Chris Hawkins: Sean, we haven’t spoken since you won a Grammy for the expansive Mind Games box set, which you produced. So, congratulations.
Sean Ono Lennon: Thank you.
Chris: How was that night at the Grammy Awards?
Sean: I mean, I have to be honest, I don’t know how to feel comfortable in that kind of situation. It was fine, but it’s a bit nerve wracking, you know.
Chris: I’m amazed you get nervous.
Sean: Really? I think most people get nervous if they’re honest. I know my dad got nervous a lot before shows and stuff. Frank Sinatra would get cold, you know, stone cold, frozen, nervous every time – he said, apparently. But, you know, it was a real honour to win a Grammy, but it’s not a normal day at the office.
Chris: That was for the expansive Mind Games box set, but now you’re set to release a brand-new box set, a super deluxe edition of Power to the People. It features 123 tracks, 90 of which are previously unreleased. Why has it taken until now to unearth them, Sean?
Sean: I think the music that my parents were making at that period, the sort of Some Time in New York period, the One to One concert, was probably the least commercially successful music my dad, specifically, had done. So, you know, there might have been less pressure to work on those tracks. But, you know, in our case, there was this beautiful documentary that wound up being kind of a surprise, the One to One documentary, which initially started as a live concert documentary, but then the director had this kind of brilliant idea to focus more on their lives, around the time of the concert. And he, you know, uncovered in our archives hours and hours of audio of my parents talking on the phone. Because when my dad found out that Nixon might be tapping their phones or that the FBI might be tapping their phones, he decided he would record his own phone calls as well, in order to kind of have evidence in case someone ever tried to say that he said something, he would have his own version of the truth. And so, when we discovered these phone calls, the director, he said, you know, let’s make a film that’s beyond just the concert. Working on the concert audio for the film, it sort of felt like the right time to come out with the musical side of things.
Chris: A lot of the phone calls that you’ve referred to there, they’re very funny. Quite surreal as well, aren’t they?
Sean: I mean, for me, it was really incredible getting to hear them because they’re so candid. You know, they’re even more candid than an interview, because it’s literally, you know, the most kind of intimate thing you can hear, someone’s private phone call. So, it really feels more than anything like a time machine or a time capsule, where you just get to be a fly on the wall.
Chris: Do you remember your dad’s voice?
Sean: Yeah, of course I do. I mean, it’s the first voice I ever heard. So, yeah. I mean, I remember a lot of things from my early childhood, more than most people do. You know, I have some memories from three and four. It’s weird, but I do.
Chris: Sean, the period that you’ve referred to that’s covered in the documentary, which is One to One: John & Yoko, it covers perhaps your parents’ most political time, doesn’t it?
Sean: Yeah, it does, and I think that’s why the music was hard for audiences at the time. Because, you know, I think there was a lot of people who just wanted my dad to make, you know, fun pop music like he had been famous for, but he and my mom, they really dove headfirst into sort of extreme activism. And, you know, I think they, arguably, you know, flew too close to the sun, because you see in the film, which I highly recommend anyone see who’s even mildly interested, because it’s, it’s an incredible film, and you see that, you know, they sort of start to dabble with all these more radical activists, and one of them is this guy, Jerry Rubin, who was in this gang called the Chicago 7, and my dad and mom start to spend a lot of time with him. They start to work together. And then eventually, they realise that he basically is starting to push for some violence, and they are shocked. And you can feel that moment in the film, or that – those scenes in the film when they just pull back and they’re like, ‘we’re not going to be a part of this anymore’. And that’s sort of the end of this kind of adventure they went on, that they didn’t want to do it in that way. And I think it’s really an important message, you know, especially for today, for people to realise that as soon as you become violent, you’ve lost the moral high ground. And so, it’s a self-defeating thing to do. If you want to start a revolution or you want to change society, you have to win non-violently, and my dad famously said that as soon as you become violent, then the government or the powers that be know how to deal with you, because they know what violence is. That’s their language. As soon as you become violent, now they know how to deal with you, but what they can’t deal with is humour and love. They don’t know how to deal with that.
[…]Chris: […] Sean, the One to One benefit concerts were your dad’s only full-length concerts after the Beatles and his final shows with your mum, three years after leaving the Beatles. How much did he actually perform after those concerts?
