Elliot Mintz | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan

Music, Arts, Performing Arts

4.6 • 731 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this conversation, I sit down with Elliot Mintz, the man who became John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s closest confidant during their most radical and reclusive years. Elliot shares how a single radio interview turned into hundreds of late-night calls, secret meetings in Ojai, and a front-row seat to Lennon’s life after the Beatles. We talk about government surveillance, artistic risk, and the quiet cost of fame. Elliot reflects on John’s complex relationships with Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan, the making of Some Time in New York City, and the moment John handed him a test pressing and told him to “break the record. Subscribe to the Magnificent Others YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yoko was the first one out.
0:02.8	And I heard a voice from the back of the station wagon saying,
0:06.2	Go on, hug him.
0:08.6	She gave me a light touch in the shoulder.
0:11.2	And then he bounced at the car and gave me a linen bear hug.
0:15.4	She tells me to sit at the corner of the bathtub, turns on the water, comes closer to me almost as a whisper.
0:22.8	The house is completely bugged.
0:25.8	Everything that we're saying is being recorded.
0:29.2	We're being watched.
0:33.4	The Bronx, 1945.
0:36.3	Is that accurate?
0:37.8	Yes.
0:39.1	Do you remember the world that you grew up in?
0:41.9	I was born in the Bronx.
0:43.9	Okay.
0:44.4	I probably spent just a number of months there, Bronx Hospital.
0:49.6	And then the entire family moved, the entire family was my mom, dad, and sister.
0:53.7	We moved to Washington Heights in Manhattan.
0:57.4	Okay.
0:57.9	In upper Manhattan.
1:00.3	And lived there for virtually all of my adult life.
1:06.3	My parents lived there and died in that two-bedroom apartment.
	...

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