The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Elliot Mintz | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

In this conversation, I sit down with Elliot Mintz, the man who became John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s closest confidant during their most radical and reclusive years. Elliot shares how a single radio interview turned into hundreds of late-night calls, secret meetings in Ojai, and a front-row seat to Lennon’s life after the Beatles. We talk about government surveillance, artistic risk, and the quiet cost of fame. Elliot reflects on John’s complex relationships with Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan, the making of Some Time in New York City, and the moment John handed him a test pressing and told him to “break the record. Subscribe to the Magnificent Others YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Yoko was the first one out. And I heard a voice from the back of the station wagon saying, Go on, hug him. She gave me a light touch in the shoulder. And then he bounced at the car and gave me a linen bear hug. She tells me to sit at the corner of the bathtub, turns on the water, comes closer to me, almost as a whisper. The house is completely bugged.

Everything that we're saying is being recorded. were being watched. The Bronx, 1945. Is that accurate? Yes. Do you remember the world that you grew up in? I was born in the Bronx. Okay.

I probably spent just a number of months there, Bronx Hospital. And then the entire family moved, the entire family was my mom, dad, and sister. We moved to Washington Heights in Manhattan. Okay. In upper Manhattan. and lived there for virtually all of my adult life. My parents lived there and died in that two-bedroom apartment.

And it was just lower middle class. I remember the neighborhood well. I remember Fort Tryon Park. I don't remember much of my youth, you know, between 45 and 55. Why do you think that is? Either it was an incredibly uneventful time for me with nothing to hang on to by way of memory. I'm just surprised when people can talk to me about what they were doing when they were four, five, six, seven, eight years old. What the heck were any of us doing?

We were doing things with crayons, I guess, and maybe on a... In my, sorry, in my case, I remember a lot of those things because a lot of traumatic things happened. So if I hadn't had those traumas happen, maybe I wouldn't remember. You see what I'm saying? Did you have traumatic things? Oh, yeah. Between the ages of like four and 16, there was all this crazy stuff that happened. So my memories are all tied to this happened, this happened, like a movie script, you know.

Well, if you're talking about teenage years, yes, I did have some traumatic experiences. but I can recall what they were. But nothing bad happened to me up to five. What really got to me, around the time I was 14, 15 or so, I woke up one morning with a chronic stutter, a stutter that would haunt me for at least two years of my life. I'm going to give you an example in it. I'm not making fun of the people who say.

stutter but I talk like this I'm not exaggerating so there I was you know in at PS 187 the smallest kid in the class the most inhibited and the one who couldn't talk that I mean what I went through during that period was so I eventually went to a therapist to try and figure out what it was that caused the sudden... Did they think it was psychological or emotional? Initially, they thought it was psychological, then emotional. They couldn't do anything about it. So when I was 17 and decided finally to leave the home and came out to L.A.,

I had the stutter and I had the New York accent, of course. I go over to LAC College, the only place that's going to accept me because my grades were terrible. And I tell me I want to be a broadcaster. That's what they did. It's a good story.

It's true. Was music, before we get you here in Los Angeles, was music a part of your youth in any particularly vital? way. Your life is very much defined by your musical association. My father, on that large mahogany Victorola that was in the dining room area, he used to like opera music. And, you know, it was just in the early 50s, I'm five, six, seven years old. And I start hearing, you know, white people covering some black songs, the Pat Boone kind of period. I guess it was 14, 15, I was 14

when I wandered into the local pizza store on 181st and Broadway. And they had a jukebox. And the jukebox was my first iPod. Up to then, it was always somebody else who was programming my music for me, and it was their music. So you didn't have any particularly emotional association as what you're saying, yeah? Until I dropped a dime in the jukebox, it's the first place where I heard Elvis. Wow. And it was the first place where black music was being allowed to be heard. Yes.

In that time, I know it's hard for that. people to remember. Do you remember the Elvis song you heard? A hound dog. Black music was not allowed to be aired. Right. Period. It was called race music, I think. So the only way you heard the way Chuck Barry and little Richard and those guys actually sang was not through Pat Boone's version, but at the jukebox at the pizza place. And I went to the pizza place, day and listened to everything that was on the machine. Those were my early music origins that played a very significant role in my life. And do-up and, you know, all of that stuff. And isn't it funny that, you know, across the ocean there, the Beatles are listening to the same music at the

exact same time? John and I used to talk about that. That, you know, he was raised on the BBC. Yeah. which is as conservative as it can get. So he wasn't getting his music initially through the radio. He was getting it from Merchant Seaman, who would be coming, you know, back to the docks, carrying records. And his earliest recollection of the music came off of most likely 78s at the time. Sure. And then slowly, you know, the BBC loose into. up and he couldn't get enough of it.

Yeah. So you come out here and you end up becoming a DJ. Yeah. Where did the idea of becoming a DJ sort of, I know you talked about your physical impairment, but like what was it about being a DJ that attracted you? The first gig was being a talk show host, interviewing people. Okay. I was, I started when I was 21, and I was the, whatever it's worth, I was the youngest talk show host in America. This is radio or TV?

Radio. Radio, because TV comes later, yeah, right? Correct. Okay. And this is a small little community station called KPFK on Coenga Boulevard that did have a powerful signal, but there I am. I have just now spent a year going home every night with a 30-pound type. writer on my soloplexus, working on breathing exercises, elongating my tongue to try and get past the stutter.

That's how I got past the stutter. And working on the accent, that's why I wound up with the voice that I currently have that people feel is affected, but they can't really tell where I'm from or Canadian. It came from all of that. So I'm 21, and for two years, I have a talk show where I interview the Frank Zappas

and the country. Grace Slicks and the people of that era that had no other place to go. So you became sort of the media for them? Yes. The counterculture heroes of my time wandered into KPFK. That led to a series of five, six, seven ongoing radio stations. And I became a disc jockey after I had done years. of telephone talk radio.

Explain telephone talk radio to me. Really? You interview a guest. The guest leaves, and you open the phones and say, Oh, okay. I'm Elliot Minn's. Sorry, yeah, yeah.

