We All Shine On
The intimate memoir of an extraordinary friendship with John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their life after The Beatles
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
'A charmingly modest tale of a long brush with stardom, with all its pleasures and frustrations' Kirkus
'A captivating and intimate window into the complicated lives of one of rock’s most legendary couples' Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
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'It’s hard to define the relationship Elliot had with our family. But I ultimately think the best word to describe him is: friend. Perhaps our closest friend. The reason I wanted Elliot to write a book, first and foremost, is because he is a good storyteller. The fact that he was there in the lives of John and Yoko (and mine), is really just icing on the cake. I like hearing him talk, and I’m sure you will, too' Sean Ono Lennon
From the moment he interviewed Yoko Ono on his late night radio show in September 1971, Elliot Mintz’s life would never the same again. That phone call would lead him to an intense and revealing friendship with Yoko and her husband, John Lennon, until John’s untimely death in 1980, and beyond, to the present day.
In 1971, then the talk host on American airwaves, Elliot Mintz was talking to all of the major figures in the burgeoning West Coast music scene when he was asked whether he would interview Yoko about her new album. Their talk quickly lead to other private calls and then to John Lennon, with whom he quickly formed a firm bond. Those conversations became hours-long epics, to the extent that Elliot had another phone line put in, for which only two people had the number - John and Yoko.
The aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup ushered in a tumultuous decade. Elliot witnessed it, or heard all about it, at close hand including the unbearable cost of such fame when John and Yoko separated for what became known as his ‘lost weekend’. There was joy when their son Sean was born and the creative rebirth that was the multi-platinum selling triumph, Double Fantasy. But then there was unimaginable tragedy too when John was brutally murdered in December 1980.
Customer Reviews
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
The author is an American radio and television broadcaster turned media consultant, who hosted a late night music interview show on Los Angeles radio in the early 1970s.
Shortly after the release of Yoko Ono’s second album Fly on 1971 (no, me either, nor do I want to), he arranged to interview her by phone in New York. She liked the interview, in large part because Mintz asked questions about her and none about her husband. The following day (4:00AM his time) she rang him up to thank him and stayed on for a chat. Ditto the next day, and the one after that. Pretty soon Mintz was having hours long, wide ranging, at least moderately weird phone conversations with Yoko five or more days a week. Then John started calling, initially looking for advice on weight loss. (He was obsessed with his weight.)
Mintz finally met them in an obscure rural location the following year when they drove across the country trying to shake their addiction to methadone, which they used to get off heroin. He was their confidante and some time publicist all through the 1970s, and remained close to Yoko after John’s death in 1980. She asked him to catalogue her late husband’s possessions in 1981 when celebrity trophy hunters were helping themselves to his bits and pieces from the Dakota apartments.
This is an engaging account of the lives of two of the most talked about and written about people in history from someone who knew them as people not celebrities, and appears to have genuinely liked them. And vice versa. (John gave Mintz the acetates of their newly completed album Sometime In New York City to play on his show before any else in the recording industry knew the album was finished.)
Mintz doesn’t shy away from the excesses, such the drug abuse, or John’s ‘Lost Weekend’ period (that actually lasted well over a year), but deals with them in a matter-of-fact, yet sensitive, way.
There is precious little self-aggrandisement by the author, who kept the fact that he was even communicating with the Lennon-Ono’s from his other friends for a prolonged period.
Bottom line
Fascinating for someone of my vintage or slightly older. (Is that even a thing?) Possibly less so for people who have to Google the names John Lennon and Yoko Ono to have any idea who they were/are. (Yoko’s still alive as I write this.)