SEAN LENNON: UNKNOWN MUSICIAN OF FAMOUS PARENTS
The whole world knows the legendary parents of Sean Lennon – Yoko Ono and John Lennon. The harder it is for him to prove to the world that he is not just a scion of celebrities, but an outstanding personality. Someone will doubt that the children of well-known personalities in general need someone to prove something. As it turned out, even as needed, not to be forever nameless “son of the very John Lennon.”
Sean Lennon – the son of a gift
Let’s try to summarize what Sean himself managed to achieve in his years. The notorious fact that Sean was born on the birthday of his father John – October 9, 1975. Daddy’s delight knew no bounds, he galloped with happiness and answered reporters that at that moment he felt higher than the Empire State Building skyscraper.
This is truly a gift, as the gift was presented by beloved wife Yoko Onomuzykant Sean Lennon to her husband on the 35th birthday. For the sake of his son, John almost stopped practicing music, and spent all his time with Sean, experiencing an incredible happiness in raising a long-awaited child. Yoko, meanwhile, took the financial trouble for herself and was actively engaged in increasing the family fortune.
Sean was incredibly lucky – very few people from the world of Bohemia devoted themselves to the child. For five years, John put his knowledge, skills and abilities into his son, tried to fully develop the boy. Probably, this is how he tried to calm down the reproaches of conscience for the lack of attention to his eldest son Julian from his first marriage.
Under the care of mother
In the house of Lennon and Ono was full of musical instruments and recording equipment, so Sean from early childhood learned the wisdom of technology. His father taught him to play the guitar and introduced him to rock and roll with the help of Elvis Presley songs. musician Sean Lennon Of course, the child was moderately spoiled, but not stupid at all. This helped him after the tragic date of December 8, 1980, when his father was gone.
The boy had to get used to life without dad. But he, fortunately, had an active mother who brought Sean to publicity almost from the cradle. He was not afraid of camera flashes and questions from reporters, he calmly treated all the costs of stellar life.
Already at the age of seven, he played one of the roles in Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk, attending music awards, art project presentations and social events with his mother. So the press attention, he was not deprived.
Yoko Ono drew his nine-year-old son to the recording of his single “Every Man Has A Woman”, and gave him the opportunity to try himself when creating other records. At age 13, fragments of his interviews were used to create the Imagine documentary about John Lennon.
European education
However, Yoko tried not to pamper her son too much and sent him to Switzerland to study in the closed boarding school of Li Rosi. As Sean himself later admitted, the conditions there were not the mildest, the schoolchildren were brought up in austerity, despite the star status of their parents. In this school, English prince Edward, the future king of Belgium Albert II, the descendants of the Rothschild clan, the children of Diana Ross, the last beloved of Princess Diana Dodi Al Fayed and members of the American indie rock band The Strokes, spent their school years.
There, Sean wanted to become a cultured and educated young man who would understand classical art and musician Sean Lennon and literature, knew the masterpieces of world cinema and could feel freely in the society of intellectuals.
Returning to New York, young Lennon realized that Europe had lagged behind the United States, in particular, in musical development. There, he almost missed the birth and formation of hip-hop. Then for three semesters, Sean Lennon studied at Columbia University, until he finally realized that he wanted to focus only on music. He was not deprived of this talent, but he did not strive to develop it especially zealously. The first lines of the charts, the screeching of fans and the enthusiastic reviews of critics of the music world were alien to him.
The first independent steps in the music
The famous American rock musician and songwriter Lenny Kravitz influenced Sean’s early work. Back in 1991, Lenny, Yoko and Shawn organized a collective recording of the song “Give the World a Chance” by the most famous musicians of that time. She became a symbol of protest against the war in the Persian Gulf. the musician Sean Lennon Shawn was close to the pacifist ideas of his parents, so world events became for him not just news from the television screen.
Later he helped Lenny Kravitz with the recording of the album “Mama Said”, and then he assembled his own band. This group accompanied Yoko Ono’s performances, even the joint album Rising was released.
After that, he began his close collaboration with the duet Cibo Matto, who worked in the genre of alternative music. Then Sean was 22 years old and joint work with the New York group, which consisted of Japanese artists Yuki Honda and Miho Hatori, seemed promising to him. However, this did not prevent him from working in parallel with Adam Yaukh from the Beastie Boys group. The band’s record label even helped Sean Lennon release his debut album, Into The Sun.