AARP Hearing Center
Julian Lennon, son of murdered former Beatle John Lennon, has found a way to move forward in life by digging up the past — figuratively and literally — with his latest, very personal album.
Jude, which releases on September 9, was assembled from old forgotten demos unearthed in his business manager’s basement. The title points to the Beatles classic “Hey Jude,” written by Paul McCartney to console then-5-year-old Julian after John left him and his mother, Cynthia, for Yoko Ono. The songs explore struggles and revelations both personal and universal.
Lennon, 59, found success not because he is the son of John Lennon, but in spite of it. His birth and his parents’ marriage were hidden from the press when he was born in Liverpool in 1963, just as the Beatles were exploding. He was largely excluded from his father’s new life (and will).
Four years after his father’s 1980 murder, Lennon burst onto the music scene with the hit debut album, Valotte. Five albums followed. After 2011’s Everything Changes, he retreated from music to wear other hats: as a photographer, children’s book author (the best-selling trilogy Touch the Earth, Heal the Earth and Love the Earth), film producer (the documentary Women of the White Buffalo) and philanthropist (his humanitarian White Feather Foundation).
Speaking from his home in Monaco, Lennon tells AARP about his renewed enthusiasm for music, a new willingness to face and embrace his past, and his hopes for the future.
How did BMG label CEO Hartwig Masuch lure you back to the music fold?
I could tell his passion for music was huge, more so than many before him at record companies. He wanted a whole album. I told him I don’t really see that. I take a long time to do albums, and having had them be shelved by labels before, I was a bit tired of it all.
But then you discovered a trove of lost material.
My UK business manager was retiring, and he had a bunch of boxes in his basement. There were old reel-to-reel demos of my first album, left uncovered for 30 years, and I thought they must be destroyed by now. I had a cassette of songs that were borderline finished. Others are from 10 and 20 years ago. We digitized everything. Lo and beheld, it’s audible. This was stuff that never quite made it onto other projects. Why not now? It sounds great. The sentiment is still spot-on. There are hundreds of these things. I’ve got work for years to come.
So, how did these fragments evolve into an album?
At first, I didn’t think they worked as an album. It was during COVID, a weird time. My friend Justin [Clayton] and I looked at “Every Little Moment,” and we discovered it was in perfect shape. I wanted to upgrade the production and get some real drums. I resang the choruses. Next was “Not One Night,” a song I sang in the guest room of my bungalow in the L.A. hills 30 years ago. We kept the original vocal and put new strings on it. I hadn’t done engineering in years, and the first song I dove into on my own was “Freedom.” Once I got the soundscape for that, I had the soundscape for the album. It’s got to have space and a journey. When I listened to Jude as a solid finished piece of work, I was in tears. This works. It’s deep and meaningful, and it moves and it discusses many issues, though it’s mostly about looking in the mirror.
