The Prague Post Online: Tempo: Sean Lennon: Art can be honesty

December 2nd, 2008

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Sean Lennon: Art can be honesty

The confessed lover of pop also believes in plumbing through grief to find truth

By Marika Ley
For The Prague Post
February 14th, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST

John and Yoko's heir says he doesn't feel his father's shadow — but he surely was inspired by his mother's early rocking years.

Upon first glance, Sean Lennon offers a familiar face that you can’t place — one that you’ve seen a thousand times, one that evokes feelings of deja vu and an abstract connectedness that’s simultaneously comfortable and unnerving. His life has been chronicled often enough, the inevitable fate of someone whose parents are John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but often the glossy magazine interviews have revealed as much about the writer’s bias as about this thoughtful young rock artist.

The gunning down of his father on a New York City street, when the younger Lennon was 5, is still felt by many to be one of the 20th century’s great tragedies. Now 32, this distinctive singer and composer has emerged from the publicly reported life of a celebrity with a calm proclivity. After a stint on the road with the avant and art music of Cibo Matto, his first album Into the Sun (with Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto, released by The Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal Records) was released eight years ago. Now, after some illuminating relationships — as well as breakups and heartache — he has produced a new recording of brutal and blatant honesty. The recently released Friendly Fire (EMI) muses on betrayal, deception and punishment, as well as forgiveness and acceptance of the pitfalls of human nature.

The Prague Post: Your new release, Friendly Fire, is very wistful; it’s really beautiful music. It brought feelings of ideas of resolve and forgiveness. Was this written for someone in particular? There were allusions to …

Sean Lennon: A specific life experience? Yeah, it was … most of the songs were kind of inspired by real relationships I had, one specifically with my ex-girlfriend Bijoux [Phillips]. And then basically an experience that I went through with her and my best friend, who had an affair with her, or she had an affair with him, whatever. And, you know, it’s kind of about describing what it was like, or the things that I felt, but it’s not necessarily trying to resolve or solve anything. It’s just sort of like saying this is what happened, or this is what it’s like when this happens. … I wasn’t trying to judge her or him necessarily, I was just trying to articulate.

TPP: It sounded like a bit of self-chastising, but also it seemed like an acceptance, in a way.

SL: I’m trying not to be pessimistic; I’m trying to actually just sort of use my life experience to make something that’s true and sort of beautiful, you know, like the way you might describe a thunderstorm. It might be a scary thing, but, if you describe it beautifully, then you’re making something beautiful out of it.

There’s definitely some bitterness on the album, but … I was putting it there to kind of be true about what it’s like. You go through a lot of different feelings.

TPP: You have a very public life, and there must be some sense of resolution and forgiveness in just about everything you have to encounter.

SL: That’s possibly true. I don’t really like to qualify my life significantly in terms of being compared to other peoples’ lives … as somehow special or different because it just makes me uncomfortable. … I think people tend to assume that life is somehow different for me, or for others, but I don’t think that it’s that different. I think life kind of boils down to the same fundamental five or six things for most people, and it’s like health and friends and family and love, or whatever. But I think people think that I’m more of a celebrity than I am. My daily existence isn’t really inundated with celebrity things, like someone like Mariah Carey or Tom Cruise or something. Those people are truly living on another planet, and my whole experience is pretty mundane, really.

I also think that since I was born, uh, with whatever celebrity I have, I didn’t make my celebrity.

It’s just kind of like a background, you know? It’s like a backdrop to my life. … It’s just sort of like, you know … my eyes are brown. … I grew up, I remember people taking my picture and stuff, and I never knew anything other than that.

TPP: With other people born into celebrity, everybody’s looking to the offspring to see what they’ll produce, whether they’ll inherit something. Is that a heavy weight to bear?

SL: People do ask me that, what is it like to live with this pressure. But it’s funny because honestly … I don’t feel some sort of pressure, other than the normal existential angst that everyone feels. … I only feel this thing as being tangible when I actually read certain articles or encounter certain people that say, well, he’s not as good as his dad.

