Happy Birthday, Julian Lennon!

Written by Michael

John Lennon’s first son Julian Lennon turns 47 today, wherever he is. I hope it’s someplace nice.

Julian deserves a lot of credit for how he’s handled the world’s continuing interest in—and adoration of—his famous father. As the physical John Lennon has dissolved into soft-focus, the chief Beatle’s first family has too often faded out, and that’s not fair. More to the point, it’s not honest or truth-telling or peaceful, or any other attribute we fans supposedly revere in Lennon. His treatment of his first family was really awful, and he certainly knew that, given the amount of time he spent justifying himself in interviews after the fact. Some of his reasons make sense (the Beatle craziness, alcohol abuse, his own fucked-up background) but it was clearly unfinished business, and Lennon had too keen a conscience to be able to endure it forever. I’ve always considered the lost opportunity to repair his relationship with Julian to be one of the genuine tragedies of Lennon’s murder, much sharper by far than any lost #1s or bald-pated Beatle reunions.

This video shows Julian talking about his pop, and specifically how he’s tried to deal with John’s parenting. I am absolutely sure—as sure as anyone could be about something like this—that had Lennon lived, he would’ve tried to make things right. Not just because the process of parenting Sean was changing him, and the passage of years would necessarily cool everybody out about the divorce, but also because it’s so clear that he was re-enacting his own paternal drama on Julian. Lennon read self-help obsessively, and really worked at it, in the face of a life and world that wanted him to stay just exactly how he was. John Lennon was a really complex person, as many of us are, but because his life was so accelerated and exaggerated, both the good impulses and the bad ones got expressed on a grand scale. But the one thing that’s core was that Lennon wasn’t afraid to change, and that reflex—the basis of all life and health—would’ve led him in a good direction with Julian.