John was one quarter of the famous pop band The Beatles. Their meteoric rise to international celebrities altered their lives beyond recognition – especially for John. When the band started, he was dating Cynthia Powell, a fellow college student. She broke off her engagement at the time to be with him and they married in 1962, when she fell pregnant. By 1968, John had already slept with many women outside of their marriage. He started an affair with Yoko and initiated a messy divorce from Cynthia.
John remarried quickly, but by 1973, he had started an affair with the couples’ personal assistant May Pang.
Biography Harry Bill claims Yoko herself encourage May to pursue a relationship with John. She reportedly said: “He likes you a lot.”
In a 2012 interview with The Telegraph, Yoko herself admitted: “The affair was something that was not hurtful to me. I needed a rest, I needed space.
“Can you imagine every day of getting this vibration from people of hate?
“You want to get out of that. Also, we were so close John didn’t even want me to go the bathroom by myself.
“‘I will come with you’, he would say. And this would be in public places like the EMI recording studios.
“I started to notice that he became a little restless on top of that, so I thought it’s better to give him a rest and me a rest.”
Once John had established a relationship with May, Yoko decided to stay in New York while her husband went to LA with May.
Yoko explained: “May Pang was a very intelligent, attractive woman and extremely efficient.
“I thought they’d be OK.”
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She said: “I’m enjoying my freedom now. Men’s attitudes are very different. When I met John it seems old-fashioned. I’m not the kind of person who’d ever pursue a guy because I was pursuing my work.
“You can be lonely when you have a guy living with you. I cherish moments of not having a guy around, but my work involves being with people, usually guys. I think I’m very lucky. I’ve got so many things going on all the time.”
Yoko has been heavily criticised by Beatle fans over the years, often blamed for luring John away from his bandmates and subsequently causing the band to split in 1970.
She told The Telegraph: “I was very aware that we were ruining each other’s careers and I was hated and John was hated because of me. We did everything together and we did everything publicly together.”
However, fellow bandmate Paul McCartney has frequently acknowledged that the four musicians were already drifting apart when Yoko arrived on the scene and is believed to be on good terms with her now.
Yoko has not remarried since John’s tragic assassination by a crazed fan in 1980.