A fresh look at John Lennon through the lens of photographer May Pang

Very few people get to claim a rock legend as their first serious boyfriend. Fewer still can say that the match was made by the musician’s wife. But May Pang said both were true of her relationship with Beatles legend John Lennon.

Pang, who was 23 and working in publishing for Apple Records at the time, was selected to work with Lennon when he and his wife, Yoko Ono, were in New York.

One of her first tasks was to assist the couple with their film, “Up Your Legs Forever.” The film includes hundreds of shots of people’s legs from their toes to their thighs.

“Yoko came over and she was like, ‘Here’s my phone book. Make calls and ask them to come down,’ and then there was somebody else that would go on the street and grab people,” she recalled. “It’s kind of hard to say, ‘Jackie Kennedy, would you like to come in and donate your legs for peace,’ you know, that type of thing. It was quite interesting.”

She continued to work with the couple and, around three years in, Ono and Lennon were going through a rough spot. Pang said Ono approached her with an idea.
“At the end of the day, she looks at me and she says, ‘But, you don’t have a boyfriend.’ And I’m looking at her like, ‘Don’t look at me. I’m not interested,’ Pang said. “She said, ‘No, you’d be nice for him,’ and I said ‘No, I’m not.’”

For Pang, the idea of inviting whatever was happening in their lives into hers was not appealing.

“She was so insistent, so after a while, … (John) just turned around. He said, ‘All right, if she’s going to keep doing this, I’m going to go for it.’”

In spite of Pang’s initial reservations about the idea, she and Lennon grew closer and a romantic relationship evolved.
Though this period in his life became known as “The Lost Weekend,” the Pang-Lennon romance lasted about 18 months.

Courtesy photo

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May Pang, Gallery 440

Pang had picked up photography as a hobby when she was 16 and had been sharpening her focus ever since. Throughout her relationship with Lennon, Pang shot photos of him and his son, Julian Lennon, with her 35 mm Nikomat camera.

At the time, she wasn’t thinking of the photographs as part of a larger archive of Lennon’s life.

“I never thought of it as I’m documenting history,” Pang said. “It was more like I just wanted to do (it) for my pleasure, search for a good photograph, you know, a good picture.”

The images reveal a side of Lennon that the outside world didn’t often get to see.

“He didn’t think he was a great player. He knew he was a good writer, but he hadn’t been out in a long time so there … were a lot of insecurities,” she said. “He would say, ‘Do you think this is good?’ … I think that surprises people.”

Pang said she stayed in touch with Lennon until his death, so if you combine their time working together, living together and post break-up friendship, she knew the musician for about 10 years.

To this day, she keeps in touch with Julian; she shot the cover photo for his album, “Jude.”

As Pang has traveled with this photo exhibition, so have Lennon’s loyal fans. One person drove five hours from Mexico to see the photos in Austin. Another flew from New York to see the show and flew back home the same day.

“I’ve had people just cry. Even the guy who curated (the show) in San Antonio here, looked at all the photos before putting them up … and he sat there and said he just cried because he’s never seen photos like this,” Pang said.

“To me, it’s lovely. … I’ve had the people that come here, they get … to talk to me (with) questions they’ve been wanting to ask. To them, I’m the closest to John they’ll ever get.”

Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.