May Pang: Loving John | Page 2 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Just finishing up this book as well. I have maybe 20 pages or so to go, so I’m past the part where John finally leaves May and goes back to Yoko.

I have a slightly different take than @Expert Textpert — after reading what John was like when he was away from Yoko, I think she was absolute poison for him. I’m sure this story is slightly biased, being written from May’s point of view, but that doesn’t change the facts: once he got away from Yoko, John started reconnecting with old friends, listening to Rock ‘N’ Roll again, and writing good music. It’s no coincidence that Walls And Bridges was his most commercially successful album.

One of the most heartbreaking things in the book is the scene where May gets a call from Mick Jagger days after John had returned to Yoko. Mick had been coming around and spending a lot more time with John during this “lost weekend” (such an inaccurate term), but when May told him that John had gone back to Yoko, Mick said, “I guess I’ve lost a friend, then.”

To me, that says it all. I’ve been in a few bad relationships in my life, and I’ve seen friends of mine get in and out of bad relationships as well, and one theme remains constant: when you’re with the wrong “significant other,” you’re a lot less yourself; when you’re with a true partner who’s good for you, you’re not only yourself again, you’re even more yourself. With Yoko, John stopped being himself. He stopped socializing with his friends. He stopped listening to rock music because Yoko didn’t like it. As Robert Rodriguez put it in a recent review of Walls And Bridges , “the lovely ‘#9 Dream,’ with its tasteful arrangement … reminded listeners that politics and Yoko paeans aside, he was still capable of crafting timeless, memorable melodies with the best of them.”

(An aside: “Pang, occupying the muse slot in John’s life once held exclusively by Yoko, made an appearance here, calling out ‘John’ like some kind of ghostly apparition. In the revisionist music video produced years later by Yoko, May was, of course, supplanted visually.” Good god, I can’t stand that woman.)

It made me very sad to learn that John — just days before going to the Dakota to meet with Yoko’s “hypnotist” to supposedly cure his nicotine addiction — was all set to go with May to New Orleans and hang out with Paul for the recording of Venus And Mars . He even told May that they’d leave as soon as he got back from the Dakota that night. Is there any doubt that John would have ended up recording with Paul if Yoko hadn’t intervened?

So John went from planning a new album and being ready to head to New Orleans with Paul, to going back to the Dakota where he shut himself away as a “househusband” and didn’t make another record for five years.

Other things gleaned from the book: it was mostly due to Yoko’s influence that John got involved in all the political stuff and writing protest songs; and according to May, it was Yoko who pushed John to quit the Beatles, and encouraged him to start making “real music” (her kind of music, naturally). Take that with a grain of salt, of course, but it does line up with what May witnessed at the Dakota, where Yoko got irritated with John for putting a Chuck Berry album on the player — I really do think Yoko disliked Rock ‘N’ Roll and saw it as an inferior art form. John, of course, was always a rocker at heart, and it’s no shock that as soon as he got away from Yoko, the first thing he wanted to record was an album of rock standards.

Yes, I know a hypnotist can’t make anyone do what they don’t want to do, but at the same time, I think May is correct: Yoko sat with John through his several primal therapy sessions, and she knew — as she apparently bragged to May on one occasion — exactly where John’s deepest insecurities were. I don’t know what happened during that hypnotherapy weekend (a truly “lost weekend” if there ever was one), but John described it as being like primal therapy, and he was violently ill during it. I have no trouble believing that Yoko used a combination of hypnotism and knowledge of John’s darkest fears to return him to a crippled state of anxiety and dependence on “Mother .”

I agree that Yoko doesn’t necessarily come across as a monster in this book, but to me, she certainly comes across as a very devious, manipulative, coldly calculating, and obsessively determined person. As John himself admitted, Yoko could make him do things he didn’t even want to do, through constant persuasion and relentless badgering. I have a hard time — especially after reading May’s book — using the word “love” to describe John’s relationship with Yoko.

And to think, he could have ended up as a guest star on Venus And Mars … instead, he ended up making loaves of bread.

