NEW YORK (AP) — Only recently given stewardship over his late father’s work, Sean Ono Lennon is on a remarkable run.
The only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono won an Academy Award this year for a short film based on his parents’ 1971 song “Happy Christmas (War is Over”)” and, a few months later, was nominated for his first-ever Grammy, for producing a box set on the album “Mind Games,” originally released in 1973.
“It feels overwhelming and surreal,” said Lennon, who also recently shared a Webby Award with his mother for Ono’s interactive art project “Wish Tree.”
For Lennon, who was 5 when the former Beatle was murdered in 1980, the work is a way to connect with his father. It’s more than a preservation mission: On “Mind Games,” he takes artistic license, pulling apart the recordings of John Lennon’s music to create something entirely new.
Lennon was inspired, in part, by another Beatle offspring, Dhani Harrison, who helped repackage his own father’s “All Things Must Pass.” Dhani Harrison is also behind this fall’s reissue of his dad’s “Living in the Material World,” but that experience is nothing like what Lennon did with “Mind Games.”
Besides the music, the innovative box is modeled after one of his mother’s art pieces and filled with art reproductions, hidden music, video, messages and puzzles, some only visible through an ultraviolet light that is included — “mind games,” remember? The deluxe box retails for $1,350, but there are less expensive options.
Learning what his father meant to others by hearings fans sing through the window
Lennon, 49, knew his father was a musician before he died; the boy tagged along to the studio for some “Double Fantasy” sessions. But truly understanding his impact came later, like when he’d hear fans singing his father’s music outside their New York apartment on the Oct. 9 birthday they shared. “It was pretty clear to me that wasn’t happening with my friends,” he said.
His father’s music played constantly around the house, and learning to play those songs launched his own journey to become a musician.
“I think I would have rebelled more against my dad’s — and my mom’s — music if I had grown up with my dad in the house and I had been angry at him or rebelled against him,” he told The Associated Press. “Because he wasn’t around, I’ve always really cherished the music as sort of a…