{"id":143941,"date":"2023-11-25T03:03:50","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T03:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theprojectsworld.com\/?p=143941"},"modified":"2023-11-25T03:03:50","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T03:03:50","slug":"yoko-told-me-john-and-i-arent-getting-along-i-want-you-to-go-out-with-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theprojectsworld.com\/celebrities\/yoko-told-me-john-and-i-arent-getting-along-i-want-you-to-go-out-with-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoko told me, \u2018John and I aren\u2019t getting along, I want you to go out with him!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

It was an astonishing suggestion even from a woman who had staged a bed-in for the global media to promote world peace during her honeymoon. But when Yoko Ono demanded John Lennon\u2019s assistant May Pang become his lover, she set in train a series of bizarre events the former Beatle would later refer to as his \u201cLost Weekend\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lennon\u2019s separation from Ono \u2013 a period of excess and, later, deep regret \u2013 actually lasted 18 months. And while Lennon and Ono spoke of what became one of the strangest tales in late 20th century pop culture, the third of the threesome, Lennon\u2019s 22-year-old lover, has remained largely silent.<\/p>\n

Now 73, May recalls in a vivid new documentary how the affair came about after Ono, who met Lennon at an exhibition of her art in 1966 and married him in 1969, heard her husband having sex with another woman during a drunken party.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I wasn\u2019t surprised,\u201d says May, \u201cwhen she walked into my office soon afterwards. ‘John and I are not getting along,’ she said. \u2018I know he\u2019s going to start seeing other women. I want you to go out with him because he needs someone nice like you.\u2019<\/p>\n

Don’t miss… <\/strong> George Harrison ‘paralysed’ John Lennon with fear during brutal fight<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing. I said: \u2018But he\u2019s your husband.\u2019 I told her I couldn\u2019t do as she asked. She said, \u2018Yes, you will,\u2019 and walked out of the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was jaw-dropping in the extreme, but even before all of this, May\u2019s own story is fascinating. Born and brought up as a first-generation Chinese American in Spanish Harlem in New York, May was ignored by her father.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I was a girl, my father, in true Chinese tradition, adopted a son and pretty much abandoned me. My mother had both beauty and brains,\u201d she continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe opened her own Chinese laundry. Stuck at home with my father, I was inspired by my mother to get up \u2013 and get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At 18, she dropped out of college and headed to Times Square in search of a job. From a young age, she\u2019d been hooked on rock\u2018n\u2019roll and particularly The Beatles. Fetching up outside 1700 Broadway, she realised the building was home to Apple Records. Without further ado, May took the lift to the 41st floor and blagged her way into a job. Within weeks, her favourite group had called it a day.<\/p>\n

In August 1971, John and Yoko moved to New York where Apple assigned them to \u201cthe youngest rock\u2018n\u2019roller\u201d in the office. May\u2019s life was never to be the same again. Within months, they\u2019d asked her to leave Apple and become their full-time assistant. \u201cI felt like I was living someone else\u2019s life,\u201d says May.<\/p>\n

The Nixon administration was implacably opposed to John, branding him \u201can enemy of the state\u201d. In November 1972, he decided they should live somewhere more secure than Greenwich Village and took an apartment in the legendary Dakota Building on Central Park West.<\/p>\n