May Pang Photo Exhibition of John Lennon in Historic Ybor City
May Pang, former girlfriend of musician John Lennon came to Tampa over the Gasparilla Pirate Festival weekend. May brought her candid photos of John taken over their 18th month relationship during the famous Lennon “Lost Weekend” period. The exhibition was showing at Tempus Projects Gallery in the heart of Ybor City. I arrived on Saturday to find the petite, purple-haired May seated at a desk, wearing a Gasparilla coin necklace fielding questions from Beatle and Lennon fans about her time with the mysterious, former Beatle. She was open, friendly and it was fun talking to her as a fan and interested historian of Beatle lore. Her photos of Lennon are amazingly personal and yet she catches glimpses of the familiar John Lennon we know and the private man that we don’t know at all.
May was the personal assistant to John & Yoko starting in 1970, working at the famous Dakota. When they split in 1973, May at Yoko’s insistence went with John to keep him company. Pang was not comfortable with this situation but traveled with Lennon as his personal assistant until they became a real couple. Pang released a documentary, “The Lost Weekend, A Love Story”, which is currently on streaming services Amazon Prime and AppleTV+, which is very informative about the time period and has a great interview with John’s oldest son, musician & photographer Julian Lennon, who remains close with Pang. One of her photos is the cover of Julian’s latest album, “Jude.”
May generously took the time to answer a few of my questions for The Suncoast Post when things slowed down a bit for her.
SP: Did you know that Julian was going to use your photo for his album cover?
MP: No, this is what he did. He wrote to me in the middle of the night and asked me if I had any photos for a project he was doing. I said, I will send you whatever I have from that time frame, and he contacted me right away and said, can I use this photo, it is perfect. I said, of course you can use it. It wasn’t until much later I found out, a few months before they put the album out. I had no idea!
SP: What is your favorite Beatles song?
MP: I like the early Beatles stuff like “In My Life” (1965) more than the later stuff which was great like Sgt. Pepper, but I love the early vocals, stuff like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” The Beatles 1965-66, they had some great songs during that time, I love that sound.
SP: Do you have a favorite John solo song?
MP: I have two. Obviously the one he wrote for me “Surprise, Surprise, (Sweet Bird of Paradox”) and “#9 Dream” which I sang on. Both songs are on the “Walls & Bridges” album.
SP: Mine would be most of the “Mind Games” album and stuff like “Jealous Guy.”
MP: He didn’t have the songs ready for “Mind Games” and he said I better book the studio and get to writing because he didn’t have any of the songs ready and he said I won’t go out and he got them done in two weeks!
SP: The original Hollywood Vampires, not the current Vampires except for Alice Cooper at that time were around L.A. during that time you were there.
MP: We didn’t know anything about the Vampires, and it was something that John was only an honorary member. We only came to be in the first photo of Alice, Mickey Dolenz, Harry Nilsson and John at the Anne Murray show. We only went to hear Anne Murray sing not because John was involved in the group.
SP: A fan asked May about living in L.A., and Laurel Canyon during that time.
MP: We visited people in Laurel Canyon, but we didn’t care for L.A. that much because you couldn’t just walk around and see people like NYC. If you didn’t have a car, you weren’t going anywhere. I got a license to drive us around and John got me a 1968 Barracuda for my birthday. Don’t know what happened to the car because we left it L.A. when we moved back to New York, but I still have the original key for it.
SP: One last question May, besides the Polaroid what camera were you using?
MP: I was using Nikkormat with a 105 lens. Nikkormat cameras used Nikon F mount lenses. It’s all about the lens!
May is going to be on Florida’s east coast in February and traveling throughout 2025. Check out her tour dates at https://www.rockartshow.com/pages/tour-dates
You can follow her on www.facebook.com/maypang
Photos by Vicky Sullivan & May Pang