Review: Elliott Mintz' John and Yoko Memoir is a Bore

Review: "We All Shine n: John, Yoko & Me," by Elliot Mintz

I wasn't expecting dirt from Elliot Mintz' memoir of his friendship with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but I wasn't expecting it to be dull, either.

The announcement of the book several months back caught my attention. Mintz, a radio announcer and PR guy, was close to John and Yoko from the early 70s up through Lennon's murder in 1980, and is still evidently close to Yoko and her son with John, Sean Ono Lennon.

I figured the book likely wouldn't say much that was negative about the Lennons, but anticipated that it might share some new stories about what they were like away from the spotlight, particularly during Lennon's five-year stint as a "house husband" when he was out of the recording studio and mostly out of the public's eye.

But, sadly, the book is a snooze. If you've read about Lennon's post-Beatles life, including his lengthy interviews with Rolling Stone (1970) and Playboy (1980), both re-published in book form, you won't learn much new from Mintz.

Oddly, for a guy who spent hours talking to John, Mintz can't quite capture Lennon's voice. His paraphrases of conversations held with John never sound quite right. And, unlike, the Rolling Stone and Playboy interview transcripts, Mintz fails to capture Lennon's humor, enthusiasm, lively intellect and anger.

Also, strangely, for the guy who hosted the "Lost Lennon Tapes" radio show, Mintz offers virtually no insights into or analysis of John's musical activities or songs.

Instead we get tidbits about Yoko's philosophizing and her preoccupation with astrology, John's love/hate relationship with his Beatles legacy and his relationship with Paul McCartney, and the couple's unhealthy obsession with fad diets, slimming pills and their weight. Again, if you've read up on the Lennons, there's not much new here.

Mintz was an unwilling intermediary between Ono and Lennon during their temporary split in the mid-70s, and he does provide some details about John's poor emotional state during this period, along with the extent his abuse of alcohol, but this is about as revealing and straight forward as the book gets.

For the most part, John and Yoko come across as somewhat annoying in their out-of-touch, celebrity self-centeredness or, worse yet for the subjects of a memoir, boring.

For a book about a decades-long friendship, I came away wondering what Mintz saw in these folks, and vice-versa.