How John Lennon Reuniting With Yoko Ono Ruined a Possible Reunion With Paul McCartney
After The Beatles broke up in 1970, many wondered if John Lennon and Paul McCartney would ever team up again. The pair had a few opportunities, including a possible reunion on Saturday Night Live, but they were rarely seen in public together again. The pair almost went on a dinner date in New York, but Lennon’s reunion with Yoko Ono sidetracked that evening.
John Lennon went through his ‘Lost Weekend’ phase after leaving Yoko Ono
Lennon and Ono briefly separated between 1973 and 1975. During this period, Lennon began an affair with their assistant, May Pang. The couple went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where Lennon had a few incidents of public drunkenness that included him getting thrown out of several venues.
In an interview with Variety, Pang spoke about the difficult time period in Lennon’s life, saying that she didn’t have much interest in interfering with their marriage, but Ono was pushing her toward the affair. Pang also confirmed that Ono was having an affair around the same time.
“Yoko did approach me, and I thought it was insane,” Pang shared. “I told her I wasn’t interested at all. They were having problems in their marriage; they actually weren’t talking to each other. But John spontaneously decided to go to L.A. on his own and asked me to go with him. Yoko wasn’t even aware we had gone until after we left.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney almost had a dinner date together
Pang mentioned a possible reunion between Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the interview. She and Lennon were supposed to meet McCartney and his then-wife, Linda, for dinner in New York. The plan was that Lennon would first meet with Ono — who was trying to make him stop smoking through hypnosis — then meet Pang back at their E. 52nd street apartment.
However, that was when Ono and Lennon got back together, and he never returned, canceling the possible dinner with McCartney. Pang said she knew that things had changed that evening when he didn’t return, but also knew what was lost by John and Paul not reuniting.
“I had a strange feeling, a premonition that something was not going the right way,” Pang said about that night. “I knew, at that moment, if John and I had gone to meet Paul and Linda, there would have been new music. He asked me if I thought it was a good idea for him to write with Paul again. What do you think I said?”
Lennon and McCartney had one more disastrous recording session together
While Paul McCartney and John Lennon never made any official music together after The Beatles, they did have one more recording session in 1974. The session can be heard on the bootleg alum A Toot and a Snore in ’74. Lennon and his band were in the recording studio when McCartney showed up unannounced. The two decided to play together from there, but things went terribly.
What can be heard from the session is Lennon continuously asking for cocaine and dealing with constant technical issues. They try to play “Lucille” and “Stand By Me” but are plagued by sound problems that eventually became too much for Lennon. While this didn’t give fans much to listen to, it did lead to McCartney and Lennon reconciling before Lennon’s death in 1980.
