‘Lennon Tapes’ Hits Its Last Reel : Radio: What began as a 2-year project ends four years later as host Elliot Mintz finishes his final ‘Lost Lennon Tapes’ show.

Shortly after John Lennon’s death in 1980, Elliot Mintz, a good friend of the ex-Beatle and a spokesman for the Lennon estate, offered to sift through and organize Lennon’s belongings.

In the process, while holed up in the basement of the Dakota building, Lennon’s New York City residence, Mintz unearthed hundreds of tape recordings of half-finished new songs, early versions of famous hits, telephone conversations and idle thoughts. Many of these intensely personal snippets were obscurely marked, buried amid recordings of the evening news or the soundtracks of television shows and movies.

“John had a habit of hiding material,” Mintz recalled. “You’d hear Walter Cronkite doing the news, then in the middle of the tape would be ‘Strawberry Fields.’ He was very secretive about most things he did in life.”

Mintz, a longtime radio personality and media consultant, and Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow, approached Westwood One President Norm Pattiz about transforming those boxes of cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes into a syndicated radio series. Pattiz leaped at the opportunity to air unpublished Lennon songs and early versions of Beatles hits.

“The Lost Lennon Tapes” went on as a weekly series in January, 1988. Mintz thought it might last a couple years; Pattiz predicted a year and a half.

Only now, however--more than four years later--is “The Lost Lennon Tapes” spinning its last reel. After 218 hours of shows, Mintz taped his last “Lost Lennon” program last week. It is scheduled to air on March 29; the series is heard locally on KLSX-FM (97.1), Sundays at 9 a.m.

“We said that once we exhausted all the material that John left behind, we were not going to attempt to milk this thing endlessly for its obvious commercial value,” Mintz said in an interview. “We were not going to indulge ourselves and do ‘The Best of the Lennon Tapes’ or a 96-parter on ‘Twist and Shout.’ We weren’t going to trivialize the work by endless repackaging. We wanted it to go out with dignity and taste.”

Though the series has come to an end, Ono said in a telephone interview that she hopes it will make a reprise in a few years because the series clearly captured the spirit of her late husband. She had given only one directive to Mintz, that Lennon be presented as he was--warts and all.

“They stuck to the idea of letting John speak for himself, rather than talking about John,” Ono said. “That was very effective, so the audience can judge for themselves about John. And I think John came across very succinctly. He communicated through this program. . . . It’s a very important historical document as well and they put it in a way that was fun.” But Mintz, 47, is not altogether done with radio shows featuring Lennon’s music. The week after the program comes to an end, he will begin hosting a related show, “The Beatle Years,” an “audio biography” that will air in the same time slot.

“We’ve taken it to the next logical step,” he said. “We’ve got millions of people who are obviously interested in the subject. We’ve got all the stations that like the programming. . . . Why not now tell the story from a slightly larger stage?

“Also, with all due respect to my old friend, not everyone loved John Lennon. He was not everybody’s favorite Beatle. A lot of people thought that Paul (McCartney) was a better songwriter. A lot of people thought George Harrison was a far more elusive and intriguing character. A lot of people thought Ringo (Starr) was funnier. . . . So, the evolution into ‘The Beatle Years’ seems to be the next thing to do. This is a new branch of the same tree.”

Mintz said that “The Beatle Years” will retain much of the flavor of “The Lost Lennon Tapes.” It will feature weekly comments from British Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn, who has written five books about the seminal rock group, and rare material from the archives of the British Broadcasting Corp.

“After we finish ‘The Beatle Years,’ we’re done,” Mintz emphasized. “It is a done deal. It will not evolve into ‘The Mick Jagger Years’ or ‘The Rolling Stone Years.’ ”

Mintz--who in the ‘60s and ‘70s hosted music and talk programs on KLOS, KABC, KMET and KLAC--regards the Lennon series as a labor of love.

“The entire experience has been bittersweet,” he said. “Nothing professionally has given me more pleasure than doing ‘The Lost Lennon Tapes.’ This was something I looked forward to every week. I was a fan of the music and of the man, as much as the host of the series.”

Heard on more than 100 U.S. stations and in six other countries by an estimated weekly audience of 7 million, the series was embraced because it provided a rare glimpse into Lennon’s thought processes, as well as an opportunity to hear the evolution of his artistry. It also enabled listeners to get to know the man behind the music.

A recent show, for example, featured communications between Lennon and his Aunt Mimi, who raised him after his mother was killed in a car accident when Lennon was 16. Lennon taped a conversation in which she told him, “A guitar is all right, John, but you’ll never earn a living from it.”

Another featured an argument between Lennon and Ono that erupted while he was being interviewed by a Japanese reporter. Ono was interpreting for the journalist on the subject of musical influences and the two got into a heated debate on whether avant-garde music had been an influential force in early rock ‘n’ roll. (Lennon scoffed at the suggestion; Ono defended it.)

There was also a segment in which Lennon’s son Sean, then 5 years old, was heard asking his father where people go when they die. Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman the same year.

But Mintz also played censor and kept off the air a recording of Lennon discussing his sexual fantasies and his stream-of-consciousness ramblings while under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms. “I found these interesting, but felt they were his own business and didn’t belong on the radio,” Mintz said.

The pair’s friendship began when Mintz first interviewed Lennon in 1971. After that, Mintz said, they celebrated their birthdays together and Mintz was with Lennon the day Lennon’s son Sean was born.

“I am not dispassionately talking about a rock ‘n’ roll legend, I’m talking about a pal,” Mintz said. “One of the things that made John Lennon unique was that there was no difference between John Lennon as a Beatle and John Lennon as a person. He was a non-censorial, totally unfiltered, constantly inspired and inspiring semi-neurotic person. And he was extraordinarily gifted.”