Starred review from September 9, 2024
Radio personality Mintz debuts with a vivid account of the decade he spent as John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s confidante, fixer, and friend. “Ellie,” as the couple called him, first interviewed Yoko on his radio show in 1971 and gained her trust, he muses, because he didn’t ask about her famous relationship. With startling speed—Yoko called him for an impromptu, 40-minute chat the next day—Mintz became the couple’s “secret friend,” playing “many parts in the sometimes puzzling, occasionally maddening, always complex dramas they scripted for the three of us.” The roles Mintz played included therapist, unofficial media rep, and de facto babysitter for John during his infamous “Lost Weekend.” In the process, Mintz got an up-close look at John and Yoko’s combustible mix of fame, talent, and fragility (he writes that the “mere mention of Bob Dylan’s name... could uncork a volcano of roiling resentments” in John, who could be “bitter and mean-spirited” when drunk). Only much later did Mintz question why he’d dedicated so much of his life to the pair. Though he closes the account on a melancholy note (“If only I’d had the strength to resist the undefinable magnetic pull both of them had on me”), he admits it was a “conversation that I too wanted to go on forever.” It’s a captivating and intimate window into the complicated lives of one of rock’s most legendary couples.