The famous photo of John Lennon wearing a “New York City” T-shirt was taken on the rooftop of the 52nd Street apartment Lennon shared with his girlfriend, muse and collaborator May Pang. To get up to the roof, you had to go through the kitchen window.

“It was a hot summer day in August 1974,” Pang recalls. The image was shot by famed rock photog Bob Gruen. Originally, Lennon wanted Pang to shoot the photo, but at the time she just had a 35-millimeter film camera, which wasn’t the format the record company needed.

“And we needed it [the photo] quick,” Pang says. “So, John said, ‘All right, all right, just get Bob.’ Because he really didn’t like that many photographers coming in. He liked the fact that I had my camera, that I could just take pictures any time.” That day on the roof, Pang captured the moment. She took out her camera and snapped a pic of Gruen taking that classic Lennon photo.

During the 18 months she and Lennon were together, while he was estranged from his second wife, visual artist Yoko Ono, Pang took many great candid photos of the Beatles legend. On May 29 – 31, she’ll exhibit 28 of her John Lennon photos at Lowe Mill, a sprawling arts center in Huntsville, Alabama that’s previously hosted the likes of filmmaker John Waters and seminal punk band X.

The exhibit is titled “The Lost Weekend – The Photography of May Pang.” It coincides with the digital release of “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” the excellent 2022 documentary film about Pang’s life and romance with Lennon.

Fans can buy limited edition photos from the exhibit, as well as posters from the doc, which Pang will sign and personalize. Due to contractual obligations, she can only sign items purchased at the exhibit. No albums, DVDs, books, etc.

After reuniting with Ono in 1975, Lennon referred to his time away from her as his “lost weekend.” But that description isn’t entirely accurate.

Yes, Lennon’s early period with Pang, after they relocated to Los Angeles on a whim, had its share of debauchery. Lennon was frequently sloshed, usually with pal Harry Nilsson, the singer/songwriter of songs like “Without You” and “Jump Into The Fire.”

Around this time, an addled Lennon got thrown out of a couple L.A. nightclubs. It got in the press. Back then his mates, who dubbed themselves the Hollywood Vampires, also included shock rocker Alice Cooper and notoriously wild Who drummer Keith Moon.

Pang says, “We would go out, John would have drinks in New York, and you never heard about it because he wasn’t jumping up and down. He didn’t need a drink. It was only when the friends would come calling when we were in L.A., and when you go out with the boys, it’s those nights. When you’re hanging out with Harry, it’s very difficult not to be … I used to argue with Harry saying, ‘Stop it,’ and it was tough.”

Pang adds, “John wasn’t on all the drugs it’s written he was on. I’m not saying he didn’t do any, but that’s when the friends came around. We didn’t have that in the house, and I didn’t drink, and I didn’t take drugs.”

Nilsson enlisted Lennon to produce his 1974 album “Pussy Cats.” Lennon decided that while making the album he and Pang should share a house with Nilsson and Moon. Uh oh.

It was the same residence where movie star/sex symbol Marilyn Monroe hooked up with U.S. President Robert Kennedy Jr. and later his brother Bobby Kennedy. In the documentary, Pang recalls how Lennon was thrilled to love her in the same bed Monroe had the Kennedys.

Eventually during his time with Pang, Lennon stopped drinking. He slimmed up, looked cooler and his outlook and music became more positive.

Pang was with Lennon during many of his biggest moments as a solo artist. One night, they were watching TV, a favorite Lennon pastime, and snuggling in their bed when they clicked to a program with televangelist “Reverend Ike.”

A phrase the reverend used in his sermon inspired Lennon to write the song “Whatever Gets You Through The Night,” which Lennon recorded with an assist from piano rocker Elton John. It became Lennon’s first number one solo single, the first Beatle to do so.

Pang says, “A lot of people don’t realize that Ringo [Starr, Beatles drummer] was the one that had more hits [solo] with his singles and albums. And John hadn’t really gotten there yet.” “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” was the lead single off Lennon’s 1974 album “Walls and Bridges,” one of the finest, if not the finest, of his solo albums.