But, other than that, 99.9 percent of my life, I don’t even think about it. I’m just doing my thing. I don’t feel, I don’t exist in terms, or I don’t in relation to this sort of abstract pressure on me.

People say it must be hard to live in the shadow of your dad, and I always say, ‘Well, I don’t really see the shadow unless I see that other people see it.’

So I think it’s hard for other people to see me as myself. I think other people have a problem with my dad being famous, but I really never had a problem with it because it would be like having a problem with my hands.

TPP: Your new album expressed the parting of Max LeRoy, didn’t it?

SL: The only thing that I have to draw from is my life … but I don’t feel like I’ve had a breakthrough and sort of figured it all out in terms of how to just, you know, mourn Max dying; all those things, they’re still painful.

TPP: So is it cathartic to sing it over and over?

SL: Yeah. It’s intense. I put it that way. I don’t know if it’s cathartic; it’s not like a breakthrough, but it’s deep. It’s life, and it feels rich, and intense.

TPP: It’s reminiscent of several musicians: Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, Leonard Cohen, and of course your father always all seem to be very present, but not necessarily exploited.

SL: That’s cool. Thank you. I basically learned how to write songs kind of from imitating my mom.

TPP: She’s a bit more discordant, and the album is anything but discordant.

SL: She’s known for discordance, but she makes a lot of records; especially the records that I grew up with her making are very pop. She has a way of sort of writing lyrics so blatantly raw and true that I never even thought of doing song lyrics that weren’t that way. It feels kinda natural to me. People always ask me ‘Is it hard for you to sort of expose your private life; publicly, in that way?’

TPP: And?

SL: It’s not. … It’s actually great … There’s a misconception about me; there’s a misunderstanding, and people don’t see what I am for real, and so, when I have a chance to write a song, I want to really show myself truly, and, if people get to have some inkling of who I am that’s real, then I feel that’s better. I prefer that to them thinking I’m some sort of … out-of-touch, prodigal, sort of princelike spoiled guy … in terms of me and my grief and my life and what I go through, that’s the truth, and I don’t have any problem with sharing that because I think that’s what art can be.

TPP: It comes through. It really does. Did you ever get to meet Elliot Smith?

SL: No, I didn’t. … I just feel so terrible that he, um, wasn’t helped. … He needed professional help, and I’m not even into medication or rehab … but I think certain people in extreme situations need it. And I feel like it’s just so sad that you can be so loved and then not really have anyone around, like to not make your life in such a way that you’re not surrounded by at least one person, or two people that can attempt to save you, a little bit, from yourself.

TPP: It seems like you have a really good relationship with the women in your life. You’re very close with your mom, and you toured with Cibo Matto, with Yuka Honda, who is now your ex-girlfriend, and she’s on tour with you now. And your ex, the actress Bijoux Phillips, was in your video.

SL: Well, I don’t believe in burning bridges with people that I love, because I think that, if you love someone deeply, then that’s … one of the most special things that can happen to a person. So, like no matter what happens, I think that it’s important to remember why you loved them and to not take that for granted … Within reason, I think I’m smart enough to really love people that are pretty interesting and interesting enough to keep around.

TPP: When you’re on tour, you have maybe 24 hours to know someone, whether you click or don’t, right?

SL: It’s almost sort of lonely: It’s like you’re always in this little spaceship and just traveling through space and you encounter the audience, which is great, but that’s like the most social it gets, really.

I was spending the night in Prague because I’ve never been to Prague. … I used to go to Budapest a lot, and I tried to take a train to Prague once, but I just was waiting until I had time to really see the city, but I guess now is not gonna be that time.

TPP: Well, if you would want somebody to walk you around with you or something, I could. I have a scooter, too.

SL: Great. That’s very kind of you. I’m happy, ’cause I didn’t know what the fuck I was gonna do when I got there.

Marika Ley can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com

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