Here are the phone numbers? No, I understand. I thought I was missing something technically. So, what year would that have first started when you were 21? So 45, 66, 66, 67. I'm so bad with numbers.

No, but that's the general thing. So you're here at the height of, you know, the cultural revolution. The summer of love. What was your impression of that music at the time? Because a lot of people that I've talked to that were actually here at the time didn't think much of the music. Now it's easy to sort of say, you know,

for what it's worth by Stephen. instills as a classic, but at the time, a lot of people were like, you know, including Sinatra criticizing rock. And, you know, there was a lot of kind of like, it was fattish. And even the Beatles had a brief foray into psychedelia. It didn't actually last that long. So it was treated like a fad. What was your impression of that music in being here at the moment? At the moment, I thought it was almost all great. That's cool. So give me some of your favorite artists at the time. From the mid-60s?

Yeah. I love this particular period of music. That's kind of what I'm after. Well, of course, I enjoyed the Beatles. I love Bob Dylan. Sorry, I'm not trying to, but I'm saying that scene that was here, I guess, was what I'm after. Oh, the whole scene, the Lovens and, you know,

the coming of age, the Laurel Canyon stuff, the flowers in the air. Did you like the birds? Did you like, you know, I love the birds. I love the Jefferson Airplane. I love the Grateful Dead. You just name it all the stuff that was coming out of San Francisco, both the well-known ones as well as, you know, the more obscure ones. I know people today of a certain age say that we mythologize that music too much. I don't think you can mythologize it enough. We're on the same page.

I think it's such a fecund period, to use an interesting word, but, you know, it's such a fecun period between about 65 and 68. There's so much great music that came out in such a concentrated area, particularly San Francisco, Los Angeles, by extension, some of the East Coast stuff like Tommy James. Yeah, but we owned it. It was West Coast music. Very much so, yeah. And I know that you have been somewhat publicly critical of some of the contemporary music or stuff that people are listening to today. I don't want to misquote you. Well, I go back and forth.

It depends on, let's call it, the perspective, right? I don't think there's any shortage of talent. I think the current music system is taking very talented people and leading them to slaughter because it works in their business model. I don't think there's a shortage of talent at all. You could argue there are more talented people in the music business now than at any in time of history. But rather than creating diamonds out of the compression of a capitalistic marketplace

that's throwing ideas into the center, they basically have caught off more than half the music business and said, we're only interested in pop sirens and people are willing to work in our business model. So that's why you're not creating the next Jimmy Hendricks or the next birds or the next Barbara Streisand. You're not creating these great artists because you're not letting them organically find an audience with what they bring to the table. So your criticism is not with the music. It's with the system that suppresses. Well, you could argue, you could argue by extension, I'm critical of the music because it's Pablam. Right. But that's no different than the Beatles felt

in 62 about what they were hearing and what I felt in 87 with what I was hearing. Every rebellious generation goes, I don't want to get that crap out of my way. I'm going to do it my way. Yes. But look at what comes from that beautiful desire to sort of sweep what came before you out of the way. There's no, I don't have any issue. Those artists should be making people like me irrelevant. But the reason they're not is because the one thing I have over them is a level of authenticity that they can't even wrap their heads around because they can't wrap their heads around the business model. Because in a click economy, a click economy, a click economy. A click economy is never going to let you find out who you are.

So, I'm a young, talented musician. No, hardly. It's 2024. I've got a band. We're playing in the garage. We have aspirations. What would be your advice to those folks? Figure out how, because I get this question a lot from,

parents will pull me aside and say, my kids can sing. I'm sure. If you're willing to look at the history of rock and roll, the artist that made the most money, got the most attention, and had the most impact were singular artists. Let me think about that. How many people copied the Beatles, including me, but there's only one Beatles.

There's only one birds. There's only one, you know, rolling stones. There's only one Jimmy Hendricks. There's only one Black Sabbath. There's only one Barbara Streisand. And there's only, there's, if you wrap your head around the fact that true success is only predicated on the fact of finding artists who are singular, there's a, they're one of one. You know, when you buy a print, one of three, one of seven, it's one of one. Janice Joplin was one of one of one. Janice Joplin was one of one of one. Name three others that were one of ones. Michael Jackson, Prince, Yes.

Sly Stone. I mean, John Coltrane, you know, Elvis, Bob Marley. And nobody could argue in defense of anybody that we know of currently on Spotify that you would consider a one-of-one. Well, Taylor Swift, Billy Elish, Juan deLis. Lana Del Rey. And then I think, I agree with those, I think to stretch it to could you name 10 of them, which you could have named from the Janice Joplin period. That's kind of one of my arguments.

Yeah. Take any generation. I get it. Popular music sort of starts to kick in, let's argue, in the 1930s. But you could argue earlier, but say 1930s. Right. Crosby, you know, there's obviously others, you know. Early Sinatra.

Sure. And then, you know, the Vaughn Monroe's and, you know, all of it, the Dorsey Brothers, whatever. Dean Martin. Every decade had singular artists in great numbers. And by the way, we're still making money off those artists 100 years later. What does that tell you? Why does the music business want to continually commit suicide with short money? I don't get it.

I don't either. I had the honor or distinction of testifying in front of Congress about a music rights issue in 2009. Tell me about that. Sure. John Conyers was the leading, he was the majority. And it was a, the quick version of the story is somewhere around 1909 or something, because they didn't want to have to pay musicians, because back then it was orchestras. They didn't want to have to pay them performance rights. They got some exemption from Congress that allowed the radio stations not to have to pay you per play or something.

So here I am testifying in 2009, and that exemption was still in place. So the guy who played the riff on my girl got paid 40 bucks. There was no mechanism to make sure that those artists would get paid performance royalties. in addition in retaliation, Europe, because we weren't paying European artists, we were forcing European artists to live by our exemption, congressionally, had retaliated. So American artists were not being paid in Europe either. So we were getting double penalized. So I was on a congressional committee four hours, no pee-p-break, okay, with, you know, because they come and go. Yeah.

