Despite popular belief that Yoko Ono chased after John Lennon, it was John Lennon who begged Ono to take him back after his year-and-a-half-long drunken bender nicknamed “The Lost Weekend.” Lennon went on this alcohol-fueled binge following his and Ono’s first breakup in 1973, which was Ono’s idea.
Ono would be the one to decide when the pair reunited in early 1975, inviting Lennon to come back home after raising hell in California with the likes of Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon, and other colleagues. The former Beatle had also been having a short-lived affair with his assistant, May Pang—an extra-marital stint that was, once again (and shockingly so), Ono’s idea.
Yoko Ono Was The First To Decide The Pair Needed A Break
Amidst John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s tumultuous legal battle of the early 1970s, during which both musicians faced deportation from the United States, the couple’s relationship deteriorated. Fed up with their constant arguing, Ono kicked Lennon out of their home. Then, in what many would consider quite an unusual turn of events, Ono asked Lennon’s assistant, May Pang, to start seeing the ex-Beatle.
“[Ono] did not realize it was going to turn into such a big love affair,” Pang later recalled in the 2023 documentary The Lost Weekend: A Love Story (via People). “She thought it would be two weeks, gone, goodbye.” But perhaps to Ono’s credit, Lennon had far less romantic notions of his separation from his second wife. In a 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon described Ono’s decision differently: “She kicked me out. I was on a raft alone in the middle of the universe.”
“At first, I thought, ‘Whoopee, whoopee!’ You know, bachelor life,” Lennon continued. “Whoopee! And then I woke up one day, and I thought, ‘What is this? I want to go home! But she wouldn’t let me come home. That’s why it was 18 months apart instead of six months. We were talking all the time on the phone, and I would say, ‘I don’t like this. I’m getting in trouble, and I’d like to come home, please.’ And she would say, ‘You’re not ready to come home.’ So, what do you say? Ok, back to the bottle.”
Why Yoko Ono Decided To Take John Lennon Back 18 Months Later
In their 1980 Playboy interview, Ono described the ways in which the public’s perception of her—a “dragon lady” who manipulated Lennon and stole him away from the Beatles—affected her psyche. As an artist who had been pursuing her career long before meeting Lennon, the vitriol affected her self-esteem both personally and professionally. Although interpersonal conflict was the final nail in the coffin with the couple’s first split, there was a part of Ono that needed to regain her independence, too.
Months after Lennon and Pang had been dating, Pang recalled Ono reaching out to say, “I’m thinking of taking John back. I said, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘I think it’s time.” As Ono told writer David Sheff, “It slowly started to dawn on me that John was not the trouble at all. John was a fine person. It was society that had become too much. We laugh about it now, but we started dating again. I wanted to be sure. He was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we could save our marriage, not because we didn’t love each other but because it was getting too much for me. Nothing would have changed if I had come back as Mrs. Lennon.”
Following their reunion and 1975 vow renewal, the dynamics of John and Yoko’s relationship changed. Whereas Ono handled most business affairs, Lennon stayed home tending the house and baby. “We learned that it’s better for the family if we are both working for the family, she doing the business and me playing mother and wife,” Lennon told Sheff. “The number one priority is her and the family. Everything else revolves around that.”
