“Full disclosure. I was never a Beatles superfan,” Elliot Mintz confesses early in his memoir, We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me. Nonetheless, in 1970, the 26-year-old radio host suddenly became one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s closest friends.
The son of a Polish immigrant, Mintz grew up in New York City and, despite having a strong New York accent and severe stutter, decided to become a radio broadcaster. He overcame the stutter, lost the accent and, by age 21, was a radio talk show host in Los Angeles. One fateful day, he hosted Ono to discuss her newly released album, Fly. Not 24 hours after the interview, Ono called Mintz at home to thank him. “Sometimes,” she said, “it’s very difficult being me.” They chatted for about 45 minutes, and Ono continued to call nearly every day. Before long, Lennon joined her.
Mintz installed a third telephone line at home, his “John and Yoko hotline,” as well as a red light on his bedroom ceiling that flashed whenever it rang. He traveled and spent holidays with the pair, and his life became consumed with their whims and needs. “I believed, in a sense, that I was married to John and Yoko,” he writes.
Like any celebrity memoir worth its salt, We All Shine On makes readers feel as if they’ve spent time with the book’s subjects. A candid storyteller, Mintz reveals intimacies about the artists’ lives without being salacious. Readers will delight in strange facts (their apartment in the Dakota contained an Egyptian mummy), compelling insights (“John was functionally a child when it came to taking care of himself”) and amusing observations (“The mere mention of Bob Dylan’s name . . . could uncork a volcano of roiling resentments and pent-up jealousies—not to mention one of John’s startlingly accurate impersonations.”). There are spats and hurt feelings, as well as the memorable time that Lennon and Ono invited themselves to tag along to Mintz’s radio interview with Salvador Dali, which they ended up ruining with their frequent, unsolicited comments.
Mintz’s ending, which leads up to Lennon’s horrific murder, is especially poignant. The couple were leading fulfilling, creative lives when suddenly their charmed world ceased to exist. Mintz, who ultimately became the spokesperson for Lennon’s estate, describes sitting outside Ono’s bedroom door after the murder, waiting for her to respond. Regardless of whether you’re a superfan or an ordinary admirer of the music of Lennon, Ono and the Beatles, you’ll likely find the captivating story of this unusual friendship unduly hard to put down.