But at various times, there were 40 members of a congressional committee asking us really pointed questions. And they're all lawyers. You got the, exactly. You got the RIA. You got the guy who's representing the, you know, the trust of the radio stations, your business. And you got me as the, and when I met Senator Conyers before the hearing, it's very nice,

he said, it's really cool you're here. You're the only person from your industry that would agree to testify. And the only reason this hearing is going forward is because no one from your business has the courage to stand up and say this is wrong. They'll grouse behind the scenes. And I said, well, why won't anyone come to me? It would be like, why wouldn't come here and talk to you? Yeah. He said, because they're afraid of being retaliated against by the radio stations.

Of course they're right. So he said, you're the only person that has the courage to stand up here and talk. Good for you. So for four hours, okay? And the key moment in the thing was somebody, I think they were on the right side of the equation, was challenging me on my assertion. And one of the points I'd made is, it was a wide-ranging discussion, but I said, do you notice how we're not making as many stars as we used to make?

And somebody asked me a question, it might have been Maxine Waters, said, you know, why is this such a big deal to you? And I said, if you're the guy who on a Tuesday in 1964 plays the riff to my girl, there should be some other means of earning if your song is being played into infinity 60, 70 years later. And I said, with all due respect, Congress lady, if it's so easy to emulate, why don't we emulate it and just have another version, which by the way, these guys would profit more from. No, we want to listen to that version of my girl. Right. Why do we want to listen to that version?

Because it's that guy playing that note that day. And that should be respected in our culture. And the fact that we do not celebrate that. Rock and roll is the great American export. So, long story short, I so wiped the floor with these, you know, hacks who were there to defend their corner of the earth. that I went, at the end of the session, Conyers literally looked at the other people on the panel and said,

do you hear what he's saying? You better make a deal. Otherwise, we're going to step in. And so it took like four years of negotiating. And finally they started moving. And the goalposts had moved. They didn't wipe the exemption, but they got them to kind of find a compromise point. Good fee. You know, my reward for that was zero. I've never received a thank you from anyone in the music business for anything. Is everybody in the music business aware of what you did? It doesn't matter. I mean, at the time was it. in newsmaking. Here's all you need to know about the way the music business operates.

Yes. Okay. Never received a thank you, never received any sort of, you know, didn't get a gold watch or anything. Okay? Made up a lot of people a lot more money than they would have made because I was willing to stick my neck out. Hadn't heard from the association that brought me in

to represent whatever their special interest group was. They wrote me an email a month ago, hey, we're trying to get this thing moving again because of something, something, something. Can you come back again? Sure. Sure. God bless, as we say in my house.

House. Would it be fair to say that the only other musician, prominent musician, that testified before Congress, beside yourself, would be Zappa? Don't know. I can't remember what Frank testified to, but I think it had to do with the... Censorship, maybe? Yeah, censorship, the R-rating. By the way, push by Tipper Gore, remember all that? Very well. I remember that. That's, in fact, for a few years, they were making us put labels on our records. They were. Because, God forbid, I used a cuss word. That was the fundamental.

That's where stickers on records became. That's the Danny Goldberg and Tipper and all of them became involved. And Zappa did go and testify in an extremely articulate manner. It's on YouTube and all that. Thanks, Frank's a lot smarter than I am. God bless them. Can you talk a little bit about when you became a televised? television correspondent.

Yeah. I've always been more comfortable on the radio. Radio by its nature is a more intimate experience, you know. You have a great voice for radio. Probably a better voice for radio than a face for TV. But I was on K-A-B-C radio interviewing people. And the higher-ups at ABC, who owned at the time, K-A-B-C, K-L-O-S, and K-A-B-C television, said, you know, he's going to go somewhere to interview Alice Cooper.

So how much would it cost us if we sent a one-person or two-person camera crew to wherever he's going to be? Yeah. And we'll take just a bite. We'll take, you know, a minute and a half, two minutes of the interview. and we'll put it on TV. It seems simple, cost effective for them. I remember it was my first piece for Our Witness News that I called Alice and said, you know, you're going to do the show and we're going to do a lengthy interview, two and a half hours for radio. Can we just knock this thing off? And he said, sure, I'm golfing at the such and such.

And we'll do it there. Yeah. And I traips out to some golf course, and there he is, passionate about the game. It puts the clubs or irons down, whatever I've never played golf. And we're, you know, doing the thing. They liked it. And I was there. I must have done 50, 100 pieces for them.

Yeah. of, you know, the most well-known, primarily music celebrities of the time. So suddenly I became an early version of George Pinocchio. He does it much better than I do. But that's what I was. It was the entertainment correspondent. I'm obsessed with old Hollywood. Yes.

And one thing I wish, you know, I obviously can't go into Time Machine back to 1939 or whatever. but what strikes me is you were around at that's sort of the fading of the old Hollywood. It came in just after the thing. But when I see names like Jane Mainfield, John Wayne, Karen Black, Sal Minio, Groucho. Yes. I mean, you had access to that. What was your impression? Because it's hard to find a bead on, you know, because you had that whole, you know, easy writer.

that crew came in to kind of kick the old Hollywood aside. Right. Rightfully so. And the death of the studio system and stuff. Yes. But there was still that sort of allure or stench, depending on your perspective, I've read a lot of different books about it. You know, the May Murrays who would walk down Sunset Boulevard and all that stuff.

What was your impression of that, those times? Like you, I loved the glamour of old Hollywood. And I love those movies. They had to be in black and white. And I don't have to tell you what a thrill it was when May West accepted my invitation to be interviewed. And I went to the Franklin Arms apartment building or wherever it was that she lived. And I sat down and she walked in in a complete, beaded gown for the radio interview. and we sat and talked.

We're spending, you know, an entire afternoon with Groucho Marx towards the end of his life, listening very carefully while we talked. And then at the end of it, him saying to me, look, I have a couple of friends coming by later on tonight. If you want, you can stick around. And I stuck around. and 10 or 20 people floated into the living room,

and Groucho greeted everybody, all very informal, and then he stood by the piano and sang for 45 minutes. Groucho Marx songs. And the first time I went out to Orange County to meet Duke Wayne, oh, yeah, I was 13, 14, 15 when I used to go to the ark, Barquio General Theater in my old neighborhood and watch those movies back to back. And there was the Duke, you know. And when he put his hand out, and at the time I had hair down on my shoulders.

