John Lennon’s former girlfriend May Pang claims that the musician was seriously considering a live Beatles reunion. Pang, who was Lennon’s companion during his mid-1970’s separation from Yoko Ono, revealed the details of Lennon’s plans to California’s Cerritos College radio station.

“John really thought about it at one point, and we were considering it early on in ‘74, just for the hell of it. Harry Nilsson wanted to be a part of it. We said, oh, that would be a good idea — a one-off (show), and we would do it in the fall. We were thinking about upstate New York, like Syracuse, because Ringo (Starr) couldn’t be in New York City. We were in the middle of a lawsuit and he didn’t want to be subpoenaed,” Pang said.

Pang went on to say that, “We had been hanging out with Ringo a lot in L.A. and it just came out of conversation, hanging out: ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great if we did this one gig,’ and they’d start talking about it. ‘Yeah, well, why don’t we do this, and George (Harrison) would do that, and Paul (McCartney would do)…’ So it was just thrown around, and everybody was like, well…let’s do that… It was early in ‘74 when it was discussed… But, obviously, certain things were not meant to be.”

Pang, who prior to her affair with Lennon, was his and Yoko’s personal assistant had recent released her second book on her time with Lennon, a photo book called Instamatic Karma. The book features previously unseen shots of Lennon during his legendary “Lost Weekend” from 1973 to 1975. Included is a previously unseen photo of Lennon and McCartney from April 1974 taken in Santa Monica, California

Although Pang never got to see Lennon reunite onstage with his former bandmates, in April 1974 she was on hand the night Lennon and McCartney reunited at L.A.’s Record Plant West recording studio. The tapes of the heavily inebriated performance, which also includes Stevie Wonder and Harry Nilsson, have been widely bootlegged throughout the years: “Had they known it was on, I don’t know if Paul would’ve approved. It wasn’t for that. It was just at the end of the session, it was the end of the first session of the Harry Nilsson (Pussycats album), Paul just walked in. He couldn’t believe that the session was over. So when Paul showed up with Linda it was quite a surprise that three drummers that we had — Jim Keltner, Ringo (Starr) and Keith Moon had all gone home — they’re going out to party! So Paul comes in and they start talking ‘Hey!’ — now they hadn’t seen each other in years. It was as if they saw each other just yesterday.”

Pang’s relationship with Lennon broke down in February 1975 just as the pair was making plans to join McCartney in New Orleans while he recorded the Wings album Venus And Mars.

Among the highlights in Instamatic Karma are photos of Lennon, who had reunited with his son Julian after not seeing him for more than two years, along with shots of Lennon recording with Harry Nilsson and hanging out with Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney.

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