For 18 months in the early 1970s, it was John and May, not John and Yoko.
Now the love affair between the former Beatle and his 23-year-old personal assistant, May Pang, is the subject of a new documentary that also features a cameo from a Tucson woman.
Chris O’Dell, who worked for the Beatles and a host of other rock legends during almost two decades in the music business, said she provided a voiceover for the documentary, “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story.”
An old photograph of O’Dell also briefly appears on screen in the film about Pang, her long-time friend, she said.
“I hung out with May all the time,” O’Dell said.
The documentary premiered last year at the Tribeca Film Festival. On Thursday, it will be screened in select theaters nationwide, including one showing each at The Loft Cinema and the Century 20 El Con in Tucson.
The film chronicles Pang’s life and her relationship with John Lennon, which turned from professional to romantic in 1973 after he and Yoko Ono separated.
Watch the trailer for "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story," in theaters April 13.
Ono reportedly encouraged Lennon and Pang to get together, though she later admitted that she didn’t think their romance would last as long as it did.
After it was over, Lennon would refer to the affair as his “lost weekend,” though Pang insists it was much more serious than that and continued for years after he returned to Ono — something O’Dell corroborates.
“John was a very important person in her life,” O’Dell said. “I saw a very caring relationship.”
Pang is also credited for reuniting Lennon with his young son after several years apart. Julian Lennon appears in the new documentary, talking fondly about the happy times he spent with May and his dad at their New York City apartment.
Tucsonan Chris O'Dell poses with records and photos from her time working with bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
O’Dell said she first met Pang early in her relationship with Lennon when the couple traveled to Los Angeles to promote his latest solo album, record new songs and collaborate with other musicians, all while lounging at a borrowed beach house.
Pang seemed to catch a lot of people off guard back then. Here was this “thin, very beautiful Chinese girl,” O’Dell said, but she had grown up in a rough part of Spanish Harlem and spoke with a “heavy duty New York accent.”
“She’s a tough, very strong woman,” O’Dell said.
She and Pang became “fast friends” and stayed that way, thanks in large part to their shared experiences at the center of rock ‘n’ roll history, O’Dell said. “We’ve both been around that. We both know what it’s like. When we talk, we can say, ‘George said,’ and we don’t have to say ‘George Harrison.’”
John Lennon in 1970
Coincidentally, when they first met in L.A., O’Dell was on the cusp of her own entanglement with a Beatle: a brief affair with Ringo Starr.
Her wild ride began at age 19 when she left Tucson in search of adventure. She found her way to L.A. and then to London, where she worked with the Beatles at Apple Records. She was there when the band recorded “Let It Be,” held their famous rooftop concert and then broke up.
That’s Tucsonan Chris O’Dell, seated at the far right beneath the chimney, and Yoko Ono, seated at the far left, during the Beatles’ famous rooftop concert at Apple Records in London on Jan. 30, 1969.
She later served as an assistant and tour manager for some of the biggest bands ever, living a life filled with household names.
O’Dell said she was a little intimidated by Yoko in those days, and she kept her distance from Lennon as a result. The most at ease she ever felt around him was when she saw him in L.A. with Pang.
“He was more easy going. He was more relaxed,” O’Dell said. “May made it that way, no doubt about it.”
She later visited Lennon and Pang at the penthouse apartment they shared in midtown Manhattan.
O’Dell recalled how proud they were to show her around the cozy home they had built together — the terrace overlooking the East River, the room they’d set up for Julian, the new television Lennon was obsessed with.
“He couldn’t believe how many cable channels there were,” O’Dell recalled with a laugh.
The three of them had dinner at a little restaurant in the neighborhood and then went together to see Harrison perform at Nassau Coliseum.
“(John) went back to Yoko not long after that, and I never saw him again,” O’Dell said.
She said Pang invited her to the screening she will be hosting Thursday in Los Angeles, but she can’t make the trip, so she will catch “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story” at The Loft.
“I have a lot of respect for her,” she said of Pang. “She has worked very hard to maintain her truth.”
O’Dell will soon be featured in a documentary of her own, based on her 2009 memoir “Miss O’Dell: Hard Days and Long Nights with the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton.”
The Palo Verde High School graduate was in London in January for two weeks of filming, and she already has a distributor lined up. She’s hoping to see the film released before the end of the year.
One thing she is still unclear on is the soundtrack. It’s a fairly lean production, so she doubts they can afford the rights to any of the now-classic songs she was there to hear as they were originally recorded.
Ironically, she said, they probably won’t even be able to use “Miss O’Dell,” the song George Harrison wrote about her in 1971 and later released as a B-side to his hit single “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).”
“If George were still around, it wouldn’t be a problem,” O’Dell said.
The 76-year-old said she and Pang still talk once a month or so, though they’ve been in touch even more lately to discuss the various projects they’ve been working on.
“Every time I go to New York, I see her,” O’Dell said. “We have a lot in common. We knew a lot of the same people. We have history, and at this stage of our lives, that history has become really important.”