He didn't like hippies much. No, not at all. He had a couple of other prejudices as well. Yes. And I really wanted to talk about the old westerns and John Ford and stagecoaches. and he hated the title of being king of the cowboys. And he cited other movies that he made that he was really proud of. And he's slopping down the bourbons, you know.

And we talked for a couple of hours in his room next to his rifle collection behind him, you know, in a cabinet. And he said, if you want to stick around, we're going to have lunch. We went into this kitchen, and there were two plates set up for us, and there were franks and beans that were delivered. I said, I'll have a glass of wine. And he said, why are you having what I'm having? He was drinking straight bourbon.

And then we went back to the rifle room, and he went on and on and on. Oh, I love those figures, the ones you've named. Yeah. Jane Mansfield was one of my first interviews when I was at L.A. City College. And every night I would come home and write a hundred letters to celebrities for the school radio show. There was no emailing or anything. Yes, had to be handwritten. It was dear so-and-so.

I'd love to interview you. Dear Jane Mansfield. Yeah. I'm 17 years old. I go to Los Angeles City College. I saw your movies and I liked them very much. Can I come anywhere to interview you? And naturally, 99% of these letters went absolutely nowhere. They went to agents or public... But she was notoriously a publicity hound. Was she ever? I mean, it didn't take more than five days before I'm in this one-bedroom. apartment in Hollywood with a Murphy bed, you know, fixing some soup and the phone rings. Ms. Jane, not a publicist, not a secretary, and she said, you're Elliot? And I said, yeah, I'm Elliot, yes. And she said, having a little party for my daughter in a week or so, if you want to come over to the house, we could talk a few years. We could talk a few of the

radio show. And I remember taking the bus to this pink mansion on the sunset. The bus. Of course, I didn't have a car for years in L.A. It was Jane Mansfield. And it was Jane Mansfield.

And I remember she took me down the recreation room as the party was going on upstairs. I'm guessing from Mariska Haggerty or her daughter at the time. And we started to

reminisce and she couldn't have been more gracious with her time and the room was covered with the pen-up magazine covers of her until she said I would love to talk to you a little longer Elliot but I have a very important appointment that I have to make and I said you've given me more than enough time and I'm also thinking or the bus is still running back to Vermont Avenue in Hollywood Boulevard. And later I would learn what the appointment was and where she went. She went from that interview with me to the Whiskey Agogo to meet the Beatles. It was the night that they played the Hollywood Bowl.

Later I joked with John and her name came up and I told him the story. and I said, so I guess it's fair to say that I knew her first, right? And his response was, yeah, but she left you for me, London. Nice one. You met John O'Yoko 1971, is that? I did a radio interview with Yoko, and we wound up becoming phone pals. But slow down a little bit because this is. is interesting because obviously it's it's a big part of your life and you just I haven't read the

book yet because it just came out I want to read it um we all shine on John Yoko and me yeah um before you talk so you first talked to Yoko as a radio interview um I was sent to a bunch of records the the record company always you know send typical publicity stuff right I listened to hers. I thought it was really unique. I thought she was unique. A one-of. For sure.

And I, you know, went through her record company publicity guy who put me in touch with an assistant to the Dakota building. He called me back and he said, when do you want to do it? As soon as possible. Two days later, I'm on the phone with Yoko. And we have, you know, what I'm. I thought was a pretty damn good interview, a penetrating interview. And I wasn't interested in asking.

Excuse me, what stuck out in, what stuck about her to you in that first interview? Like, you know, in terms of character or personality. Original thought. Very much so. Original thought. Sorry to interrupt you. No. Obviously, Yoko through the years has gotten a lot of stick from the musical thing and, you know, trying to blame her with the Beatles.

and all that stuff. But what I think is really often missed with Yoko is she's one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. She really changed the way people viewed art. I believe that to be true. And what I always cite, this is more private conversation is, it was John and Yoko that introduced the idea of like war is over. Yes. And at the time we're mocked and the bed in and all. But if you really look at that, that is revolutionary thought. That is an artist figuring out a way to game the system, use the media, and deliver a message that cannot be stopped. He was the first one to take the makeup off. He was the first one to wear the glasses because he couldn't see unapologetically. And he couldn't keep his mouth shut. That's true. And I

don't remember anybody else who came along before John and, you know, the Woody Guthrie's of the world and other people who spoke their mind, but in the essential rock community coming off of, some would argue, the greatest rock group ever, he risked it all. Yeah. And the two of them were revolutionary in terms of those bed-ins for peace where he said, look, we got married and know that the press is going to follow us all around looking how we spend our honeymoon. So we're going to lay in bed for seven days and do an advertisement for peace. And we're going to invite the world press in every day to ask anything they want. And all we were going to do is try and spread our message.

Well, you know, you tell me four other people or one other who would have risked all that stuff or that. Well, to convert the currency of his celebrity towards something that was beyond something self-serving. Precisely. Possibly self-destructive. Well, there's that too, yeah. He knew that there were a lot of people who thought we should be in Vietnam and didn't like these peace niche. Sure. So during that first interview, I heard this original, what I consider it original, what I consider it,

original concepts and thoughts, which I probed. I drove back to Laurel Canyon that night. I now had a little $300 Morris Minor car, a used car. And I thought, well and good. And I'm an insomniac, and it was 3, 4 in the morning, and I fell out. Sometime around noon or one the next day. the personal phone in my house rings, and it's Yoko. And she called because she just wanted to thank me for the interview.

She said that she really appreciated the fact that I didn't steer her off in terms of beetle questions, John questions, the Dragon Lady questions, you know, all of it, and that she really had an opportunity to speak her mind, and she wanted me to know that. Now, I can tell you, I've spoken to other people in the radio and TV world, guests will come and guests will go. And maybe it's different today, but certainly back then, nobody had ever called me to thank me for an interview. They were on to the next interview and the next one.

