{"id":602562,"date":"2026-08-23T22:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T22:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/602562\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T22:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T22:52:16","slug":"did-john-lennon-and-paul-mccartney-last-meet-in-1978-over-a-pizza-in-new-york-city-i-recall-paul-asking-john-are-you-making-any-music-these-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/602562\/","title":{"rendered":"Did John Lennon and Paul McCartney last meet in 1978 over a pizza in New York City? \u201cI recall Paul asking John, \u2018Are you making any music these days?\u2019”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guests on Billy Corgan\u2019s The Magnificent Others podcast have brought up some fascinating anecdotes in recent months. Gene Simmons told how Ace Frehley lifted a guitar solo from the Doors<\/a> for a Kiss track. Zakk Wylde revealed how a chance to work with Guns N\u2019 Roses sidelined his career with Ozzy Osbourne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But few have delivered a history-changing story quite like Elliot Mintz. A friend of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Mintz has challenged the long-held belief that Lennon and Paul McCartney last met on April 25, 1976. According to that rather sad tale, McCartney turned up unannounced at Lennon\u2019s New York apartment at the Dakota and was turned away by Lennon, who was busy with his son, Sean. Supposedly, the two former musical partners never met again.<\/p>\n

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Mintz, however, says the two men crossed paths two years later, during the Christmas holiday. And he knows, he says, because John and Yoko invited him over.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey invite me to Dakota to spend one of the Christmas days with them,\u201d Mintz tells Corgan. \u201cAnd I go up to the Dakota, and I notice in the living room, there\u2019s a vase with a single branch of a tree. That\u2019s their Christmas decoration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sat down on the white couch in the white living room, and we\u2019re just making small talk,\u201d he goes on. \u201cThen there\u2019s a knock on the door after the intercom. [Lennon] opens it, and Paul and Linda McCartney walk in.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mintz, who had been a radio DJ in the 1960s and went on to become a TV personality, had become friendly with Lennon over the years. But he says this was his first meeting with the other half of the iconic Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sat and we talked for a while. It wasn\u2019t overly jubilant. It wasn\u2019t icy. It was just correct,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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The McCartneys then suggested they go to Manhattan celebrity hotspot Elaine\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Inside John Lennon & Paul McCartney\u2019s Final Meeting: A Quiet Christmas at the Dakota – YouTube
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\u201cElaine\u2019s had a reputation,\u201d Mintz states. \u201cI mean, you walk in and there\u2019s Woody Allen, Gore Vidal, and there\u2019s Tom Wolf and all those people. But the food was miserable, and everybody knew it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leafing through the menu did little to inspire. Then an idea struck.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLinda said, \u2018You know, there\u2019s a great pizza place not far from here. Really thin-crusted pizza. Do you think you could get a pizza delivered here?\u2019 And she said it directly to me. Who else was she going to suggest it to? \u2018Yoko, would you drop the dime?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing that Elaine\u2019s could be \u201cproblematic,\u201d they arranged to have the pizza \u201cdelivered through the back door. It was taken out of the cardboard box,\u201d Mintz explains, \u201cput on Elaine\u2019s beautiful plates, and brought out so a casual observer would think it\u2019s a dish that they hadn\u2019t seen yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"John\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

With the sun setting, the group retreated to Lennon\u2019s white living room, and soon it was just the two Beatles and Mintz.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn and Paul kind of wandered over to this very, very tall window that looked down upon the west side of Manhattan,\u201d Mintz says. As he was still on the couch, he could hear only \u201cspasms\u201d of their conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was small talk,\u201d he says. \u201cNothing of substance. But I do recall Paul asking John, \u2018So, are you making any music these days?\u2019, and John replying, \u2018No. My time is with my baby,\u2019\u201d he said, referring to Sean, who was born in 1975. \u201c\u2018What about you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Paul says, \u2018I\u2019m always making music. I make music every day of my life. I can\u2019t stop making music.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"John\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

McCartney was always writing, sometimes solo, sometimes with Linda and, by the 1980s, with guests that included Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Elvis Costello<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mintz believes that if Lennon had taken the bait, the pair could have \u201csat in the living room and changed the face of contemporary music one more time.\u201d But that didn\u2019t happen. The McCartneys were gone within the hour.<\/p>\n

Corgan\u2019s interviewee admits that this final-ever meeting of two of music\u2019s greatest minds was \u201canticlimactic,\u201d and yet it perhaps still represents a more touching final moment for their partnership than the alternative that has been passed down through history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guests on Billy Corgan\u2019s The Magnificent Others podcast have brought up some fascinating anecdotes in recent months. Gene…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-602562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}