Did John Lennon’s Lost Weekend Nearly Spawn a McCartney Reunion?
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.
Pang has told her story in book form, but upcoming documentary The Lost Weekend: A Love Story (trailer below) is the first time she’s been involved in a screen version. “I decided it was time to reclaim my own history,” she told Variety in a recent interview. “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.
“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.’”
Speaking about how the episode ended after their return to New York, she said: “Yoko told John she wanted a divorce and ordered him to her attorney’s office to sign the papers. When John came home, he claimed, ‘I’m going to be a free man in six months.’”
Soon afterwards, she continued, Ono met Lennon to talk about using hypnosis to stop him smoking, after which he’d planned to take Pang to dinner – but instead he went home with Ono and they re-established their marriage. Pang said the sudden change of direction meant a planned dinner date with McCartney and his wife Linda never took place.
“I had a strange feeling, a premonition that something was not going the right way,” she recalled. “I knew, at that moment, if John and I had gone to meet Paul and Linda, there would have been new music. He [had] asked me if I thought it was a good idea for him to write with Paul again. What do you think I said?”
During his time with Pang, Lennon revitalized his music career, reconnected with ex-wife Cynthia and their son Julian, and even took part in what would be his final studio session with McCartney. “My time with John might have been short, but everything during it was monumental,” she said. “I was there when he jammed with Paul for the last time… I played tambourines with Mal Evans. We saw UFOs together.”
The Lost Weekend: A Love Story premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival yesterday (June 10). Release plans have not yet been revealed.
Watch a Trailer for ‘The Lost Weekend: A Love Story’