They were doing junkets. They don't even remember the name of the guy. And I thought about it. I just picked up the phone a day. or two later and said, forgive me for intruding, you know, I had your number from the other night, but I have to tell you how moved I was by the fact that you called me. And we talked for two and a half hours. And the next day she called me, and I called her. And it began probably six or seven weeks of conversation until one day she, I was called it three, four, five

in the morning, she called and she said, what are you reading right now? And I said at this very moment, and she said, no, what's on your night table? I know you were probably just sleeping. And I said, there's a new book by J. Krishna Merti, who is a kind of a philosopher. And I've been perusing that. And she told me the title of the book. And I said, do you read those? books? And she said, never. I don't read any of those things. She said, I primarily read mysteries. But John's reading it. And I knew that John had a, you know, a kind of questionable relationship with anything related to holy people or divine people, God. And I felt that was intriguing. And she said, you should talk to him about it.

you should talk to him about it tomorrow because it's his birthday. And I am so certain. I'm so certain. Sounds like a setup. Your husband has better things to do than to be talking to me on the radio. Well, apparently he didn't. And I had my first conversation with John on the eve of his 31st birthday. On the radio.

On the radio. And, of course, it wasn't. long after that that John called me and yoga called me and John called. And for months I would be speaking with one, the other, or both. Every night of my life, during the daytime hours as well, the longest conversation where she said, look, I'm going to the office, but the lights blinking John wants to talk to you and she would hang up. The longest of those conversations went on for six hours.

It became my life. Why do you, maybe it's too spiritual question. I'm a big believer in that, you know, we're meant to go certain directions at certain times. Me too. So what do you think it was about you or that moment that sort of had them loop you in? Because they, overall, I would imagine they were a bit paranoid.

This was a period of time. in their life where they were being pursued by government intelligence agencies. And that's all come out now. It's all published. Did they, were they aware of that at the time? Completely. And would... Sorry to interrupt you.

Was it because people, sources or inside people would say, hey, by the way, you know, I'm a fan, I'm just letting you know. Like, how are they aware that they were being surveying? They would hear noises on their telephone. They would see black cars following them. They were hanging out with Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and Huey Newton of the Black Panthers. And there were, you know, obvious, radical anti-war protesters. It doesn't take long to either.

They put it all together and they were right. So in answer to that question about why. Why you? Yeah. There were a couple of reasons. One, I was alone. I didn't have a wife. I didn't have a girlfriend.

I lived by myself and they knew when they dialed that number, the only voice that would pick it up is me. And nobody would be listening beside me. Accessibility. The insomnia factor that the time difference didn't mean anything. He's always awake. one way or another. I could be trusted. They could share information with me and not hear it come back at them or see it in page six. I'm a good listener, and I pay attention. I have my own opinions, but I'm not argumentative. I'm not a musician. I've never picked up a guitar.

Yeah. I wouldn't be peppering John with questions about music. That would have been me. Yes, well, naturally. Yeah, I'd be like, you know, when you went to that chord, that would have been me for sure. I have learned my lesson with when I do get to know famous musicians, I wait a good year before I start asking those questions. What about people who just meet you? did they

other musicians, did they take time before they start talking with you about chords, they go right at your throat? Pretty much. Yeah, well, I imagine.

It's fine, but it's a, how can I put it, and this may go to the heart of why they were attracted to you as a person. You learn to read the room quickly about,

let's call it, why is this person here? Yes. What do they want? What do they want? What do they need? Yes. Do they need?

There's that great scene, and I don't know, you know, everybody knows the scene where there's some kids shows up when they're living in outside of, you know, in England. The kid shows up, and John's just like, look, I'm not Jesus, you know what I mean? And he has this long conversation with a kid. You know what I mean? He was somebody who was a trespasser. Yeah. He was a homeless guy who was camping out on their property.

Yeah. And one of the people just were concerned about him. eaten and he was unshaven and John went out to see him and he was a delusional person who believed that John was writing songs only for him all of that and after a few minutes Johnson said are you hungry then and he nodded and just come on inside and they shared breakfast and you know talked for an hour or so John forever trying to demythologize himself It's the working class hero. He's not the rock and roll priest from on high.

I would meet them a few months after our telephone thing for the first time. I got a call. My name is Peter. And I'm with Johnny Yoko, and they would like to meet you. And I thought, well, this is going to be great. And I assumed that there would be at some local hotel, not... far from where at Laurel Canyon. And he said, could you be here in an hour?

And I said, sure. Where are you staying? And he said, we're in a place called Ohio. Which is not an hour from here. It's close to 80 miles away. I had literally just woken up again. I was in a bathrobe. I didn't have anything to eat.

But what have meant to say? Can we push it up a day or two? Yeah. I said, give me the direction. And he gave me these very peculiar, circuitous directions of once you get off PCH you make a ride at Ohio. But when you get on that road, you're going to drive around these curvy roads until you're going to come to a pasture. When you come to the pasture, in the middle of the pasture, there's a giant oak tree. To the left of the oak tree, there's going to be a station wagon parked.

pull your car up alongside the station wagon. And I'm not a great driver and I don't take directions well and this before cell phones and what if I got lost and didn't show up or I'm a turn around the wrong oak tree. And of course they had never seen me before. I knew what they looked like. And I got to the car and, you know, Yoko was. the first one out. And I heard a voice from the back of the station wagon saying,

Go on, hug him. She gave me a light touch in the shoulder. Very Japanese. Very Japanese. And then he bounced out of the car and gave me a linen bear hug. They had driven across the country with a driver named Peter Bendry, best known to Beatle fans as Peter the dealer. That was his title.

And he worked within the John Yoko experience. We went back to this little house like a bungalow in Ohio, which was really a hideout and had a long history of being a safe house for radicals. And they were renting it and presumably hiding out. And we spent the afternoon together. And it was during that afternoon where, and it was kind of a rinky ding kind of bungalow. And we were sitting around the small pool area, smaller than the room we're currently in. And I'm sitting next to John, and I yoka comes up to me and does this. And I follow her down a hallway into a bathroom.

and she tells me to sit at the corner of the bathtub. She closes the door. I thought this was peculiar for her first visit. Yeah. Turns on the water, loud. Comes closer to me almost as a whisper. The house is completely bugged. Everything that we're saying is being recorded.

