John Lennon’s ex May Pang says that the late musician still wanted to write with Paul McCartney even after The Beatles split.
Pang — who dated Lennon for 18 months from 1973 to 1975 amid a break in his marriage with Yoko Ono — spoke with USA Today in an interview published Friday about the retelling of her relationship with the legendary musician in her documentary,The Lost Weekend: A Love Story.
In a wide-ranging chat about how she and Lennon became involved romantically and details covered in the documentary, Pang, 72, is asked by the outlet if it was “surprising” that Lennon’s “mind goes to ‘Maybe I should start writing with Paul again,’” (in the documentary).
She then explained: “The pressure was off. All of them were now free to do whatever they wanted to do.”
“So in January 1975, Paul and Linda [McCartney] were saying, ‘We’re going to go down to New Orleans and do a new album [Venus and Mars].’ So John says, “Oh, great, New Orleans, always loved it,’” Pang recalled.
She continued, “A couple of days later, he’s tinkling on the guitar, and he goes, ‘What do you think if I wrote with Paul again?’ You talk about shock: The reference is like The Exorcist, the head flips back. And I said, ‘I think it would be great.’”
“Then he goes, ‘Maybe we should go down.’ He really wanted to do that,” Pang told USA Today. “I knew if I’d gotten him down to New Orleans, it would have happened.”
The idea that Lennon — who was fatally shot at age 40 in 1980 — would want to make music again with McCartney, now 81, may surprise fans after the musicians’ now famous fallout in the years that followed the legendary rock quartet’s dissolution in the spring of 1970.
In a late 2021 interview with BBC Radio 4 series This Cultural Life with John Wilson, McCartney set the record straight on the band’s split, revealing that it was Lennon and not himself who “instigated” the breakup.
“I didn’t instigate the split. That was our Johnny,” McCartney said of when McCartney, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr decided to go their separate ways.
“I am not the person who instigated the split. Oh no, no, no,” he continued. “John walked into a room one day and said, ‘I am leaving the Beatles.’ Is that instigating the split, or not?”
McCartney said he felt Lennon was “always looking to break loose” of the band, as he reflected on what “could have been.”
“The point of it really was that John was making a new life with Yoko. John had always wanted to sort of break loose from society because, you know, he was brought up by his Aunt Mimi, who was quite repressive, so he was always looking to break loose,” McCartney said of Lennon.
In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1970, Lennon had indeed told his former bandmate that he was “leaving” The Beatles. A link to the interview was shared by the official John Lennon X (formerly known as Twitter) account at the time of McCartney’s 2021 interview.
Fortunately, the two former bandmates later reconnected before Lennon’s untimely death at age 40 when he was fatally shot outside his apartment in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1980.
McCartney recently remembered Lennon on what would have been his 83rd birthday on Oct. 9.
“Celebrating the birthday of my wonderful friend and collaborator, @johnlennon – Paul ????,” McCartney captioned his Instagram post of him performing in front of a big screen featuring his former bandmate.
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