“They were paradoxes, John and Yoko, filled to the brim with internal contradictions. On the one hand they could be incredibly sensitive, honest, provocative, caring, creative, generous and wise. On the other they could be self-centred, desperate, vain, petty and annoying. In John’s case, also shockingly cruel, even to Yoko.”
So writes Elliot Mintz, spokesman for the Lennons both before and after John’s brutal murder, who certainly has a tale to tell and it is to his great credit that he has waited so long to tell it. A radio broadcaster by trade, his introduction to the Lennon’s came in 1971 after he interviewed Yoko about her LP Fly. Sympathetic attitudes towards Yoko being thin on the ground in those days, she was charmed by Mintz’s support and they stayed in touch, or at least she continued to phone him to chat, often late at night, for reasons he at first found difficult to understand.
Several months went by before she put John on the phone, ostensibly to interview him on air too, and much the same thing happened. Indeed, he and John spoke so regularly that Mintz had a second phone installed in his LA home for calls from the Lennons, with a blinking red light to warn him one of them was on the line. When they finally met in person a friendship developed and Mintz became privy to their bizarre lifestyle, not as a paid employee but as a reliable, discreet ally, a sounding board with whom they might discuss anything under the sun, a resource upon whom they could occasionally rely in emergencies and someone who would turn a blind eye to indiscretions. He filled this role with tact and distinction and the tone of his book suggests it remains the most fulfilling relationship of his life.
Mintz’s services were definitely required. “John was functionally a child when it came to taking care of himself,” he writes. “He never learned to do his own grocery shopping, never paid a utility bill or mailed a package or involved himself in any of the myriad mundane tasks the rest of us spend so much of our daily lives mired in. He was clueless about the most basic elements of human commerce, like money and how to buy stuff with it.”
The book spans the 1970s, the final decade of John’s life, and for the most part describes encounters between Mintz and the Lennons, most of which shed light on their occasionally perplexing beliefs and lifestyle. These reminiscences are clearly selective, chosen for their weirdness, which enlivens the book no end, but we are led to believe that many more encounters took place about which Mintz does not write, possibly because they were not as interesting, or possibly because he’s saving them for a sequel. Moreover, it’s a shame his tape machine wasn’t hooked up to the Lennon hot line, as we also learn that “hundreds” of phone calls occurred between him and the Lennons, just as they exchanged “hundreds” of letter and postcards*, a handful of which are included as illustrations in the book. Dialogue is therefore assumed, but it rings true, Mintz having learned to translate John’s idiosyncratic speak patterns, part funny, part Scouse, part endearingly Lennonesque. He always referred to Yoko as Mother.
Much of what Mintz writes about John chimes with my own beliefs or what I have read elsewhere. He was a klutz when it came to practical matters, and a terrible driver. He spent lengthy periods of time alone, often watching TV, mostly in their expansive apartments in the Dakota on New York’s Westside. He was fiercely protective of The Beatles’ legacy and disliked any comparisons that suggested they were influenced by others, especially Bob Dylan. He was a fan of numerology, as practised by Yoko, and food fads designed to reduce weight or otherwise enhance his health. Also, like the other three, he was not above playing the Beatle card to ease his passage through life.
Surprisingly, Mintz wasn’t at the judicial hearing in 1975 when John was awarded his green card, which enabled him to travel freely, but he did accompany the Lennons to Japan in 1977, a delightful trip for everyone involved, and became a sort of temporary third parent to John’s sons Julian and Sean when child minding was required. He was also present when, one Christmas (the year is unstated), Paul McCartney turned up at the Dakota where conversation between him and John was strangely stilted. It goes without saying that he was devastated by the events of December 8, 1980, and flew immediately to New York to offer himself as a pillar for Yoko to lean on. Aside from a few swipes at certain individuals who sought to capitalise on John’s death, the book contains very little about the years that followed.
We All Shine On is not a long book – I read it in two four hour sittings – its 300 pages are typeset sparsely with generous leading and there are plenty of unused pages throughout. It is illustrated with photos at the start of each of its four parts, has 16-page plate section and a useful index.
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*Hunter Davies’ book The Lennon Letters, published in 2012, is an illustrated, annotated collection of over 200 letters that John wrote to all and sundry, authorised by Yoko, but it contains not a single one to Elliot Mintz, nor is Mintz mentioned in its index. In the light of the “hundreds” of letters Mintz claims to have received from John, I thought this was curious but Hunter enlightened me. “I never saw any letter [Mintz] says he received,” he informs me. “Yoko provided none alas, just her blessing and an intro and [she] allowed me to use her copyright on all John’s writings. For which she got 50 percent of all proceeds, without providing any letters. She said she was keeping what she had.”
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