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