“He was so proud of ‘Walls and Bridges,’” Pang says. “People don’t realize John made that album in eight weeks, from the start into the studio right into handing it to the people at Capitol Records. And within budget, because I used to do all the budgets. I think we did it for 60,000 [dollars].”

The “Walls and Bridges” album included another hit, “#9 Dream.” The female voice whispering “John” on the track is Pang’s. When Lennon started recording on “#9 Dream,” Pang was in another part of the studio, New York’s Record Plant, working on budgets. A young studio assistant named Jimmy Iovine, later a super producer, label exec and Beats headphones mogul, was dispatched to bring her to the control room.

When she got to the control room, she found Lennon and the recording engineer “grinning like Cheshire cats.” Pang looked out into the studio’s main room and saw it was dark except for a light illuminating a microphone and mic stand. Lennon asked her to get behind the mic.

“And I said, ‘Me? Why do I need to go out there?’” Pang recalls. “And John goes, ‘I need you to do something. I need you to whisper to me.’ I said, ‘Whisper to you?’ So what he had done was he made it comfy and cozy [in the studio], to whisper to him, you know, in a bedtime, sexy voice. And so that’s what I did.”

“Walls and Bridges” contains several strong deep cuts, like the slinky “Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradise).” Lennon wrote that one about Pang. Before the sessions, one day at their home he got out his acoustic guitar and played and sang the song for her.

Anyone who’s had a love song written about and played for them knows how special it can make you feel. Now picture John Lennon doing that for you.

“I have to tell you,” Pang says, “when he first said sit down and then started playing, in my mind I’m going, did he just write a song for me? OK, how do I take this all in? And he goes, ‘This is as far as I got.’ And I’m thinking, oh my god, so I am very proud of that song.”

Lennon was struggling financially during this period due to legal expenses fighting deportation because the Nixon administration viewed the politically outspoken British expat as a threat. Lennon and Pang lived on a tight budget.

While the couple resided in L.A., they lived in homes borrowed from friends, including Mamas & The Papas record producer Lou Adler, later known as the guy who sat next to Jack Nicholson courtside at Los Angeles Lakers games for years.

Pang paid for her own film and prints. Lennon was able to buy her an orange Plymouth Barracuda sports car for her birthday. The drawings he did for her, including one of a gorilla, Pang’s favorite animal, meant more though.

When Lennon and Pang moved back to New York, the 52nd Street apartment was only around 800 square feet or so. “We turned the living room into our bedroom,” Pang says. “So we had this king-size bed, everybody could sit on that, and like two director chairs and very sparse furniture around.”

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger was a frequent visitor to the apartment, at first accompanied by first wife Bianca Jagger and later on rock muse Bebe Buell. “Whenever Mick was in town,” Pang recalls, “he would just pop over. He would come over telling John about how they [the Stones] were looking for a guitarist, before [hiring] Ronnie Wood. [Jagger said], ‘Yeah, we’re thinking of all these different people. What did you think?’ I was like, ‘He’s asking me?’”

Another night while naked on their apartment rooftop, Lennon and Pang saw a UFO, a sighting confirmed by other locals. The event would later inform Lennon’s lyrics to his posthumous 1983 hit “Nobody Told Me.”

There was a funny incident at the apartment where Jagger whispered to Pang that famous record producer Glyn Johns was mad at Lennon. From across the room, Lennon asked what they were whispering about.

Pang said aloud, “Mick said Glyn is mad at you.” The only problem was Johns was in the room, too. “Mick was just mischievous all the way around,” Pang says with a smile. “But he was a good friend, and he loved coming to hang out with John. After John and I split. I don’t think that Mick ever saw John again.”

The term “lost weekend” for Lennon and Pang’s relationship is inaccurate on multiple levels. For one, it was way longer than a weekend. And two, Lennon was more found than lost during that time, as he went out and saw his friends more than he had in years.