Expert Textpert said
According to Yoko, John never laid a hand on her. In the short time he was with May Pang he tried to strangle her to death, ripped a friend’s apartment to shreds, made a fool of himself in public, shouted obscenities at a comedy show, attacked a reporter, and consistently drank so much he could hardly do anything.

And yet this was better for him? I don’t think so.

Not when you put it like that, no.

On the other hand … all of those things you mentioned were incidents when John drank too much, and if you’ll recall from the book, May said he had quit drinking after the incident where he tried to strangle her, and remained off the alcohol for many months leading up to his return to Yoko.

And I guess I would disagree with the characterization that he “consistently” drank too much. May reports something like four incidents where he got out of control, during the early days of their time in Los Angeles when he was hanging out with Phil Spector and Harry Nilsson. But once he realized how bad it was getting, he quit drinking. Again, quoting Rodriguez:

Once John got the hard-partying “I’m a bachelor again!” behavior out of his system, he demonstrated seriousness toward his craft and got down to business, belying the 1980 stories of how despondent and incapable of functioning he was without Yoko.

I’m not at all surprised that he went on a drinking binge for the first few months after he put 3,000 miles of distance between himself and Yoko. It looks exactly like the behavior of of someone who’s finally got out from under “Mother ‘s” thumb, and doesn’t know how to handle the newfound freedom at first. But again, he sobered up pretty quickly in early 1974 once he realized how destructive and unpredictable he was when he was “on the bottle.”

I don’t think it’s fair to say “he drank too much when he was with May, but with Yoko he behaved himself.” It would be just as easy to say that when he first started seeing Yoko, he got hooked on heroin with her. The substance abuse (whether drugs or alcohol) reflects more on John than it does on his romantic partners.

The drinking (or drugs) thing aside, though, I still go back to the question of what it looks like when a person is with a partner who is a good match. It’s not purely a question of John’s productivity, although that’s part of it, because Walls And Bridges looks like the work of a man who has rediscovered his creative center. 

But more importantly than his musical output, I think it’s incredibly telling that John felt more free to connect with his peer group once he was away from Yoko, and it’s especially interesting that, with May Pang’s encouragement, he also reconnected with Julian. I think that’s a strong sign of being in a healthy relationship, when that relationship means expanding outward and cultivating other relationships.

Of course, I don’t mean to say that Yoko alone is at fault. John had two stellar women in his life at different times in Cynthia and May Pang, both of whom were interested in seeing him free to be John. But they were both fairly passive women, and in his own emotionally unsettled state, John craved a Mother Figure who would “make him behave.” Yoko certainly gave him that, but I would argue that’s hardly healthy, and not at all a sign of a good relationship.

I guess we’ll never know, because it’s alternate history in a parallel universe or whatever, but it seemed like John was on a good trajectory towards personal responsibility, growth, creativity, and reconciling past relationships … right before he went back to Yoko. In going back to “Mother ,” I think he stunted his growth and locked himself into an emotionally dependent state — a state that Yoko was more than happy to keep him in.

It seems awfully convenient that Yoko start maneuvering to get him back just as he was about to really reconcile with Paul. Of all the people in the world, I think Paul represented the biggest threat to Yoko’s place in John’s life, which is probably why she was always trying to keep them apart. A quote from May: “When Paul first started to visit, John would say, ‘Err, Paul and Linda want to stop by, is it O.K.?’ I said it was great, why do you even have to ask. Then I figured out that previously it probably wasn’t always O.K.” 

I seem to remember Pete Shotton relaying a similar story in his book, about how he called John at the Dakota once and was going to go over for a visit, and John was all excited to see him, but then Pete heard muffled sounds of John and Yoko arguing just off-phone, and John came back on and said, “um, maybe it’s best if you don’t come over.”

EDIT: Oh no, @Expert Textpert, I’ve just realized your profile signature, “Yoko Ono is my favorite Beatle.” I’m probably wasting my breath with this discussion, aren’t I?