Sean Lennon has rejected the “assumptions” made about his parents, artist Yoko Ono and the late John Lennon, over their “Lost Weekend” separation.
Sean, also a musician, is preparing to mark the 44th anniversary of the Beatles star’s death in New York in 1980.
In an interview with BBC Radio 6 Music about the recently released, Grammy-nominated expanded box set edition of John’s 1973 album, Mind Games, Sean discussed the influence his mother had on his father’s work.
At the time he was writing his fourth solo album, Mind Games, John was in the middle of his famous 18-month separation from Ono, a period referred to as the “Lost Weekend”.
“A lot of people said like, ‘Yoko wasn’t around for this record, why are they featuring her in the booklet’ or something,” Sean began. “And I think there’s a lot of history, there’s a lot of assumptions made about that time period because they were sort of on their way towards that famous separation that people call the Lost Weekend.
“But the truth is, even when they were apart they were always talking, so I don’t think they ever really broke up, all his stuff was still in the apartment with my mum. It’s not like they had a real separation. And on top of it, all my dad was thinking about was her.”
He pointed to the album artwork for Mind Games: “It’s a collage of my mum literally the size of a mountain, and he’s this little tiny thing sort of fading into the background.
“And I think it’s clear what his view of my mum was in his life. She was monumental, obviously. And the whole album is about her.”
Sean said his work on the reissue of Mind Games was, in a way, “my best effort to try to be a good son”.
He said Ono “never has moved on” from her relationship with John, as he called Mind Games’s re-release a “love letter” to his parents.
In another recent interview with People, Sean opened up about the impact that his father’s death had on him, revealing it was this that led him to pursue music in order to fill “a void”.
“I never played music because I was good at it,” he said. “I lost my father and I didn’t know how to fill that void. Learning how to play his songs on guitar was a way to process the loss with an activity that made me feel connected to him.
“When you’ve lost a parent, things like that motivate you – because you’re trying to find them. Making music always made me feel like I was getting to know him better.”
Sean was five years old when John was shot and fatally wounded outside his Upper West Side apartment building in New York City.
