John Lennon Was 'Functionally a Child' When It Came to Taking Care of Himself, Said a Friend
John Lennon's friend worried about him when he and Yoko Ono separated. He said Lennon could hardly take care of himself.
Celebrity
John Lennon was famous and wealthy for so long that this friend said he struggled to take care of himself. He spoke about Lennon's lack of life skills.
by Emma McKee
Published on January 13, 2025
John Lennon’s friend, Elliot Mintz, tried to help him in the early 1970s when he and Yoko Ono separated. Ono told him she wanted time apart, and he moved to Los Angeles. Mintz wasn’t exactly sure how well Lennon would bode on his own. After so many years of fame, Mintz said Lennon scarcely knew how to function.
When Mintz picked up Lennon from the airport, the musician appeared to have no idea how to use money. Mintz didn’t think this was entirely Lennon’s fault.
“John was functionally a child when it came to taking care of himself,” Mintz wrote in his book We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me. “This wasn’t his fault: he’d been a rock star since he was a teenager. His every want had been arranged for him virtually his entire adult life. He never learned to do his own grocery shopping, never paid a utility bill or mailed a package or involved himself in any of the myriad mundane tasks the rest of us spend so much of our daily lives mired in.”
John Lennon | David Farrell/RedfernsLennon traveled with May Pang, his assistant. The two began a romantic relationship during the separation from Ono. Mintz said she also worked to keep him alive.
“He was clueless about the most basic elements of human commerce, like money and how to buy stuff with it. But then, that was what May was for,” Mintz wrote. “Whatever other intentions Yoko may or may not have had for the assistant, her primary job in LA was to make sure John was properly fed and cared for, that all his basic needs — or at least most of them — were satisfied.”
Mintz was close with both Ono and Lennon. He shared what they were like as people.
“They were paradoxes, John and Yoko, filled to the brim with internal contradictions,” Mintz wrote. “That was the main thing I learned about them during those early years of our friendship.”
He noted that they were complicated. While they had many good qualities, they also had some less attractive traits.
“On the one hand, they could be incredibly sensitive, honest, provocative, caring, creative, generous, and wise,” he wrote. “On the other, they could be self-centered, desperate, vain, petty, and annoying. In John’s case, also shockingly cruel — even to Yoko.”
Pang has spoken frequently about her romantic relationship with Lennon. While Lennon reunited with Ono in 1975, Pang claims she remained a part of his life. Mintz doesn’t seem so sure about that.
“She’s published several books about her affair with John, discussed the intimate details of it in documentaries, and given hundreds of interviews on the subject,” Mintz wrote. “And if you believe her account, you inevitably come away with the impression that for a time she was the red-hot center of John’s universe — that their romance was the axis around which the entire Lost Weekend revolved. I don’t doubt that she believes this to be true.”
John Lennon and May Pang | Peter Simins/WWD/Penske Media via Getty ImagesHe said Lennon never talked about his girlfriend.
“I can also tell you that after I dropped her and John off at [music manager Lou] Adler’s house — stopping briefly at a bank on the way to cash those traveler’s checks — I seldom bumped into her again in Los Angeles,” he wrote. “Perhaps even more tellingly, in all the years I knew John — all the way up to his final days — I cannot recall a single conversation in which he mentioned her name.”
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