We're being watched. The water is there to drown out. this information. So you have to be very careful what you say. Do you understand that, Elliot? And I said, I do, I do. It's okay, we're going to go back to the pool now. And I thought that was odd. And John said to me, Yoko just laid horizontal on a diving board or a long black hair just inches above the water of the pool with her sunglasses looking straight up. It was like a felini-esque scene. Sounds like it.

And John said, you're going to hear her say things that you won't understand. But listen to her because she's almost always right. Interesting. That was the first directive. We spent the rest of the afternoon primarily talking about the weather. Looking back, do you think they were being monitored? I don't believe that a team of agents came to that bungalow in the middle of the night and hung microphones around faded palm trees around the swimming pool.

But I thought that perhaps their comings and goings, who was going to see them, who would show up could be useful ammunition. I see, yeah. So at that point in time, I didn't necessarily believe it, but I was too confused about it and somewhat naive. Well, you're also with these super famous people who, you know, Titanic cultural figures on the world stage. Maybe you weren't impressed like that.

It would be hard for me to get past that. Well, from the very beginning, from that first visited Ohio, yeah, when he got out of the car and, you know, he looked like John Lennon. There was that moment of, but prior to that moment, I had already interviewed more than a thousand people. I had already stood in front of the famous, yeah. And you know how it is when you meet famous people for, you know, for a, the first second if it's somebody who you've always paid attention to it's a super big deal

after fifteen minutes i'm sure in your case those trapping is sure dropped he was never beatle john to me we both acknowledged that we were raised in elvis that would have been more would have taken me a you know a couple of beats longer to shake that one if he had come out of the car and we also had established the tell telephone relationship.

Yeah, yeah. We had been talking up to that point for more than 100 hours together. So what changed was his physical presence. Yeah, yeah, I get it. But he did something as I was walking to my car because I had a radio show to do. He said, before you go, we have a present for you. He said, present for me. And he came out with an acetate in a white cover with no one.

art or anything on it, just side A and side B. And he said, this is our new record. And you'd be the first disc jockey to break the record. And the two of them autographed it to me and said something sweet. I still have it, of course. It's in the vault. So I got into the car and there's no way of playing an acetate in a car. There was no time to stop off at my house to do anything. I was up against a clock, and I race into K-L-OS. And I had my bag with me with a stick of incense and a candle, dim the lights, centered myself, red light, engineer. Hi, it's Elliot Mintz, and you're listening to KLOS,

and I have a very, very special surprise for you. Tonight, we're going to listen to a new album just recorded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. And I'm going to get a bunch of commercials out of the way so we can both experience this together for the first time. So just make yourself comfortable and we'll be right back. And I just wiped out the 15 commercials. And I said, and I didn't tell them where I was and I didn't tell them that they had given me none of that stuff. One of the admonitions in Ohio was that Yoko said, don't tell anybody that you know us.

And I kept that secret for two years. Cued the engineer, tone on the first track, listening in my earphones, and I hear John singing the song, Woman is the N of the world. But he didn't use it. use the word N. I know the song.

And we make her, paint her face and dance. An op-ed piece that Yoko once wrote for the New York Times was she said, of all the subjugated people in the world, women are in the lowest ring of the toad and potal. They are the ends of the world. And she said the entire word, too. John was impressed by that piece. He wrote music to it.

He sang it. A minute in, I knew I might as well pack my incense. And the engineer, who bears the responsibility for what actually goes out on the airwaves with the FCC license, he stared at me for a second. And we went right into a song about Free Angela Davis of Berkeley Marxist. professor to Attic Estate about releasing all the prisoners in Attic Estate. And the entire album was this incredibly incendiary piece of a John and Yoko collaboration where they were just shouting to the world.

So I drove home that night. I got a phone call early in the day. And it was from one of the manager guys. They asked if I wouldn't mind coming in. You know, just hearing that, I knew it was up. And then they said that they were thinking of going in a slightly different direction with their format. And I got back to my place and I called. them. And I said, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. And John said, give me the good news.

I always take good news. And I said, well, the good news is I played the entire album without any commercial breaks. Yeah. And I heard him screaming to Yoko, mother, which is what he called Yoko. Mother, he played the whole record last night with no commercials. And she said, great, great, fantastic. And John went on effing great. And he said, so what's the bad news then? And I said, well, I've been fired. And that was his reaction.

He just broke out in laughter and he said, and they fired him. And I heard Yoko explode in a laughter. They just thought this was the funniest. story. I didn't. And after a few more minutes, he said, so what are you going to be doing now? I'm going to be sending out my resume and looking for a job, of course. And John said, tomorrow we're going to get out of here and we're going to drive up to San Francisco. Why don't you just pack a bag and join us? And that's when I joined the Magic Surve. Yeah, the magical mystery tour, part two.

Let's hit pause on the Beatles for a second, Beatleland, John and the Yolkerland. We were doing publicity or marketing or both, because John, sorry, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Diana Ross. There came a time in the broadcast career. Well, I just got tired of it. I just got tired of the endless business.

It was much more complicated than finding the guest. I didn't have a, well, I had a producer, but we still had to go through the machinations of calling the publicity department, waiting for the manager to get back to us. It was just a thing to get good guests on the radio. And not all of them were fascinating characters, and I just got burnt out with broadcasting. So it occurred to me that I had interviewed a couple of people who I particularly liked, and I called one or two of them and said, I know why you do media, you know, to promote your product and get attention for it.

And I also know the requirements of media in terms of selecting guests. So I'm now a media consultant, which is kind of like a publicist with a touch of managerial skins. Sure. And I'm going to teach you this process. And I hung my shingle up. And it wasn't long after that that the first, you know, recognizable names jumped on board. Right.

