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Best Of John Lennon - [ John Lennon Greatest Hits Full Album ] - John Lennon Playlist
Elliot Mintz is a veteran journalist, radio host and media consultant who became close friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the 1970s. In the days after Lennon’s murder, 40 years ago on Dec. 8, he also unexpectedly found himself as the family’s media representative. While Mintz has interviewed everyone from Groucho Marx to Salvador Dalí and represented public figures from Bob Dylan to Paris Hilton, he is perhaps best known as an intimate and authority on John and Yoko, and has maintained his friendship with the family to this day. Mintz spent an hour last month with Variety looking back on that fateful day and the weeks that followed — thoroughly and thoughtfully if rather reluctantly. Hours of the interviews and recordings he references below are available on his website and YouTube channel.
I was working as a radio talk show host in Los Angeles, and one evening in 1970 I did a wonderful phone interview with Yoko. We talked about the record she had just put out [“Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band”], her art, her politics — it was unlike any interview I’d ever done before, just so original, out there, different and provocative. To my surprise, the next day she called me at home just to let me know that she enjoyed talking with me, because most people only wanted to ask a lot of questions about her husband, the Beatle. It was a very sweet call and the only time that a guest had ever called to thank me, and it really touched me. I called her back a day or two later and told her that, and so began a telephone friendship that continued over the next few months, at all hours — I’m an insomniac and she’s an early riser.
John was kind of curious about this person that his wife kept talking with on the phone at various times during the day and night, so I interviewed John for about 40 minutes over the telephone, live on air — this was around the time of “Imagine.” I tried to make it a conversation about subjects I hadn’t heard him being asked about, and he was very open. Not long after, I called him back to thank him, and the three of us began to have long talks. One day they called and said, “We just drove from New York to Ojai [California], we’d like to meet you.” So I drove up and we spent the afternoon talking, and before I left John said, “We just made a new album called ‘Some Time in New York City,’ I have an acetate, you can play it [on the air] first.”
So I went straight back to the station — there was no time to listen to it before I aired it — and handed it to the engineer. I told [the radio audience] that I’d just had my first actual visit with John and Yoko, and “We’re about to hear their new album, straight through.” Now, if you know that album, it’s very political, the songs are very controversial [the single was called “Woman Is the N—er of the World”], and I just sat there and watched the engineer, who holds the station’s FCC license, as his face turned red. However the audience felt, I knew that management would definitely hear about it, and the next day I was invited to the front room of the station and was told they were rethinking the format of the radio station and contemplating some changes. I understood where the conversation was going.
I called John that day and said, “Well, I’ve got some good news and bad news.” He said, “What’s the good news?” I replied, “I played the entire album on the air.” He yelled, “He played the entire record!,” and I could hear them both whooping.
Then he said, “So what’s the bad news?” I said, “I think I’m going to be looking for a new job,” which he thought was enormously funny and yelled, “And they fired him!” He asked what I was going to do and I said, “This is the nature of the game, I’ll find another job.” He said, “Don’t do that right away, we’re gonna drive up to San Francisco, let’s hang out.” And so began the magical mystery tour.
In the early stages, we talked about almost everything except music; I don’t know much about it, and was a little too old for the Beatles experience. We talked about religion, philosophy, history, books he’d read that they wanted me to read, the news, poetry, in frivolous moments a little Hollywood gossip, although Yoko wasn’t interested in that. He was a man of tremendous, diversified curiosities and interests, and he was a very intent observer. And the friendship went on — I flew back to New York maybe 20 or 30 times over the years, and would spend four or five days primarily with them, sitting in the kitchen, talking into the night. We seldom went out — the vibe changed when they were dealing with the general public — although I traveled with them sometimes. Once a messenger turned up at my door with a plane ticket: “We’re in Japan, we miss you.”
I last saw him in November of 1980. I went to one of the ‘Double Fantasy’ recording sessions and then afterward the three of us went back to the Dakota and hung out until two or three in the mo
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