John Lennon Said Something so Cruel to a Friend That He Still Feels ‘Scarred’ by It 5 Decades Later

In the 1970s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono became friends with radio personality Elliot Mintz. They called him separately to discuss their relationship, and he became one of their closest confidantes. Mintz said he liked them, but the closeness of their relationship sometimes posed a challenge for him. One night, he tried to calm down a furious Lennon. The singer’s words to him were so shocking that Mintz refuses to repeat them. 

John Lennon said something to a friend that still shocks him

After meeting Lennon and Ono, Mintz began receiving so many calls from the couple that he had to install a hotline just for them.

“I wound up installing a hotline, with a number that would only be for John and Yoko,” Mintz said, per the New York Post. “I’m an insomniac, Yoko woke up at 7 a.m. in New York [which was 4:00 in Los Angeles], and they liked the idea that they could call that number any time, day or night, and I would be awake. They could share their innermost secrets. They got used to it and, of course, I got used to them.”

While he became accustomed to their frequent calls, Mintz said it became a lot to handle. He was under more pressure when Lennon moved to Los Angeles during his lost weekend.

One night, he grew so drunk and violent that producer Phil Spector tied him to a chair. Mintz came to calm the singer down, but he immediately became a target of Lennon’s rage. Mintz won’t repeat what Lennon said to him that night, but he said he will never forget it.

“He looked at me and said, ‘What are you doing here?’” Mintz said. “Then he hurled an epithet at me. I don’t repeat it in the book and I just can’t repeat it to you now. It was really mean and it scarred me.”

Lennon’s girlfriend wrote about that night in her book

During his lost weekend, Lennon dated his assistant, May Pang. She recalled Lennon getting drunk and frustrated in the studio. They drove home separately and, when they arrived at the house, Lennon had worked himself up into a rage.

“When we got to the house, I dashed out of the car,” Pang wrote in her book Loving John. “Arlene [Reckson, Pang’s friend] got out of the other one and ran to me. She looked very frightened. ‘John’s gone mad,’ she said. ‘He tried to kick out the windows of the car. He’s been hitting everyone and pulling their hair. Jim Keltner tried to sit on him and hold him down, but it was impossible.’” 

He continued to try fighting people until Spector and his bodyguard took him upstairs, where they tied him to a chair.

“We tied him up,” Spector told her. “He was too dangerous. We tied him up tight so he won’t be able to harm anyone and he’ll be able to sleep it off. Untie him in the morning. Let’s go, George. Goodnight. By the way, wasn’t it a terrific session?”

Pang rushed to a hotel for her safety. Eventually, a group was able to calm Lennon down.

John Lennon’s friend said the musician was full of contradictions

Mintz witnessed a lot of Lennon’s bad behavior in the decade he knew him. Lennon admitted that in his private life, he was always not the way he presented himself to the public.

“The reality is,” Mintz told People, “as I would learn over the years in the bad behavior department, John would say to me, ‘Ellie,’ which is what he called me, ‘I’m not always the ‘Imagine’ guy.’”

Mintz said that Lennon’s contradictions were part of what made him likable, though.

“Don’t get me wrong. Much of the time, he was the person that we related to, who wrote ‘Imagine’ and expressed his vision of the kind of world where we would all like to live,” he said. “But he didn’t always stay there. He was imperfect. It’s one of the reasons, by the way, we all fell in love with him — because he was real.”