It wasn't until after John died that Bob Dylan called one day and said, you know, I want to talk to you about what it is that you do. And I wound up spending 10 years with Bob. It was with Dylan more than John and Yogo. So it was a media consultant and I promoted people and advised people. And that put me together with everyone from Diana Ross to Paris Hill and to Crosby, Sills, and Nash to... I don't like to toot my horn like that, but it's all Googlable or bookable.

And that's what I did. And I guess it's fair to say, it's really been my last legitimate line of work. I hosted a lengthy radio series called The Lost Lenin Tapes. Used to listen. Thank you. It went on for 215 episodes over years. But I don't do that anymore, and I wrote a book. And here I am. The reason that the Dylan thing struck out to me, I didn't understand it was the way it read

wherever I read it. It seemed like it was around the same time that you met them. But it struck me that you've worked intimately with someone who, like you said, with John, who spent a lot of times demystifying his mythology. and Dylan, whose entire life has been to build and destroy and build and destroy again. It bothered the hell out of John. And I wrote about that, that he had a real love-hate relationship with Bob. I happen to have been a fan. George Harrison had been an enormous fan.

The Beatles were an enormous fan of the first one or two records. The first one was stunning to John. But there were two things that Bob did. One was a temporary conversion to Christianity. The saved period, right? We all got to serve somebody, and that just infuriated John. He hated that. And, you know, in our late-night discussions, he would say, you know, I put everything out there.

I tell people everything about myself. he just keeps this phony air of mystery around him the unwashed phenomena and he said it's just all phony and I said John he's considered

along with you one of the most brilliant lyricists of the 20th century and John said I write much better than he writes it's easy for you to write a gobbledygook song that nobody can kind of figure out with the surrealistic impressions with a copy of the thesaurus next to you. The stuff that I write is from my heart. Yeah. And I said, I think I just rambled off one or two songs by the Bob. And John said,

listen to Walrus. And I did. And it was surreal. as well as a number of other of John's songs. He didn't like the fact that more people considered him the great lyricist, and at that time in his life, he thought that most people thought of him as the ex-beetal who married this Japanese woman. I see, I see. He would later have the same feelings about Paul McCartney.

Right. Because you would have been sort of around in their orbit, But, you know, this kind of, you know, beetle lore is that McCartney was trying to rebuild their relationship and would occasionally show up at the Dakota. How much is that real? You know, they had gone through a whole mess of stuff together. And public, too. And in public. Poorly with Paul writing a dumb song about John and how he heard him.

And John Countering. How do you sleep after Paul writes too many people? And it was like two high school kids arguing on Instagram. And we had many talks about Paul and John's thoughts about him ranged from the, you know, he always reminded me that he and Paul met long before the Beatles. Well, they met at a time when nobody else knew of the Beatles. Yeah. Long before I would become aware of them, they were like brothers to each other sitting in Paul's little living room that his parents has, composing all those early songs in

the first album. And he spoke so lovingly of Paul. But then when John was not making any music between 1975 and almost 80, and Paul, and Paul would have these mega hits with the wings. John became insanely jealous about that. Did he think the music that he was putting out, Paul, in that period, was valuable, or was it more about it, was it a jealousy of he's doing good work, or was a jealousy of, like, look what he's doing?

I perceived it as being the latter. He was jealous of the amount of attention. and accolades and the fact that Paul was filling stadiums. At that time, John was just looking after Sean. Yeah. Not just. He was devoting five years of Sean's. Yeah.

And when John would say to me, they're not embracing me, I'm paraphrasing, the way they are him. And I said, John, you're not enough. a concert stage, you're not in a stadium, you're not making music. And he said, you missed the point.

They're embracing his genius. But have you ever heard silly little love songs? And I would say, let's be fair. He's done things other than silly little love songs. But that would go nowhere. It would be like the arguments when I would come over to the Dakota and we would be discussing something that was in the New York Times bestseller list. And he said, I should be on the New York Times bestseller list. I should

have the number one book. I have more to say than these people. Miss it? John, you haven't written a book. That's why you're not on the New York Times bestseller list. You missed the point completely. one day during Christmas in the latter part, I think it's 1978, I'm in New York, they invite me to the Dakota to spend one of the Christmas days with them. And I go up to the Dakota and I notice in the living room there's a vase with a single branch of a tree that's their Christmas decoration. and I sat down on the white couch in the white living room and we're just making small talk. And then there's a knock on the door after the intercom and he opens it and Paul and Linda McCartney walk in. And they greet each other. Have you met Paul?

Never. No, I had not met him up to that moment. And they come in and John just said, this is our friend, Elliot. And I said, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Linda. And we sat and we talked for a while. It was, how should I say, it wasn't overly jubilant. It wasn't icy.

It was just correct. And then we decided, they decided to go to a place called Delanes, which was the, the co-celeb of restaurants in Manhattan at the time. And we got into Paul's car. We went up to Elaine's, for the five of us, and they perused the menu, all of them. Didn't see anything they particularly liked, and Elaine's did have a reputation. I mean, you walk in, and there's Woody Allen, there's Gorvidal, and there's Tom Wolfe, and there's, you know, all those people.

But the food was miserable, and everybody knew it, and it was reviewed as being awful. And Elaine could be problematic as well. And Linda said, you know, there's a great pizza place, not far from here, really thin-crusted pizza, you know. Do you think you could get a pizza delivered here and we could eat that? And she said it directly to me. Who else was she going to suggest it to me? Yoko, would you drop the dime? and I knew

I knew what a social fo'pa was this but I also knew that Elaine's was not going to escort it. You must leave my restaurant. We had the pizza delivered through the back door. It was taken out the cardboard box. It was put

on beautiful Elaine's plates and brought out so a casual observer would think it's a dish that they hadn't seen yet. We had the pizza. It was pretty good. And then we took a car back to the Dakota, and then we went back into the white room. The sun was setting. And Linda and Yoko kind of went off on their own. Yoko always loved

Linda McCartney. They got along great. And John and Paul kind of wandered over to this very, very tall window that looked down upon the west side of Manhattan and the lights. And the lights were coming on. You saw some of the Christmas decorations, etc. And me, the fifth wheel, was sitting in the couch, looking at the white carpeting, and the branch in the vase. And I could pick up bits and pieces of conversation. Now, I've explained many times when people say, how can you report exact conversations you had with John and Yoko in your book? and go on for paragraphs and paragraphs. When you never had a diary, you never kept a journal,

and obviously I never tape-recorded them, except when we were on the radio. I have an answer for all that, but in this case, because I could barely hear, or they were far away, I can only catch spasms, and it was small talk, nothing of substance. and I do remember Paul asking John, so you're making any music these days?

