May Pang

When one hears the name May Pang, they most likely think of John Lennon’s “lost weekend.” She is much more than Lennon’s one-time-girlfriend. What many don’t know is that Pang has been in the public eye for over five decades. Her career in the music industry started at eighteen with Allen Klein’s company, ABKCO Industries, the firm that managed the Beatles’ Apple Corps. Ltd. and the Rolling Stones.

In 1970, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono hired May as their personal assistant. Pang would eventually become their production coordinator playing a key role in films and solo records by Lennon, Ono, and Harry Nilsson, to name a few. In 1974, Pang was awarded an RIAA gold album for her work on Lennon’s hit album, Walls and Bridges. Pang can be heard singing on his hit single #9 Dream.

In the late 1970s, working for Island Records, Pang coordinated all activities related to the release of albums by Robert Palmer, Third World, and Bob Marley and the Wailers. By the early1980s, she was one of the leading professional managers in the music publishing industry at United Artist, working with several unknown songwriters and successfully obtaining coverage for Diana Ross, Judas Priest, the Four Tops, Air Supply, and more.

Pang decided to set the record straight about her relationship with Lennon in her memoir, Loving John, which was published in 1983 on Warner Books. The book detailed her liaison and working association with the late Beatle and shed light on his relationships with his first son, Julian, and former bandmates Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison.

In 2008, St. Martin’s Press published Instamatic Karma, a collection of Pang’s personal photographs of John Lennon. The long out-of-print book is now being prepped for reissue in Japan from publisher Kawade Shobo.

May has appeared in most major news and magazine publications (NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, The Daily News, UK’s Mail on Sunday, People, etc.) and has been a guest on national TV shows Good Morning America, Howard Stern, Good Morning LA, CBS Sunday Morning, Court TV, and Entertainment Tonight. May’s documentary called, “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story” was in the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. It was one of the most requested films that it “broke” the Festival’s internet on the first night of its viewing.

May Pang’s photographs from “The Lost Weekend” are now part of a touring exhibition in the United States entitled “The Lost Weekend – The Photography of May Pang.” The exhibition has traveled to over 35 cities to great crowds and critical acclaim.