Now caretaker of his dad’s work, Sean Ono Lennon seeks to innovate, not merely repeat

NEW DELHI: Only recently given stewardship over his late father’s work, Sean Ono Lennon is on a remarkable run.

The only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono won an Academy Award this year for a short film based on his parents’ 1971 song “Happy Christmas (War is Over”)” and, a few months later, was nominated for his first-ever Grammy, for producing a box set on the album “Mind Games,” originally released in 1973.

“It feels overwhelming and surreal,” said Lennon, who also recently shared a Webby Award with his mother for Ono’s interactive art project “Wish Tree.” For Lennon, who was 5 when the former Beatle was murdered in 1980, the work is a way to connect with his father. It’s more than a preservation mission: On “Mind Games,” he takes artistic license, pulling apart the recordings of John Lennon’s music to create something entirely new.

Lennon was inspired, in part, by another Beatle offspring, Dhani Harrison, who helped repackage his own father’s “All Things Must Pass.” Dhani Harrison is also behind this fall’s reissue of his dad’s “Living in the Material World,” but that experience is nothing like what Lennon did with “Mind Games.”

Besides the music, the innovative box is modeled after one of his mother’s art pieces and filled with art reproductions, hidden music, video, messages and puzzles, some only visible through an ultraviolet light that is included — “mind games,” remember? The deluxe box retails for $1,350, but there are less expensive options.

Lennon, 49, knew his father was a musician before he died; the boy tagged along to the studio for some “Double Fantasy” sessions. But truly understanding his impact came later, like when he’d hear fans singing his father’s music outside their New York apartment on the Oct. 9 birthday they shared. “It was pretty clear to me that wasn’t happening with my friends,” he said.

His father’s music played constantly around the house, and learning to play those songs launched his own journey to become a musician. “I think I would have rebelled more against my dad’s — and my mom’s — music if I had grown up with my dad in the house and I had been angry at him or rebelled against him,” he told The Associated Press. “Because he wasn’t around, I’ve always really cherished the music as sort of a living part of him.”

He inherited the job of keeping his father’s music alive for new generations when his mom, now 91, retired. In liner notes for “Mind Games,” Lennon explains that “the only meaningful way that I can show my love to him” is to work hard on his music and keep it in the culture’s consciousness. That’s poignant, and maybe a little sad. Does Lennon really have to prove to anyone that he loves his father?

“What else can I do in this Earth to express my love and reverence for my father than to do an incredibly meticulous job of taking care of his music?” he said. “I can’t actually think of anything else, other than taking care of my mother, which I try to do as well.”

That reverence for his elders came from his mother, he believes. When his Japanese grandparents came over to the U.S. “it was like the president was visiting,” he recalled.

Only after he began the “Mind Games” project did Lennon learn that the album wasn’t particularly wellregarded when it was released. He found an interview where even John Lennon considered it a transition from a period of political activism to being a musician again. The title song was its only hit.

That attitude lingers, judging by an online site called “Brutally Honest Rock Album Reviews.” In an unsigned review, the author said the “Mind Games” reissue defines overkill. “You can now own and forever cherish six different versions of songs that were unmemorable at best and a complete waste of time at worst.”