And John replying to Sir Paul. No, my time is with me baby. That's what I do all the time. I don't make any music. What about you? And Paul said, I'm always making music. I make music every day in my life. I can't stop making music.

And I thought to myself as I sat on the couch, what would have happened if John bit the bait and said, I got a couple of guitars in the other room? Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't I bring them out, you know, just for the hell of it? And the two of them could have sat in the living room and maybe change the face of contemporary music. Yeah, one more time.

One more time. The McCartney stayed for another hour or so and left. I stayed on with John and Yoko and, again, wondering why they had me there. So I asked them, and they said, no big deal, you were coming in for Christmas and they're coming, they were around, so why didn't you like them? He said, no, they seem like very, very nice people. How did that feel for you? He said, what do you mean, how did it feel to me? And he said, was there any tension?

He said, it was dismissive. He said, you were with us all afternoon. I mean, the two of them have known each other since they were nine years old, practically. So that, I've mentioned. this story to a couple of the real beetle historian people who believed that that was the last time that they were together. I can't attest to that. And it's my point of view.

Sir Paul has not discussed that visit at all. He was anticlimatic. And I've run into Paul, Sir Paul, on a few other occasions since, we both eat at a little restaurant out of the way and we were just seated. I was with a date and he was with his new wife and on the way out. I just said it's good to see you again. He asked how Yoko was doing. Always very civil and polite and went to one of his concerts and he greeted me after the concert and we were going to do an interview but we didn't. I got along with the others. better, especially George. I went to all the Wilbury sessions, of course, that George had,

because I brought Bob there. Yeah. And, you know, George would never miss a Dillon concert, so it would arrange from to have a chair and a glass of water right off the side of the stage by a curtain. That's all he ever asked for. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because this incredible bond they had created so much great music. I saw a quote where Paul was saying, you know, we sat down together to write a song, whatever it was, 100 something times. And he said, in every instance, we always came out with something. Always. Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing. So, to, I could talk to you forever about this stuff because I love, I love this band. And when I knew I was going to talk to you today, I wrote Sean Lennon a little note.

I know Sean a little bit. And I said, you know, are you cool with Elliot? You know what I mean? Because I wanted to bring him in into what I wanted to talk about. But, you know, if he wrote me back and said, you know, no, it's my mother's thing or something. You know, every band has its politics. I know you understand. And he said, no, I love Elliot.

And I've known Elliot my whole life. And he was very sweet and talked about how much you like the book. And so, and it's an odd setup, but I think it's an interesting way to end. You know, I asked Sean, and I don't, before I say what I asked him, I don't want to say what he said out of respect for his privacy. But I did ask him, I said, why do you think your mother stayed in the Dakota after your father was killed? It's a very interesting choice. So I ask you the same question because, you know, we all put ourselves into situations. You know, it's what we do as human beings.

And, you know, it strikes me that Sean as a little boy, you know, here he is walking almost daily past the spot where his father was taken. And then to have to go out into the world and then have everybody sort of put their version of it on them. And when you talk about the Beatles, that's the whole world. There's no, there's no corner to, you know what I mean? Even today, before I spoke with you, I interviewed with Rick Springfield and doing my research when he was in Australia. His band covered Eleanor Rigby in like 1969. There's a clip on YouTube.

Oh, I must see that. The band was called Zoot. They play almost like a heavy Led Zeppelinist version of Eleanor Rigby. That would be intrigued. Zoot. Right. So I found this clip in talking to Sean a little bit. I said, oh, you should check out this band.

And he wrote back, oh, this is really awesome. You know, so this is this interesting connection. But again, when you're talking about the Beatles, there's no end to the association. It's a limitless pool, right? So I humbly ask you this question. Why do you think Yoko chose to stay in the Dakota? I'm going to answer that question. And I also want you to know that Sean was the motivating factor for me to write the book when I attended Yoko's birthday a year or so ago, two years ago.

He had been asking me for a long time, what's taking me so long. And he said that I knew them as well as anybody else did. He wrote a little blurb for me saying that Elliot was. was our closest friend. And his encouragement throughout the writing of the book, I can't speak highly enough about him. I met him when he was two weeks old, you know, and grew up with him and his dad and then continued.

So total love and respect for him. I last accompanied him to the Academy Awards and a few months ago. when he received an award for Best Short Anna Day Duck. Yeah, he told me about that. That's cool. And, you know, he's up for a Grammy now for Best Box Set. And I texted him the other night saying, if you need help again on the red carpet,

doing what I do. I'm there for you one more time. So I love him dearly. Why she stayed? And I was there that morning when that front doorway area was still a crime scene. And I had to step over the yellow tape and the broken glass. And it was an act of investigation. So nobody had taken away the blood or things of that nature.

And to get to see Yoko, to offer whatever counsel I could provide, as I speak to you, that's embedded in my brain. And in all the subsequent visits to see Yoko, after all these years since he's been gone, I still pause for a second when I enter and exit, because that area, like the Dakota building itself, nothing ever changes. It's just there.

It bothers me. And I did ask her once about how she deals with that or does that ever, how painful it was, I think was the question I asked. And she's sometimes very good at deflecting. And then there's sometimes where she just is speaking her truth. She said, John and I spend so many wonderful years in this. apartment and one terrifying, impossible moment. And I try to always concentrate on the great times that we shared together. That's how she deals with it. Yeah. Thank you, Elliot. It's great talking. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation and you're a superb host. Thank you very

very much.