Yoko’s Rival
Pans ‘Lennon’
Musical imagines she
didn’t exist.
Lennon, the Broadway-bound musical, is being frantically retooled at the eleventh hour, and May Pang, John Lennon’s lover when he was separated from Yoko Ono in the mid-seventies, has some unsolicited advice on how to make it better. For one thing, the singing is “all treble and no bass,” she said after attending a preview of the Ono-approved show (she bought a ticket—an invitation was not forthcoming). Also, there’s the omission of
Pang’s eighteen months with Lennon, which he called
his “Lost Weekend.” “Eight or nine people are on that stage,” says Pang. “Somebody could have played me. There wasn’t even a character for Julian.” Why would it cut her out? “Maybe it changes the myth. Maybe John wasn’t as happy at home with Yoko. But the time I was with John takes up a lot of creative time.” She notes that she was dating him when he recorded the No. 1 single “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.” Lennon creator Don Scardino says Pang wasn’t “a relevant part of the story.”
—Boris Kachka
Intelligencer: August 8-15
Advertising
Most Popular Stories
Most Commented
Last 24 Hours
- The Party Promoter in the Paranoid Stage of a New Relationship
- Obama Loses Face at Home and in Japan With Awkward Bow
- Okay, So How Do We Feel About the Increasing Number of Bans on Smoking in Your Own Apartment?
- Blake Lively’s Breast Looks
- Rudy Giuliani: 'I Didn't Think We Were in the Business of Granting the Requests of Terrorists'
- Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly Going on Tour Together!
- Saturday Night Live: January Jones Is No Jon Hamm
- Five Things That Obama Didn’t Tweet
- Jimmy Choo at H&M Causes Madness in Shoppers
- Can Sarah Palin Stage a Comeback?
Most Viewed
Last 24 Hours
- Saturday Night Live: January Jones Is No Jon Hamm
- I Dream of Diane
- 100 Under $100
- Jimmy Choo at H&M Causes Madness in Shoppers
- Hedgies Unhinged
- The Party Promoter in the Paranoid Stage of a New Relationship
- Fashion Models: Female Models
- Lindsay Lohan Doesn’t Pay for the Drinks She Drinks
- The Obama Diaspora
- Brooklyn Top 40
Most Emailed
Last 24 Hours
- Another Kind of AIDS Crisis
- There Is Crying in Basketball
- Jimmy Choo at H&M Causes Madness in Shoppers
- Will Somebody Please Save NBC?
- Budget Travel Shuttering?
- Fast Fashion Now Available for Canines
- International House of Holiday Cakes
- Mother and Son Call Cops on Cat
- Brooklyn Top 40
- Gabby Sidibe Makes Her Outrageously Charming Conan Debut
Email
Print
Review: Nabokov’s Unfinished Last Novel
David Edelstein on The Road and More
Performa 09: All New York’s a Stage
Reinventing Blanche Dubois at BAM
The 2009 Gift Finder 
Oceana Morphs Into an Expense-Account Joint
The Spotted Pig’s Official Restaurant Forager
100 Gifts Under $100
Dissecting Obama's Extended Family
The Bitter Aftermath of the Taconic Crash
The Kidney Transplant That Saved Two Lives
Why True Fans Endure the Knicks’ Rebuilding