“It’s a misunderstood time,” she tells me. “And I know that a lot of people would like to see that it was the other way, but it wasn’t.”

While cutting “Whatever Gets You Through The Night,” Lennon and Elton John made a wager. If the song went number one, Lennon had to perform it live with Elton, one of music’s biggest stars at the time. Besides a widely panned 1972 performance with Ono, Lennon hadn’t played live much since 1966 on the last Beatles tour.

After “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” topped the charts, Lennon made good on the bet. He and Pang attended Elton’s 1974 concert at Madison Square Garden. Backstage before Lennon went on, to ease his nerves he and Pang tried on several of Elton’s signature outlandish eyeglasses.

Before Lennon went on to sing “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” with Elton and his band, he asked Pang to stand by the stage where he could see her. Pang says, “John kept saying, ‘I want you to stand right here so I can turn around and see you, because I know that if you’re bopping, then I’m doing good.’

“I just remember standing there, right behind Elton, where John could turn to his right and see me. It was scary for me because I felt the stage go up and down. The stomping, the screaming [by the arena’s audience], was nothing like I’ve ever heard before. That’s how intense it was. It was amazing.”

It would be Lennon’s last concert performance. And contrary to popular belief, Pang says, Lennon didn’t leave afterwards with Ono that night.

“I’m the one who told Yoko that he was going to perform,” Pang says. “And she kept saying, ‘I gotta go,’ and I said tickets will be arranged for you. And that’s how she went. And of course, she was going to come back and visit. Everybody went to the after-party.”

It was Ono who’d paired Lennon and Pang together. Pang was the couple’s personal assistant, a job she started when she was around 20 years old.

Previously, she’d been a receptionist for the New York office that managed The Beatles’ label Apple Records as well as three of the former Fab Four: singer/guitarist Lennon, drummer Starr and guitarist George Harrison.

For Lennon and Ono, Pang took care of everything from buying groceries to handling publicity. She did the couple’s wardrobe for the music video for “Imagine,” Lennon’s signature solo song. Worked on Ono and Lennon’s avant-garde films, one of which required Pang to catch flies for use in the film.

She lived with the couple at their London estate. And in New York at a posh three-story apartment in a building called the Dakota.

When Lennon and Ono recorded albums, Pang was a production coordinator, which included picking studio musicians. She even sang backing vocals on Lennon and Ono’s single “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” She’s also on the picture sleeve for the “Happy Xmas” vinyl, standing next to infamous hit-maker Phil Spector, who co-produced the track.

Spector also produced Lennon’s fifth solo album, 1975’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” comprised of covers of songs that inspired Lennon early on, like Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-a-Lula” and Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.”

After five years of acrimony, Lennon invited former Beatles bandmate/songwriting partner Paul McCartney to the Los Angeles studio where he was working. The resulting studio jam, which also included musicians like Stevie Wonder, was the last time Lennon and McCartney ever played music together in public.

At Lennon’s request, Pang joined in on tambourine. She was young and pretty, but never just arm-candy for Lennon. She was his partner.

The recording sessions for Lennon’s album “Rock ‘n’ Roll” weren’t all fun. At one point, taskmaster Spector fired a handgun inside the studio, which obviously unnerved Pang and especially Lennon, who melted down after they got back home.

In 1975, Lennon and Pang were invited to a recording session by Lennon’s friend, glam rocker David Bowie, who was editing his cover of Lennon’s Beatles classic “Across The Universe.” On the studio floor while jamming with Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar, Lennon played a guitar riff that sparked Bowie’s hit song “Fame.”

“John loved the idea of collaborating,” Pang says. “He told Carlos, ‘I have this riff in my head, and I’d like to do something with it.’” Lennon’s riff was inspired by Shirley & Company’s disco hit “Shame, Shame, Shame.”

After about 45 minutes or so, Bowie left the mixing board and walked out to the studio’s main room. “Believe it or not, David was a little nervous around John,” Pang says. “He said, ‘What are you guys doing?’

