<body><div> When <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/john-lennon/index.html" rel="nofollow"> John Lennon </a> and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/yoko-ono/index.html" rel="nofollow"> Yoko Ono </a> were at the height of their fame, they were guaranteed to be mobbed wherever they went. But the instantly recognizable former Beatle and his artist wife had come up with a wild - almost implausible - ruse to keep their fans at bay. In his new book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743169/we-all-shine-on-by-elliot-mintz/" rel="nofollow"> We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me </a> , Elliot Mintz reveals the couple were convinced they could perform mass hypnotism on people, enabling them to walk through a crowd without being spotted. And he witnessed them in action during a memorable car journey in 1972. Mintz, a one-time radio host who became a confidante of Lennon and Ono, was picked up in Ojai, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/california/index.html" rel="nofollow"> California </a> , by the pair and their driver Peter Bendrey - aka Peter the Dealer - at the tail end of an epic cross-country road trip. They were traveling to the west coast in the hope that consultations with a Chinese herbalist there might help them conceive a child after several miscarriages. About three hours from their destination, John got hungry - so Mintz suggested stopping for something to eat at Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf. 'The second I suggested it, though, I realized it was a terrible idea,’ he writes. ‘They were John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They couldn't pop up on a crowded pier without any security. Things could get quickly dangerous. But John waved away my concerns.’ As they drove towards the pier, he describes how John and Yoko started ‘behaving strangely. ‘They began whispering to each other in the back seat. After a while their whispering grew more intense, then turned into a mantra or something like a Hare Krishna chant.’ By the time they reached the wharf, he said there had to have been 500 tourists milling around the pier. ‘There was no way John and Yoko could navigate such a huge throng without getting mobbed,’ he writes. <figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2fH4Yl_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2fH4Yl_0wMD625E00" width="634" height="425" ><figcaption>There was no way John and Yoko could navigate such a huge throng without getting mobbed </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=4bAdJX_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4bAdJX_0wMD625E00" width="634" height="836" ></figure><nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0TKvWv_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0TKvWv_0wMD625E00" width="634" height="357" ><figcaption>By the time they reached the wharf, he said there had to have been 500 tourists milling around the pier </figcaption></figure> ‘Before I could raise any objections, though, the two of them were already out the doors and heading from the parking lot straight into the crowd.’ Mintz followed anxiously, convinced the crowd would soon recognize the famous couple in their midst, and fearing the chaos that would then ensue. But they confidently weaved through the crowd, unbothered by the hundreds of people around them, almost as though they were invisible. <nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate> 'The most recognizable couple of the planet had ambled smack into the middle of a horde of hundreds, and not a single soul seemed to know who they were.' Once ensconced at a table in a lobster restaurant, John smiled and turned to Mintz to explain what he'd just witnessed. ‘It seemed that John and Yoko had developed a bizarre but apparently remarkably effective method of crowd control,’ he writes. ‘It involved some sort of esoteric mind game in which they each mentally disguised themselves with alternative identities: John became the Reverend Fred Gherkin and Yoko became his wife, Ada. ‘That's what they'd been chanting in the back of the wagon a few moments earlier: "Fred and Ada Gherkin.” ‘Somehow, as improbably as it sounds, John and Yoko took on these imaginary roles so completely and authentically that they were able to project them to the outside world. Like a sort of mass-hypnosis invisibility cloak, it rendered them all but undetectable. <nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate> '"Works every time!" John said.' However, as the waiter arrived to take their order, it seems the 'spell' was broken. 'You could see the veils fall from our server's eyes the moment he heard John's voice,' writes Mintz. <figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2LFoAX_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2LFoAX_0wMD625E00" width="634" height="420" ><figcaption>The Beatles and their wives visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India in 1968 - at the time John was married to his first wife, Cynthia </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1wL5cl_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1wL5cl_0wMD625E00" width="634" height="954" ><figcaption>The 'spell' was broken when people heard Lennon's unmistakable voice </figcaption></figure><nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=39Fcuo_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=39Fcuo_0wMD625E00" width="634" height="421" ><figcaption>They were travelling to the west coast in the hope that consultations with a Chinese herbalist there might help them conceive a child after several miscarriages </figcaption></figure> The result was mayhem. Murmurs from fellow diners became louder, and the noise was joined by the scraping of chairs as people surrounded the couple, thrusting napkins and pens in their faces, demanding autographs. Nervously, they backed out of the restaurant without eating, and escaped back to the safety of their car - the huge green Chrysler Town &amp; Country station wagon they affectionately dubbed the 'Dragon Wagon'. <nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate> Once back on the road, Mintz asked what had happened. ‘It's me voice,’ said Lennon, dejected. ‘That's what broke the spell. People always knew me voice before they knew what I looked like.’ The book also reveals Lennon and Ono's unhealthy <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13981723/john-lennon-yoko-ono-confidante-book-obsession.html" rel="nofollow"> obsession with body image </a> , saying they were 'obsessed with staying skinny.' 'John kept a journal where each day he would write what his weight was,' Mintz writes. 'Yoko and John had endless questions about this subject. They thought that everybody in Hollywood was slim and trim and that there were magic diet pills and insisted I get that for them.' Mintz was with Yoko Ono in the hours and days following Lennon's murder in New York in 1980. <nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2kL8kk_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2kL8kk_0wMD625E00" width="634" height="909" ><figcaption>John and Yoko photographed in November 1980. He was shot dead a month later </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=21rCxT_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=21rCxT_0wMD625E00" width="306" height="462" ><figcaption>Mintz, a one-time radio host, became a confidante of Lennon and Ono in the 1970s </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0p9nTd_0wMD625E00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0p9nTd_0wMD625E00" width="306" height="462" ><figcaption>He wrote his memoir about their time together </figcaption></figure> Arriving at the Dakota Building at 7.30am to comfort his heartbroken friend, thousands of people were already outside, many of them playing Beatles songs on boom boxes, and laying flowers against the gates. 'A few had made signs, which they held up almost as if attending a protest. One of them aptly read, "WHY?"' Ushered up to the Lennons' apartment on the seventh floor, he sat silently with Ono in her bedroom as she watched live footage from the street below on a big-screen TV. 'Standing by the bed, wearing silk pajamas and a kimono, Yoko looked incredibly frail,' he writes. 'Yoko had been watching, with the volume off, for who knows how long. Even though the windows were shut and the shutters closed, I could hear the music from seven floors below.' Just as she crawled back into bed, the TV lit up with the face of the man suspected of the shooting. 'Yoko sat up and stared intently at the mug shot of the assailant; she seemed both mesmerized and repulsed - and deeply confused - by the face of the man who, just hours earlier, had murdered her husband. 'She appeared to be searching for something in the photo... she was looking for the answer to the question on that sign that was being waved outside in the crowd: WHY?' We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me by Elliot Mintz is published by Dutton </div></body>

Mountain View, CA

Lennon and Yoko Ono were guaranteed to be mobbed wherever they went. But the former Beatle and his artist wife had come up with a wild - almost implausible - ruse to keep their fans at bay.