Sean: Well, the first thing that shocked me is when you just say it like that, that it was three years after the Beatles, it’s pretty amazing, because it just feels in terms of the transformation and the amount of music that was made over those years, it feels like a whole other era, but it was only three years, which is pretty remarkable. He seems almost like a different person at that point. I’m fairly certain that the Elton [John] show was technically his last time on stage, which is when he played the black Telecaster and went on stage with Elton. But I could be wrong,
Chris: The One to One concerts were certainly the last time he played with your mum. Who else played at those concerts? And for those that don’t know, the reason they’re referred to as either the One to One concert or concerts is it was the same concert on the same day at Madison Square Garden, one matinee and one in the evening. Who else performs, Sean?
Sean: Well, Stevie Wonder gets on stage in the end, which is pretty cool. The band is Elephant’s Memory, who are a band who made the Some Time in New York City album with my dad and mom. And it’s a band that I think were just playing either in Washington Square Park or in Central Park. They were kind of like a jam band, a New York jam band, who, you know, played the little clubs, and they would play cover tunes in the park. So, they’re at this concert as well, with additional sort of session guys. [Jim] Keltner is there too. One of the things that made it a little bit difficult to mix was that there were two drummers on stage at any given time, and the microphone, the mic system, for miking the drummers, had changed between the early show, the matinee show, and the evening show. So, there was a lot of kind of technical confusion because there were so many people on stage, and I guess as well, because they hadn’t really been touring. It was just a one-off show. So, there was no system or routine to figure out how to get all these musicians, you know, miked properly. So, the whole thing was a bit haphazard in that way, and that’s why it was extra challenging, mixing this.
Chris: Was it fun?
Sean: Yeah, it was really fun because, well, I really enjoyed working on Mind Games, because it’s one of my favourite albums of all time. But Mind Games was recorded very professionally, so there wasn’t really that much work, other than making sure that it was well balanced and EQd, whereas with the live concert, you know, to be not to be rude, but it was sort of a bit of, it was a bit of a disaster, recording wise, I would say. So, it was really fun to be able to improve it so much. That’s what’s fun. It feels like our work is meaningful when it’s making it better. So, I enjoyed that bit a lot.
Chris: Your dad said the Madison Square Garden gig was the best music I enjoyed playing since The Cavern or even Hamburg. Had he fallen out of love with music?
Sean: I think there’s a bit of a myth about that. I don’t feel that he’d fallen out of love with music. I think he’d fallen out of love with a certain kind of fame. I think he’d fallen out of love with having to be a part of a machinery, of a pop machine, you know. I think that was – even though he was always rebellious within that framework, I think that he still resented, you know, having to be a Beatle in a way. I think he really wanted to move on from that, you know. I think his relationship with my mom was the catalyst for it and the symbol of it in his mind. And he wanted to move on and be a radical artist and activist with, you know, this girl, Yoko, who he had fallen in love with. So, I think he was trying to find a new way to do things and looking for a new way to do things. I think there were some growing pains, you know. And by growing pains, I just simply mean he made a record with my mom that people didn’t necessarily like, Some Time in New York City, you know. I think the songs are really great. I just think they’re less manicured than what people were used to. You know, they were clearly recorded impulsively and quickly. And I think that was the rock and roll spirit. It was almost like a punk, a proto-punk kind of spirit. But I don’t think people were ready for that, paired with how heavily political the messaging was. But it still – I think when it didn’t sell, I think that was hard for them.
Chris: Through the 70s, Sean, John and Yoko, they were on a mission to make the world a better place. How much do you think they achieved?
Sean: That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? I mean, the world is such a complex system that it’s hard to measure whether it’s simply better or worse. But I do think a lot of what John and Yoko did and the Beatles and rock and roll music in the 60s was, of course, very positive for many people. It did evolve the consciousness of the planet on some level, but at the same time, you look around and there’s wars everywhere. So, you know, one could easily argue, well, the 60s didn’t work or something. I think many things were improved, and a lot of the ideas that were espoused by the flower power generation did change people’s minds and consciousnesses and opened up their, you know, opened up the global consciousness, as it were. This is how my mom puts it. She says, ‘you’re either in the peace industry or you’re in the war industry’.
Chris: Sean, thank you so much for being with me. It’s always wonderful to talk to you. The new box set is beautiful. It’s a weighty box set, and I love the lenticular on the cover that changes from your dad to your mum’s face.
Sean: We had a good friend of mine, Liz Hirsch, help us with the graphic design part, and she has such an incredible eye. So, I think it’s actually a very, very beautiful package, and we’re very proud of it.
