Ticket 2 Ride

Elliot Mintz was a radio personality and publicist in L.A. when fate moved him into John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s orbit. More than 50 years later, Mintz details his relationship with the Lennons and the role he played in the aftermath of Lennon’s murder.

I’ve read most of the books written by those surrounding the Beatles (and ex-Beatles), but I wasn’t aware of Mintz’s book. I remember Mintz from his “The Lost Lennon Tapes” and other Sunday night radio programming. He was one of those L.A. voices providing syndicated or network programs to the rest of the country.

We All Shine On: John, Yoko, & Me (2024, Dutton) begins in 1981, only two months after Lennon’s death. Mintz has been asked by Yoko to inventory Lennon’s possessions, which there were many, and some of which have already disappeared. Mintz is staying at the Dakota, in what used to be the Lennon’s bedroom (Yoko has moved to another part of the floor owned by them). As he goes through Lennon’s effects, he describes handling the many pairs of Lennon’s eyeglasses, and noticing Lennon’s poor vision. Could his limited eyesight have influenced how he saw and reacted to the world?

Then there was the ominous paper bag delivered from the hospital where Lennon was declared death. No one dared to open the bag, which contained the blood-soaked clothing and his blood-stained eyeglasses.

Mintz had spent the previous decade as friend and confidant to both John and Yoko, now he embarked on a different role as Yoko and son Sean navigated life without John. Yoko could surround herself with security, lawyers, accountants, nannies, assistants and whatever helpers were needed – but people she could trust were a rare commodity.

It all began in 1971 when Mintz began a telephone relationship with Yoko, that soon included conversations with her husband. “But I’d been talking to Yoko for weeks, and certainly gained a sense of John through our conversations. Leading up to my interview with John, which was live on the air, I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

An opportunity to interview John Lennon would change the trajectory of Mintz’s career, and his life. And yet…

“…I was concerned about the language issues as well-if he’d use a four-letter word on live radio. I was worried it was going to be unruly.”

Mintz was fired when he played the entire John & Yoko album Some Time in New York City, complete with “Woman is the N***** of the World”. That only pulled Mintz deeper in the John & Yoko orbit. To aid in their growing telephone dialogue, Mintz even hat a “hotline” installed in his home for John & Yoko calls.

Mintz was a rare insider that got to see the good and bad.

“Yes, I suppose you could say they were dreamers, and, no, they were not the only ones. I personally found their idealism infectious and inspiring, and so did millions of others. Still, as I got to know John and Yoko as flesh-and-blood friends—or, in those days, more often as incorporeal voices on the phone-I began to see their flawed human sides as well.”

“Alcohol was not John’s friend. While pot relaxed and inspired him, drinking tended to make him mean-spirited and reckless, unleashing bitter demons.”

Many of the John & Yoko experiences presented here have been written about by others, but these are really first-hand accounts and Mintz brings new insights. The wildest story is about Lennon having sex with a woman at a party, loudly, where everyone, including Yoko, could hear every noise. That was apparently the event that cracked the Lennons’ marriage and started Lennon’s “Lost Weekend” excursion in L.A. with May Pang. Mintz differs with Pang’s view of her love affair with Lennon. He claims not to have been around her much with Lennon in L.A.

Few people get a chance to enter the private world of people like John & Yoko. Mintz indicated that Sean Lennon told him to just tell the truth. The truth can be very painful, and enlightening, especially when it’s true.

Worth the read.

4/5