John Lennon once allowed Los Angeles-based radio DJ Elliot Mintz to preview his new album, a move aimed at boosting his career.
“Some Time in New York City'' was a long-awaited collaboration between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, scheduled for release in 1972, less than two years after the Beatles disbanded.
When Mintz got his hands on an early copy, the song wasn't even printed on the jacket or label, but he was the first to try his hand at playing it.
Shockingly, that gift costs him his job, and as a result, he embarks on an outrageous adventure that no one could have predicted.
As explained in his new memoir, We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me (Dutton, on sale today), the record's opening cut is “Woman is the N—-r of In the song “The World,'' the N is for – word is prominently displayed. Mintz's superiors at the station were unimpressed and quickly canned him.
He told Lennon and Ono the same thing. “They thought the story was interesting,” Mintz told the Post. “So John asked me what I was going to do. I told them I was going to look for a job. And he said, 'I'm leaving for San Francisco tomorrow.' Would you like to join us? ”
Mintz replied, “Yes.” The trip is for Lennon and Ono to meet an herbalist who mysteriously helps Ono conceive — and an unconventional friendship begins.
“They were both trying to kick their methadone habits,” said Mintz, now 79. “They were both taking heroin from time to time…and found themselves in a spiral. They never shot. [injected] Anything. They snorted it. That led them to seek help, and they got methadone and became addicted to the drug. ”
Mintz definitely fell in love with Lennon and Ono. And maybe they did that to him too. In the early 1970s, John and Yoko sent Mintz a collage that doubled as a birthday card, invited him on a trip to Japan (where Mintz ate turtle soup from a turtle shell), and invited him to visit a recording studio in New York. went. I recorded “Double Fantasy” with a couple at the Hit Factory.
Yoko regularly called him at four in the morning and had long conversations about what was going on in her world. It interfered with Mintz's sex life. Because he remembered the woman he was spending the night with, and he didn't take kindly to the rude wake-up call from the mysterious woman in the middle of the night. Mintz was sworn to secrecy about his friendship with the A-lister and didn't make any big fuss about his conquests.
“She packed her things and called a taxi,” he said. “The next day I realized I had to make a concession. I wouldn't be able to live my private life the way I used to.”
In fact, he facilitated the infiltration of Lennon and Ono. “We ended up setting up a hotline just for John and Yoko,” Mintz said. “I have insomnia, but Yoko woke up at 7 a.m. in New York.'' [which was 4:00 in Los Angeles]And they liked the idea that if they called that number any time of the day or night, I would be awake. They were able to share their deepest secrets. They got used to it, and of course I got used to them. ”
Among the secrets Mintz kept was that Lennon called him in 1972 to confess his sexual infidelity. He and Ono were attending a party at the home of Jerry Rubin, a political radical turned Wall Street investor. When the party was in full swing, Lennon slipped into an empty bedroom and had raucous sex with one of the female guests. It was loud enough for someone to turn up the volume on a Dylan record to try to drown it out. Of course, Mr. Ono actually heard everything.
Both men shared their positions with Mintz, who had to juggle relationships with her husband while working various jobs in radio and television. “sometimes [dealing with them] I became an intruder,” Mintz said. “At what point do you want to change back? Remember, I never get paid.”
However, things only got more intense for Mintz when Lennon showed up at his home ground during what was known as the 'lost weekend'. In reality, it was an 18-month binge of sex, drugs, and booze from September 1973 to 1975.
After Mintz called Lennon “indiscreet” at Rubin's house, Ono and his assistant May Pan exiled Lennon to Los Angeles.
It is widely believed that Ono personally selected Pan as Lennon's surrogate girlfriend, but Mintz's recollection differs. Yoko “chose his assistant at the time to accompany him and take care of his basic needs,” he said.
“She carried it out so competently that their relationship became more than estranged husband and assistant.”
In fact, it turned into a full-fledged love relationship.
But as Mintz learned the hard way, Pan wasn't the only woman Lennon strayed from. “He called me, woke me up, and told me to go to his address,” Mintz recalled.He honored his request and moved into a house he had never been to before, where he met Lennon. He explained that he had found him alone in his bed under the sheets. A woman in a bathrobe was waiting in the next room. “John just looked at me and said, 'Get rid of her.'
Mintz did as he was told, but he didn't like it. And it produced one of the few times he felt he had to stand up to Lennon. He said he was not the right person for the job and hoped he would never be asked to do it again.
“John was upset about that,” Mintz said. “He yelled at me and said, 'You're going to hear whatever I want to hear.'
Mintz split up the scene and returned home as the hotline rang. It was Lennon, now sober. “Look,” he said to Mintz. “I'm sorry for yelling at you, but you don't tell me what I can and can't say.”
Mintz's rationalization today is that Lennon “had a big mouth and didn't hide his emotions.” He didn't want anyone to limit his ability to express himself. ”
However, in Mintz's case, Lennon did it at his own risk because he had a secret relationship with Mintz. “Yoko and I talked every night,” Mintz said. “When they separated, I told them I had no intention of keeping secrets from either of them. But in this case, he didn't bring it up and instead talked about her upcoming gallery opening, her A state of mahjong.
But that wasn't the final blow from Lennon.
After a night of extreme inebriation, Lennon became so violent that his bodyguard, who worked for Phil Spector, with whom Lennon was recording an album later titled Rock and Roll, tied him to a chair.
Mintz was called in to calm Lennon and relieve him of his restraints. “He looked at me and said, 'What are you doing here?'” Mintz recalled. “Then he threw an epithet at me. I don't repeat it in this book and I can't repeat it to you right now. It was really mean and it hurt a lot.”
Nevertheless, on the dark night of December 8, 1980, when Lennon was killed by a bullet from an obsessive fan, Mintz hopped on a Redeye from Los Angeles to New York to console Yoko Ono and, without permission, took Dakota's I stopped by the building. When she needed someone to organize Lennon's belongings, he took the job.
Among the many wire-frame glasses and musical instruments, Mintz found an unsent letter. It was in a sealed envelope addressed to him. He did something that is unthinkable for some people. “I didn't open the letter,” he said. “That envelope wasn't mine. I thought about it. I wondered about it. But it wasn't my place to open that envelope.”
Looking back on it all, considering everything he did for Lennon and Ono, why did Mintz stay with them for so long when he had no financial reward for his troubles? Do you think it was done? “It's love,” Mintz said. “The love I received from those two people. They completed me.”