“And John says, ‘Oh, working on this riff, you know, from a song that I heard’ And he [Bowie) goes, ‘Do you have any lyrics?’ And John said, ‘No.’ And so he [Bowie] goes, ‘Do you mind if I write something?’ John said, ‘Be my guest.’ Twenty-five minutes later, he comes back with the lyrics of ‘Fame.’”

These are all whirlwind experiences that would’ve warped many young people. Especially given Pang grew up a huge Beatles fan. A first-generation Chinese American, she was raised in Manhattan and attended Catholic school.

Pang was ignored by her father, and idolized her mother, a beauty who started her own laundry business. In their neighborhood, which was mostly Black and Latino, she was “a minority among minorities,” as Pang puts it in her documentary.

Around the time Lennon was doing his third solo studio album, 1973’s “Mind Games,” he and Ono weren’t getting along. Lennon started fooling around. Ono came to Pang and said she decided Pang should date Lennon, because he needed someone nice like her to take care of him.

Understandably, Pang found the proposition uncomfortable. Lennon was her employer and he was married. Ono persisted though and said she’d arrange it.

Eventually, as Pang recalls in her documentary, Lennon literally “charmed the pants off me.” The first time he kissed her they were in an elevator at a recording studio. Soon, at age 23, May Pang had her first live-in boyfriend, John Lennon.

One day, McCartney and his wife, photographer Linda McCartney, visited Lennon and Pang’s L.A. home. With a Polaroid instant camera, Pang snapped a photo of Lennon and McCartney casually chatting while sitting on lawn chairs.

“John was one of the first people to have that Polaroid camera,” Pang says. “He found out that it had been test-marketed in Florida and said to one of the camera-crew people [that worked for Lennon], ‘You’ve got to go find this camera for me.’ John loved the fact that you can get the instantaneous feel of everything at that moment.” She took many of her other photographs with a Nikon 35mm camera outfitted with a special lens.

Pang’s photographs are wonderfully humanizing. You don’t see Beatles, you see human beings: Lennon slurping soup; McCartney and Starr joking behind a piano; Lennon lounging with his and Pang’s cats, named for piano keys (white cat “Major,” black cat “Minor”).

Pang snapped a photo of Lennon during a 1973 road trip the couple took. They’d stopped at a California ghost town. In the parking lot, there was a black Harley-Davidson “trike” motorcycle Lennon quickly got enamored with.

“I see him looking at this trike and he kept staring at it,” Pang recalls. “Walks away, he comes back and he’s still looking at it longingly. He did it a couple of times.”

They had no idea who the motorcycle belonged to, but Pang had Lennon go over and stand by the cycle and she took a picture. Ordinary couple stuff. Like many of Pang’s Lennon photos, this was a one-off as she didn’t take a safety or second shot.

Pang’s orchestrated relationship with Lennon wasn’t the first time Ono used her to manipulate him, she says in the “Lost Weekend” doc. In that documentary, Pang recalls how Lennon had been estranged for several years from his young son Julian Lennon, his then-only child and from his first marriage to Cynthia Lennon.

At the Dakota, Pang answered the phone one day, she says in the doc. It was Julian asking if he could speak to his dad. All incoming calls to Lennon had to first be approved by Ono, who told Pang to tell Julian his dad wasn’t home and not to tell Lennon his son called. It broke Pang’s heart. Broke her heart again the next time it happened.

After Julian called a third time, Ono finally gave Pang permission to put the call through to Lennon, Pang says in the documentary. After putting the call through, Lennon asked Pang if this was the first time Julian called. Ono had just told Pang if Lennon asked this, Pang had to lie and say Julian hadn’t called before. She did as Ono asked, lied to Lennon as she’d lied to young Julian, and was ridden with guilt.

