John Lennon and Yoko Ono were deeply preoccupied with their weight during their time in the public eye. Elliot Mintz, a former Los Angeles radio and TV announcer who was close friends with the couple, revealed in his memoir “We All Shine On: John Yoko & Me,” that they were “obsessed with staying skinny.” Mintz, now 79, became friends with the couple after interviewing Ono for her 1971 album “Fly.” He has remained close with the Japanese singer and her son Sean Lennon since John’s death in 1980.
Mintz alleged in his book that Lennon kept a journal where he would daily record his weight. “Yoko and John had endless questions about this subject,” Mintz added. He recounted an incident where Lennon called him at 4 a.m. asking for help finding “diet pills,” believing everyone in Hollywood was slim and that there were magic diet pills. Mintz, however, did not oblige this request.
Mintz also described the couple’s wardrobe as “like a Manhattan boutique,” organized by waist size, with a large ladder to access higher boxes. He noted that they had “hundreds of articles of clothing, including dozens of hats and glasses,” all categorized by waist size, ranging from 28 to 32 inches, depending on their perceived weight and how tight the pants fit.
Their refrigerator, according to Mintz, was filled with “unrecognizable” health foods. “Their refrigerator was like going into this pit of curiosity,” he said. “There were sometimes these paper containers, suggesting there were leftovers from the night before, and you would open the container and look in and still not be able to identify what they were eating.” Mintz continued, “Before John learned to cook, they were a little thin in the nutrition department, and Yoko, with all due respect, did not know her way around the stove.”
Ono’s representative has not yet commented on these claims. Lennon was tragically killed by Mark David Chapman outside his New York City apartment on December 8, 1980, leaving Ono a widow. Their son Sean was only 5 years old at the time.
In recent years, Ono has largely stayed out of the public eye, with rumors suggesting her health is declining. In 2020, a source close to her staff revealed that she requires round-the-clock care and rarely leaves her apartment in the Dakota, located in the Upper West Side of NYC.
Mintz, who has acted as a family spokesperson for Ono, assured that his new memoir does not contain any “salacious” material about Ono and Lennon. “What it is to the best of my knowledge, is an honest first-person account of what it was like to spend almost a decade of my life with them, and now, more than 50 years with Yoko,” he said.
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