Sean Lennon maintains that he and brother Julian Lennon have always been close — despite legendary tension and past bad blood between Julian and Sean's mom, Yoko Ono. Julian, who was the first of the Beatles' children, was born in 1963 to John and first wife, the late-Cynthia Lennon. Sean was born 12 years later to John and Yoko on Lennon's 35th birthday.
Sean, who produced the upcoming Lennon compilation, Gimme Some Truth, which drops on his and his dad's birthday — October 9th — spoke to Mojo about the family, revealing, “There’s a lot of misinformation and rumors about Julian and I not liking each other. But we’ve always been very close. He was a real hero to me. There may have been complicated feelings between my mom and Julian. But that never affected us.”
Sean spoke about his emotions regarding his dad's final work, which appeared on 1980's Double Fantasy: “There's a lot of songs on Double Fantasy that I really love. But when I listen to them, another part of me thinks, 'Maybe this wouldn't be my favorite song If I hadn't been there when it was recorded.' Generally the only relationship I have with my dad is through music.”
During his late-'70s “house-husband” era, John Lennon was especially proud of the legendary loaves of bread he baked from scratch, Sean remarked, “I don't remember Dad baking. I do remember him making toast every morning and how burnt the toast was. He really liked it black with butter and marmalade. When I wanted more of anything I was eating, he would just cut it in pieces, and he'd say, ' There, now you have more.'”
When pressed as to what John Lennon would be thinking today, Sean, who was only five-year-old when his father was murdered, said, “The only thing I know for sure is that it wouldn't be the same thoughts he had in 1980, because the only thing that's sure about John Lennon is that he evolved all the time. He was never the same two years in a row.”
John Lennon considered a true mark of success being able to create his work without the constraints of the music business and/or his detractors: “We've never had any real trouble with self-expression. There's an occasional — a record will be banned because of some prejudiced about a word, or something. All our demonstrations. . . of what we are and what we stand for have always been done in a way, like the Bed-in and things that people can't really complain about. Although they can wonder what we're doing, so everything that we did is done in such a way as not to get ourselves in some kind of corner, y'know?”
