The fact is there are only three women John Lennon lived with." May Pang says. "I happen to be one of them."

Pang is tired of the lies, the whitewash and revisionist history bandied about by Yoko Ono and believed by millions. "For me, when my time is taken away, I like to have it corrected," she says. "I'm not taking away the time John spent with Cynthia, the time he spent with Yoko -- that's not my thing."

Most Lennon fans have a vague sense of who May Pang is, usually remembering her as John and Yoko's onetime personal assistant and the woman with whom Lennon spent his "lost weekend" in the mid-1970s. "People say, 'What is she still talking about John for? She only had a weekend with him!' First of all, it was 18 months. When John was back at the Dakota, he was forced to say something, he had to put out a statement. To explain the time away, he was going to have to call it something, and he told me he was going to call it the lost weekend. 'It's not personal,' he told me, 'but I have to call it something.' It just steamrolled from there. It was a very interesting time, because since 1980, it's as if I never existed. If you want the official book, then I can't be there."

The "official book," as Pang calls it, is another way of saying the Yoko story. Since Lennon's death 25 years ago this week, Ono has done everything short of canonizing the former Beatle. And while there is no doubt he ranks among the greatest songwriters of all time, was one fourth of the greatest band in music history, and was a constant purveyor of peace and harmony, it somehow isn't enough. From bilking blood relatives out of millions to disallowing Paul McCartney lead credit on a handful of Beatle numbers, Ono has shaped the Lennon legacy as she sees fit.

"Maybe she just feels that she has to be the one," offers Pang. "This was an icon in the world, so maybe it's insecurity on her part. When you talk about the truth, it's not just one sided here. There are definitely a lot of checks and balances; it can't always be about her. What happened to the rest of us? Didn't we exist?"

Pang is the embodiment of class when she talks of her relationship with Lennon. Never defensive and without bitterness at her portrayal over the years, she just seems to be telling the story the way it is. Just this year, in books by journalist Larry Kane and Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, Pang's importance has been documented, after years of being swept under the rug of history. "It's nice to be vindicated, to know that I did exist, that I was there," she says.

Ono has never denied she and Lennon spent time apart. By 1973, their relationship began to sour, and Ono suggested that they take a break, but with their assistant to keep a watchful eye. "When she came and approached me about going out with John, I was like, 'Don't look at me! I'm too busy working for you guys,' " Pang says in her still-thick New York accent. "Yoko said, 'I want you to go out with him, I know you'll treat him nicely, I know you'll take care of him.' It was more like I should go out with him, I needed a boyfriend. That's what she said to me, and I was like, 'No, I don't!' It wasn't something that I wanted. I had already been with them for three years, so it wasn't like I was after this man. I knew what they were like morning and night; the last thing I wanted was him as my boyfriend!"

Yet the two fell for each other, and for the next year and a half, Lennon would be at his most visible and creative, post-Beatles. Lennon was at a productive peak, recording the covers album Rock 'n' Roll and Walls and Bridges. But in the gossip columns, that translated to accounts of a debaucherous, nonstop party, a tag which Pang is quick to refute. "When people say he was so drunk all the time, they're only citing the one or two instances the whole time I was with him. You're saying the same thing over and over again. It was very easy to say that, but if he was that drunk, then how could he be in the studio working that prolifically?"

While uneven, Walls and Bridges contained some of his best solo songs, including the Elton John duet "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" and "#9 Dream." But the album has also been the victim of Ono alteration in its reissued format in November 2005. Crediting herself as producer (in all caps, no less), Ono changed the cover from a one of Lennon's childhood drawings to a Bob Gruen photograph and put her own picture on the CD itself. Most striking is her alterations to a song penned for Pang, "Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox)": during the fadeout Ono has added a new voice-over that says "Yoko, I love her," an interesting addition for a work recorded when Ono wasn't even around. "John didn't intend to have it done that way," says a clearly irritated Pang. "To be reissued is one thing. To start changing things, not the way he intended, is changing the artist's work and changing everything. She's not enhancing it, she's making it something else, and I find it sad."

Continued Below:

 [ send green star]

Continued from above:

Walls and Bridges also features a curious sentence in the liner notes in which Lennon states, "On the 23rd Aug. 1974 at 9 o'clock I saw a U.F.O. -- J.L." Pang explains, "It was nighttime, and John went out on the terrace of our apartment to have a cigarette, and he yelled out to me, 'May!' And I just ignored him at first, you know, 'Yeah, yeah, I'll be right out.' He yells, 'No. Come out now!' So I run out, thinking something had happened, and I looked up and stopped mid-sentence. I couldn't even speak because I saw this thing up there. You could see the bottom; it was silvery, and it was flying very slowly. There was a white light shining around the rim and a red light on the top. I could hear the traffic on the East River Drive, I could hear the helicopters across the river, but this thing was silent. We started to watch it drift down, tilt slightly, and it was flying below rooftops. It was the most amazing sight."

Another surreal experience that never came to fruition was a reunion with his Beatle band mates, which Lennon was seriously considering, according to Pang. "He asked me if I thought it was a good idea. I told him I thought it'd be great! Because the two of you would be unbeatable, it would be amazing. I told the story to Paul years later, and it was later confirmed by Derek Taylor [the Beatles press officer], who had a postcard from John, which said that he 'was thinking about visiting the Macs down in New Orleans.' "

With Lennon's untimely death in 1980, the possibility was voided forever. "It's 25 years. There's no significance, because with each year that goes by, it's hard for me to believe that he's gone. It just puts back a memory for me that he's not here," Pang says. "It's just heartbreaking for me; I'm sure for Yoko, for Julian, for Cynthia, for all of us who loved him dearly." While the true history and depth of their relationship continues to leak out as years go by, Pang's moments with Lennon are what she holds most dear. "My time to think about John is thinking of his birthday, because we were both October babies. We always used to give each other chocolate cake, because he loved chocolate; he was a big chocolate-cake lover. My celebrations with him, his life, not his death. The memories of him getting together with his pals -- he jammed with Jagger, he jammed with Paul, with Harry Nilsson. All this was going on in this short time period: his time with his son Julian, the time he finally got up to sing a song with Elton, the times he was writing music and I was his sounding board. The picture of him in that New York City T-shirt, which is the one everyone remembers, that was taken on our rooftop. All those little moments."

While Yoko tries to maintain control on the public perception of Lennon, Pang says the truth about her relationship with him is out there. "When you see the story and you lay it out, it's right in front of you, if you choose to open your eyes and see it," she affirms matter-of-factly. "Some people don't want to."

http://www.popmatters.com/music/features/051208-lennon-christopher.shtml

 [ send green star]