Sean Lennon Interview

Here Comes the Son

Not many people can release albums whenever they feel the time is right. But not many people are the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono either.

In Sean Lennon’s case, the wait was well worth it. His last album, 1998’s Into the Sun, showed a young Lennon experimenting with bossa nova and giving off an uneven feel. On his latest release, Friendly Fire, named one of Rolling Stone’s top 50 albums of the year, shows a matured musician dealing with the issues of heartbreak and loss over gorgeous melancholy pop songs, recalling some of his father’s most intimate work. Lennon seems to have more of Paul McCartney’s meticulous control over every aspect of the album, as opposed to his father sitting in bed recording “Give Peace a Chance.”

“I wanted to have it be connected thematically, to be about the demise of relationships. I modeled it after like, in terms of how long it was, after Revolver in terms of the number of songs and feel. A couple other records, they all come in around 37 to 43 minutes, Pet Sounds, Revolver, Joni Mitchell, the best records do. So I wanted to make something that was conceivable in its length, because I feel like the problem with CD’s is your brains attention span tends to wane after 45 minutes. But I did intentionally make it that long, or short rather. I intentionally recorded with one band. We did all the basic tracks in 10 days so that it had a consistency.”

On Into The Sun, Lennon played every instrument, but the last eight years Lennon has spent collaborating with artists as wide ranging as Ryan Adams to Jurassic 5. On Friendly Fire, he had guest musicians, including producer Jon Brion play on a few of the tracks, who Lennon described as “how I would imagine it’s like to work with Prince. It’s like having a weird alien prodigy in your room.”

Accompanying Friendly Fire are videos for each song. Lennon called upon a couple of his friends to help him with the videos, including Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Fisher, and ex-girlfriend and inspiration for the album, Bijou Phillips. Phillips and Lennon were dating when she cheated on him with Lennon’s best friend from childhood. Before Lennon and his friend could ever reconcile, his friend died in a motorcycle accident. Although this may seem right out of a soap opera, the videos are very dream like and surreal, and put the music in a new light.

“ I wrote them, and I produced it, and I made a lot of decisions and I drew the animation myself, by hand, 600 drawings, in two weeks. We filmed the entire movie in 12 days. So yeah, I’m kind of crazy. I work a lot.”

In some of the videos Lennon is in a gravatron carnival ride, touching on an underlying theme of innocence lost.

“Well that’s exactly why I got one. We really lucked out with the gravatron we got because it was aesthetically so beautiful. I’ve been on a lot of old school gravatrons that are basically a white round room. This one was just like a spaceship and it was beautiful. Gravatrons just aren’t in demand. It only cost us like five grand for us to rent that whole fair for the day and the night. It seems like I spent millions of dollars on the videos but I just spent my regular video budget. I just make it look good by putting all the money on camera, on screen.”

With Friendly Fire, Lennon seems to be escaping the title of John and Yoko’s son and establishing himself. However, he says that being the son of a rock legend isn’t all necessarily bad. In fact, he sees it as a challenge.

“I think it’s been not great. But it’s been alright because I get a lot of people coming to my shows to see John Lennon’s kid and they leave being fans, so there are advantages… I think it was the challenge, it was the hardest thing I could do with my life, so I (became a musician).”

Lennon, like his parents, also is an artist, and his website is adorned with sketches he has made. He said that music and art are closely related, but there are some differences.

“The difference is that drawing is more introverted and music is diverted. Drawing for me is really kind of meditative and introverted, you’re alone a lot. You’re paying attention to the subtleties of the lines, the shadows. In music you’re working with people, it’s different.”

His mother, the notoriously harsh critic who is often sited as the reason the Beatles broke up, was not afraid to criticize her son’s work either.

“She liked it, it seemed like she did. I think at first she thought it was a bit too mainstream, but in the end she liked it.”

As far as plans for 2007, Lennon replied, “I’m going to be touring. Touring, touring, touring.”

This appeared in the January 12th issue of The DePaulia.