But soon Pang played a huge role in Lennon reconnecting with his son. In the “Lost Weekend” documentary both Julian and Pang fondly recall their time with John together, the three of them. There was a boating trip to Long Island Sound. Goofing around at Lennon and Pang’s home with masks. Pang and Cynthia Lennon also became friends. They remained close until Cynthia’s 2015 passing.

One time in California, Lennon, Pang and Julian snuck onto the Paramount Studios lot and watched a taping of hit sitcom “Happy Days.” They took a pic with the show‘s cast, who were thrilled to meet Lennon. While on the lot, the trio also ran into a young Jodie Foster and Julian was smitten. Pang has photos that capture these warm times.

A meeting was scheduled in 1974 to sign the contract that formally dissolved The Beatles four years after the band publicly announced their breakup. McCartney, Harrison and Starr inked the document. Lennon was a no-show. He later signed the contract while on a trip with Julian and Pang to Disney World in Florida. Pang shot a photo of Lennon’s hand scrawling the signature that officially ended The Beatles.

A decade later, Julian recorded his debut solo album “Valotte,” featuring the hit title track and “Too Late For Goodbyes,” here in Alabama, at Muscle Shoals Sound. “Such a beautiful album,” Pang says proudly.

Pang accompanied Lennon to a 1974 “Monday Night Football” NFL game between the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins. Sportscaster Howard Cosell invited the couple to the broadcast booth, and he interviewed Lennon during halftime.

Asked what he thought about an NFL game, Lennon said, “It makes rock concerts look like tea parties.” Cosell asked Lennon if the Beatles would ever reunite. Pointing down at the field, Lennon replied, “If it looked this, it might be worth doing.”

After they’d moved back to New York, Lennon wanted to quit smoking cigarettes because he thought it was impacting his singing. Ono, who stayed in contact with Lennon and Pang, arranged for Lennon to undergo hypnotherapy to kick cigs. The day he left his home with Pang to go do that, she had a strange feeling he was leaving for good.

After not hearing from Lennon for a few days, Pang’s heart sank. She finally saw him at a joint dental appointment they had previously scheduled.

Afterwards, Pang began to walk home toward their apartment. She turned around to see Lennon walking the other way, towards the Dakota. Pang told him home was the other way, and he told her Ono had allowed him to come home to her.

In the documentary, Pang is shown recalling that moment through tears. It’s hard not to wish Lennon had instead walked home with her that day. And wonder how his life might’ve been different if he had.

After Lennon reconciled with Ono, he’d contact Pang occasionally and they’d meet for trysts — all the way until Lennon was shot to death Dec. 8, 1980, outside the Dakota by a deranged fan. In a sad circular moment, that night Cosell announced Lennon’s passing to the world during a “Monday Night Football” broadcast.

It was a devastating loss, but Pang moved on. She worked as a publicist for artists including Bob Marley. In 1983, she published a memoir titled “Loving John” and in the late ‘80s married record producer Tony Visconti, known for making classic David Bowie, T. Rex and Iggy Pop albums. They had two children together before divorcing in the early 2000s. In 2008, she published “Instamatic Karma,” a book of her Lennon-era photos.

In often-seen photos from her early 20s, Pang exudes laid-back style, and she still has that today. When she beams in from her Forest Hills, New York home for our video interview, her hair’s streaked with punkish purple. She speaks in a salt-of-the-earth New York accent, which Lennon, who spoke with a distinctive Liverpool lilt, used to get a kick out of.

Pang still has her eyeglass frames and some funky clothes from her Lennon era. She’s flattered young women now tell her that her life and style have influenced them. Women of Chinese decent, in particular.

“And it’s lovely,” Pang says. “And I’m very happy that I’m being recognized for not only that [her personal style and time with Lennon], but for being in the music business. Because I don’t think there’s ever been another person like me in that position that I was in.”

“The Lost Weekend – The Photography of May Pang” will be at Huntsville arts center Lowe Mill, address 2211 Seminole Drive, May 29 – May 31. Lowe Mill is open 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. those days. More info at lowemill.art.