It wasn’t entirely by chance that John Lennon had an affair with May Pang. From September 1973 to 1975, the Beatles legend embarked on what he called his “Lost Weekend,” a period marked by an 18-month binge of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Elliot Mintz, a close friend of both Lennon and Yoko Ono, revealed to The Post while promoting his new memoir, “We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me,” that the Japanese singer sent her husband to Los Angeles with Pang, their assistant, which led to a full-blown affair between the two.
According to Mintz, Lennon had a sexual encounter with a woman at a party hosted by political radical-turned-Wall Street investor Jerry Rubin in 1972. Ono was aware of everything, leaving Mintz caught in the middle of the couple’s turmoil. “Sometimes dealing with them became an intrusion,” Mintz said. “At what point do you rein it back in? Keep in mind that I was never paid.”
While it’s commonly believed that Ono chose Pang to act as a surrogate girlfriend for Lennon after his indiscretion, Mintz recalls a different story. He said Ono “selected a then-assistant to accompany him and basically look after his basic needs.” “She did, very competently,” Mintz said about Pang, noting that her relationship with Lennon evolved into something more than just a separated husband and assistant.
However, Mintz disclosed that Pang wasn’t the only woman Lennon was involved with during his “Lost Weekend.” He recounted a time when Lennon called him in the middle of the night, instructing him to go to a specific address. When Mintz arrived at the unfamiliar house, he found Lennon alone in bed, with a woman in a bathrobe waiting in the next room. “John just looked at me and said, ‘Get rid of her,’” Mintz recalled. After complying with Lennon’s request, Mintz told the singer he was done shielding him. “John got angry at that,” Mintz said. “He shouted at me and said, ‘I’m going to ask you to do anything I feel like asking you.’”
Lennon later apologized to Mintz, the former radio DJ remembered. He claimed Lennon told him, “I’m sorry I shouted at you. But you just can’t tell me what I can or cannot say.” During this time, Mintz was secretly communicating with Ono “every night” but wasn’t disclosing Lennon’s reckless behavior. Meanwhile, Pang remained committed to Lennon.
In an interview with The Post last year, the now 73-year-old Pang shared her perspective on the affair. She claimed that Ono “took advantage” of her and arranged for her to become Lennon’s girlfriend in 1973. “Yoko said, ‘John and I have not been getting along. He is going to start going out with other people. I think you will be good for him,’” Pang remembered, adding that Ono wanted to “control the relationship.”
In September 1973, Lennon allegedly told Pang, “We have to get out of New York, May. Just the two of us. Away from Yoko.” The couple moved to LA and “fell in love with each other” during their 18 months together, Pang claimed. Ono stayed in New York but kept a close watch on the relationship. “She’d call 20 times a day,” Pang said. “Sometimes it would be at 4 a.m. And the calls were over nothing. She would say, ‘I just went for a walk.’ I would say, ‘And?’ But there would be no and.”
After returning to New York, Lennon eventually reconciled with Ono and spent a weekend with her at The Dakota. Afterwards, “John told me, ‘Yoko is allowing me to come back,’” Pang said, adding, “I asked whose idea it was. He said ‘Nobody’s.’ That was the end. It hit me hard.” Pang stopped working for Lennon and Ono and found employment at Island Records. However, she claimed to The Post that over the next five years, there were phone conversations and sexual encounters between her and Lennon.
She said the last time Lennon called her was six months before he was fatally shot by Mark David Chapman in front of the Dakota in December 1980. “I went cold and called a friend to make sure I heard it correctly. I next heard that he was dead,” Pang remembered. “I dropped the phone and screamed. I later spent a lot of time crying by myself and spoke with him spiritually.”
Pang went on to marry producer Tony Visconti in 1989 and they had two children together. They divorced in 2000. Ono, now 91, became a widow after Lennon’s death and raised their son, Sean Lennon, by herself. She never remarried.
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