I always felt sorry for Julian Lennon. After being ignored by his dad during The Beatles Years he had to watch his father fly off to America to not only have another kid, but then decide to dedicate his life so much to his newest son he gave up making music for five years! Meanwhile the only Beatles song written about him was by Paul McCartney, Hey Jude. Julian Lennon would go on to say that during those time he definitely felt that Uncle Paul spent more time with him than Father John.
Then for some reason when Julian launched his own career - just a few years after his father’s assassination - all the critics shit all over him, immediately discrediting him for reasons unclear to me. “He’s trying to sound like his father!” “He’s okay but he’s not his father!” “How dare he so soon after his father’s death!” and in and on and on. I remember liking his big radio hits just fine. Were they up to his father’s standards? Well no, but who the fuck else's were?!!
Jump 15 years ahead to 1998 and my first weeks in Brooklyn. Julian’s young half-brother Sean was about to release his very first record. He’d never released music before or played a show, but every music critic in the city for some reason decided that everything this kid was gonna drop was absolute genius; the one-upsmanship between them re: ball-slurping the music the kid was deigning to gift us all was palpable.
Of course the album sucked, it was more his mother Yoko than his father John, with weird noises etc replacing actual words and music. The critics quickly disappeared and agreed the album had never happened.
The only reason I thought of any of this was the other night I was re-watching the classic Chuck Berry doc Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll!, and Berry brings a 23 year-old Julian Lennon to sing Johnny B. Goode with him. The verses are unremarkable but when the kid starts singing the chorus it’s UNDENIABLE who his father was, and it makes you wish those fucking critics in the beginning had given him a real chance. Ah well.
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