will Display Her Photos of Him at the Cygnet Gallery
by Bill Trotter/Bangor Daily News
SOUTHWEST HARBOR—May Pang never sought to become John Lennon’s live-in girlfriend when, in her early 20s, she met the ex-Beatle and his wife Yoko Ono while working for ABKCO Records in Manhattan.
But after Lennon and Ono became estranged, and Pang and Lennon became a couple, the New York City resident definitely wanted to document and preserve those moments through photography.
Pang, now 74, is bringing a collection of those photos to Mount Desert Island this month to display them at Cygnet Gallery in Southwest Harbor. The photos will be exhibited at the gallery during the weekend of Friday, July 25 through Sunday, July 27.
In an interview, Pang said she always had an interest in photography, since before she met Lennon, and when they were a couple he encouraged her to take photos of their life together. Prints of the images, which for the exhibit number around three dozen, will be available for sale at the exhibit but, at the time they were captured roughly 50 years ago, were not intended for a public audience, she said. Pang will be at the exhibit on Saturday and Sunday and available to sign purchased prints.
“They were more for us, just to have,” Pang said. “But the photographs are not just about me and him. They are about the times.”
The pop-up exhibit comes three years after the release of a documentary called “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” in which Pang tells how she became Lennon’s girlfriend.
“The Lost Weekend,” taken from the title of a 1945 movie, is the term Lennon chose for the nearly two-year period he lived apart from Ono and became intimately involved with Pang.
The documentary was based on a book Pang wrote, and later updated, about her relationship with Lennon in 1983, three years after he was shot and killed by a deranged fan outside his apartment building in New York City. Another book of her photos from her life with Lennon was published in 2008.
Pang said that even today, most people who know that she and Lennon were romantically linked don’t understand the depth, however temporary, of their relationship.
“That’s why I did the documentary,” Pang said. “I let it go for a long time, but I got tired of other people telling my story.”
In the documentary, Pang details how she grew up in Spanish Harlem in New York City, got a job at the Beatles’ record company and then ended up working directly for Lennon and Ono.
When Lennon and Ono started having marital problems, Ono encouraged Pang to date Lennon, Pang said. Pang said she was skeptical at first but Lennon took an interest in her, and their relationship quickly grew and became intimate.
For the next year and a half, Pang and Lennon were a couple, spending time in both New York and in Los Angeles. It was during this time that Pang helped Lennon reconnect with his son Julian from his first marriage to Cynthia Powell, with whom Pang remained friends until Powell’s death in 2015. Through Lennon, Pang also got to meet and become friends with other musicians such as ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, Elton John, David Bowie and Harry Nilsson.
Pang, a rock n’ roll fan before she met Lennon, said that he spent more time during this period making music, and less time being outspoken about politics, as he was in his early relationship with Ono. In addition to collaborating with Elton John and Nilsson, and working with Phil Spector, Lennon re-connected with Paul McCartney, though their relationship had soured when the Beatles split up in 1970.
Lennon asked her if he should try writing music again with McCartney, who shared writing credit with Lennon on many of the Beatles biggest hits.
“I said ‘Of course you should,’” Pang said. “The Beatles were not just a band. They really shaped the baby boomer generation.”
But Lennon reconciled with Ono and moved back in with her in 1975, largely ending his relationship with Pang, though she says they remained in touch and saw each other a few times over the years until Lennon died in 1980.
Pang said she never reconnected with Ono again, after Lennon moved back in with her — not even after Lennon was killed.
“I reached out, but I heard nothing,” Pang said.
Pang said that if Lennon were still around today, he likely would both welcome and be horrified by different aspects of the modern world.
Politically, Lennon would not support President Donald Trump, who drew little public attention in the 1970s, she said. Lennon himself was targeted by then-President Richard Nixon for deportation, but Pang noted that those efforts were channeled through the court system, not through Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And after Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, efforts to deport Lennon were dropped, she said.
But Lennon also was enamored of technology, she said, and would love the instant gratification enabled by the internet. He loved cable television, she said, and wanted to get a Polaroid camera even before they were publicly available.
She said Lennon would “embrace” the streaming era, and likely would follow the careers of pop artists like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.
“He loved ska music, and liked disco,” Pang said. “‘Love Train’ was one of his favorite songs. He would be so fascinated.”
The pop-up show is one of several Pang’s agent has arranged in the Northeast over the coming months. Others will happen in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Long Island and upstate New York; and New Jersey.
This story appears through a media partnership with the Bangor Daily News. This allows the BDN to use a certain amount of our stories a week and we can also choose to share that paper’s.
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