The Brutal Truth Behind John Lennon’s Booze-Fueled 'Lost Weekend' — Sparked by Yoko Ono Ordering Young Assistant to Have Affair With Tormented Beatles Icon
Lennon wanted Clapton to join a supergroup in the early 1970s.
Nov. 21 2024, Published 8:06 a.m. ET
The Beatles star John Lennon "charmed the pants" off a young assistant after partner Yoko Ono banished him from their New York apartment.
In 1973, Ono exiled Lennon from their home in New York and instructed assistant May Pang, then 23, to have an affair with him, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
But the brutal truth behind their 18-month fling is that Pang was a reluctant player in the mind games between Lennon and Ono, and the star later revealed he hated his life at the time.
Lennon had an 18-month affair with his young assistant.
"It was god-awful," he said in his last interview, with Playboy. "I drank too much. … I was out of control, and nobody was looking after me and I needed somebody to love me and there was nobody there to support me, and I just fell apart."
Pang, now 72, was a teenage college dropout when she bluffed her way into a job at The Beatles’ Apple Records, then as personal assistant to Lennon and Ono.
After the Lennons reunited and made their 1980 Double Fantasy album just before he died aged 40, he referred to his 18 months living with Pang in L.A. as his “lost weekend,” a reference to the 1945 film about alcoholics.
But in the recent film The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, Pang said: "I made them look good."
Ono exiled Lennon from their home in New York and instructed assistant Pang, then 23, to have an affair with the tormented singer.
She worked on Lennon’s Mind Games album and sometimes sang backing vocals with him. She and Lennon were reluctant to become lovers as Ono decreed, but after Ono ordered him out, Pang said: "John Lennon charmed the pants off me."
In a joint 1980 interview with Lennon,
Ono explained her reasons for the separation: "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."
Pang says she also thinks Ono wanted to have an affair.
Pang says she thinks Ono wanted to have her own fling.
While living with Pang, he wrote laments about Ono.
He penned What You Got, with the lyric "You don’t know what you got until you lose it," and Going Down on Love, which echoed his 1965 cri de coeur Help: "When the real thing goes wrong/And you can’t get it on/And your love, she has gone/And you got to carry on …Somebody please, please help me/You know I’m drowning in the sea of hatred."
Lennon wrote Surprise, Surprise about Pang, which contained the lines: "She gets me through this god-awful loneliness, A natural high butterfly, Oh I, I need, need, need her."
Pang revealed her intimate relationship with Lennon continued after he moved back in with Ono.
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Pang said Lennon got a kick out of the fact that they shared a bed in Peter Lawford’s home, where JFK and Marilyn Monroe had made out.
She says in the film that her intimate relationship with Lennon continued after he moved back in with Ono, and in 1980, he still called to try to set up a rendezvous on Long Island.
Pang married Tony Visconti, producer of U2, Paul McCartney, and David Bowie.
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