John And I Did Run Into Some Trouble In Frankfurt, Germany… Somehow, The Desk Clerk At The Airport

John and I did run into some trouble in Frankfurt, Germany… Somehow, the desk clerk at the airport hotel couldn’t find our reservations, and no amount of my pleading could convince him to give us some rooms. I reported the bad news to John, who’d been “hiding” in the hotel lobby by using his old disguise of staring close up at a wall.

“They have no rooms,” I said.

“They have rooms!” he said. “They always have rooms!”

“Maybe you can try?” I asked. “I mean, you are John Lennon. If anybody can get us rooms, you can.”

“I can’t do that,” he said. “I can’t say, ‘I’m a Beatle: give us rooms.’ ”

“John, it’s raining outside. We can’t walk around Frankfurt in the rain all night.”

John sighed and headed towards the front desk to reluctantly play the Beatle card. For the next few minutes, I watched as he and the clerk chatted, occasionally smiled, and at one point even laughed. And then, for some reason, John pointed at me. The clerk stared in my direction, nodding furiously. A few moments later, John came over with two keys.

“I told him you were Paul McCartney,” John said. “That seemed to work.”

It worked, all right. I was given a gorgeous suite with a feather bed and a sauna. A little later, the desk manager sent up a tray of delicious snacks and a bottle of wine. Life as Paul McCartney was clearly good.

But then, early in the morning, John was at my door, looking tired and miserable. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “This place is such a dive. They gave me a bloody closet.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “This place is great!”

John stepped into the suite, surveyed its opulence, and his jaw practically hit the floor.

“I guess the desk manager liked the “fact that I wrote ‘Yesterday,’ ” I joked.

John didn’t laugh.

Excerpt From ‘We All Shine On’, Elliot Mintz