The night John Lennon and a Rolling Stone were attacked by a gang in Chinatown: “It was pretty amazing”
Being one of the most famous people in the world is one of the hardest things to have to navigate, and knowing that even going out in public while trying to mind your own business could bring you heaps of unwanted attention on every occasion must be one of the most tricky aspects of notoriety that celebrities have to deal with. Even though The Beatles ceased activity in 1970 with the release of their final studio album, Let It Be, the fact that all four members remained in the public eye due to their individual ventures meant they were still subject to unwanted encounters in public spaces.
One needn’t be reminded that in December 1980, Mark David Chapman fatally shot John Lennon on the streets of New York City in a harrowing incident that shook the world. It’s the ultimate example of how accruing so much fame can place a target on one’s back and turn the prospect of celebrity status into something terrifying and unpredictable that can instil fear into those who have achieved great levels of success.
While at the end of the day, celebrities are still normal people who would love nothing more than to live their lives as such, there has arguably never been a more high-profile example of how the integration of high-profile figures into the unpredictable and hostile real world can ultimately be dangerous. It’s understandable, then, that those who are of such a high profile, whether in the world of entertainment or not, choose to frequent places where they would be more likely to remain anonymous and be treated as regular citizens.
While still in New York City, you’d imagine that in a neighbourhood like Chinatown, Lennon and his entourage wouldn’t have to keep their heads down as much due to its cultural separatism from the rest of the wider city, but one particular encounter that the former Beatle experienced while there would suggest that he was unsafe for different reasons.
While on a small excursion with music executive and then romantic partner May Pang, alongside Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys and his partner, the foursome allegedly ran into some trouble in the neighbourhood, which Pang attributes to there being a lot of prejudices being present in the ideals of the residents.
In a 2003 interview with Asiance Magazine, Pang recalled an evening when the group had a brush with a local gang that objected to the fact that Pang and Lennon were presenting as an interracial couple. We were just walking down the street,” she recalled, “And I heard one of them yell to me in Taishanese; ‘What, you’re going out with a white person?’” None of the locals seemed to know or care who Lennon was, and Pang immediately realised that they might have found themselves in a predicament.
After hurriedly bundling themselves to get into a cab and away from the impending danger, Pang explained to Lennon what the gang members had been saying, to which Lennon responded by flipping them off from the moving vehicle. “All of a sudden,” Pang continued, “These gangs start running toward the car. Thank god us girls were sitting in the middle, because the gang members open the door on Bobby’s side.”
With Keys having screamed at the gang members to shut the door, the taxi managed to evade being caught by the angry mob, but Pang said that the close shave was something that stunned both those in the cab with her and the Chinatown residents. “The gang member was so shocked that a white guy stood up to a Chinese man on his turf,” she said. “He was standing there dumb-founded. It was pretty amazing. John was so amazed that this stuff was happening.”
