Sean Ono Lennon on his ‘Mind Games’ Grammy nomination and stewarding his family’s legacy: ‘I’m trying to do good by my own father’
When Sean Ono Lennon, the only child of John Lennon and artist/activist Yoko Ono, was growing up, his father’s third solo album, Mind Games, was “just sort of the lore of my family; his music was always playing in the house,” he tells Gold Derby. Mind Games eventually became not only his favorite John Lennon album, but also one of his favorite albums, period, of all time. It was only when Sean began working on Mind Games — The Ultimate Collection (Super Deluxe Edition) that he realized the album had been poorly received and generally misunderstood by both critics and fans at the time of its 1973 release.
So, now that the Mind Games project has been nominated for Best Boxed Set or Limited Edition Package at this year’s Grammy Awards, Sean feels “very vindicated, because I always felt that Mind Games was one of [John’s] best albums and it wasn’t fully appreciated at the time. … I think every song on the record is very beautiful.”
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Sean, who was just 5 years old when his father was murdered, describes working on the six-disc Mind Games box (which includes stripped-back Elemental Mixes, instrumental Elements Mixes, track-by-track audio histories called the Evolution Documentaries, raw studio mixes, and outtakes) as an “almost spiritual journey” and “the kind of work that is very good psychologically for me to do,” because his appreciation for this particular album goes beyond the actual music.
“I think what these [songs] represent to me is very personal, very intimate, because my parents were going through a kind of breakup. I mean, it wasn’t a breakup, but I say a separation around that time,” Sean explains, referring to the much-mythologized “Lost Weekend” between the summer of ’73 and early 1975, when John was living in Los Angeles and dating May Pang. And so, delving into the Mind Games archives helped Sean set the record straight in another way.
“The reality is, it was a separation, but it’s not like [my parents] ever lost each other,” Sean stresses. “On a lot of the outtakes of the recordings, you can hear my mom on the tape, talking and helping him finish the song. … You can hear my dad talking about how much he loves my mother. Even on the album cover, you can see that my mother is sort of this towering mountain in the distance that dwarfs him and he’s this little kind of lost figure in this field. You can tell that he’s trying to find her again, or in a way she’s the compass by which he navigates the world.
“The result of that, obviously, is they get back together — and then I’m born nine months after that!” Sean added with a laugh. “So, I think it has a personal kind of meaning and sentiment for me as well.”
Sean, now age 49, is well aware that virtually anything Beatles-reissue-related will be divisive, but along with the Mind Games Grammy nomination, he’s pleased that the project has been praised by his peers in general. “No one I really respect has been upset about it!” he chuckles. And he is already planning Ultimate Editions for other John Lennon albums. “I think my dad is one of the most important composers of the century that he lived in, so I’m going to treat every single solo record as if it’s the most important record in the world,” he asserts. “It feels like I’m doing the right thing. I’m trying to do good by my own father. And at the end of the day, that leaves me feeling good and proud.”
Below, Sean Lennon opens up about the “forensic, anthropological dig” that went into Mind Games — The Ultimate Collection, dealing with detractors, the recent groundswell appreciation for his mother’s work that has been “a long time coming,” taking over the stewardship of his late father’s work, and much more.
[Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
Gold Derby: Congratulations on your Grammy nomination!
Sean Ono Lennon: Thank you so much. I’m really surprised and it’s a great honor, but at the same time, this L.A. fire situation is really overshadowing the whole thing, to be honest. It’s really frightening what’s going on. I can’t believe that it’s happening. At some point I thought maybe the Grammys weren’t going to happen, but I realized that they’re going forward, and I guess it’s good to not let a tragedy interrupt life. It’s good to try to keep living and working.
It will be a different Grammy Awards this year, for sure, but I’m still happy that you’ve been recognized for your hard work on the Mind Games. It’s your first Grammy nomination, and for such an important project that’s so near and dear to your heart. That must feel amazing.
Yes, and the real amazing coincidence is that I get to go to the Grammys for my first nomination for working on my dad’s album the same year that the Beatles are up for two Grammys for a song that my dad wrote [“Now and Then”]. That does feel really beautiful, actually.
I don’t know if a lot of people expected a Beatles song, particularly one that was put together under such unique circumstances, to be up for Record of the Year in 2025 against all these current pop artists.
It’s pretty remarkable, honestly, that the Beatles are still able to get Grammy nominations after all this time. In terms of Mind Games, I feel very vindicated, because I always felt that Mind Games was one of his best albums and it wasn’t fully appreciated at the time it was released. It got overshadowed by a lot of ’70s pop chart records, and also he didn’t really have time to promote it or to tour or anything. But I think we managed to have people reconsider it — and listen to it for the first time, for a lot of people. And in terms of the Beatles’ “Now and Then,” I honestly, I don’t think I can be fully objective about it, because whenever I hear it, I get super-choked-up. It’s sweet to just hear them on the same piece of music, Paul [McCartney] and Ringo [Starr] and George [Harrison] and my dad together. It’s very touching. I don’t know if they’re going to be able to compete with these younger artists who have the world’s attention right now, but it’s amazing enough that they’ve been nominated.
Well, the other Record of the Year nominees are Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift — all great songs, but all relatively in the same generation and same pop universe. So, you never know. The others could split the vote and make way for a minor upset with a Beatles win.
That would be incredible. Incredible.
Absolutely. So, you used the word “vindicated” just now. Were on a mission to make people rediscover, or reconsider, Mind Games?
I grew up listening to my dad’s records before I was even aware of how people reacted to them. It was just sort of the lore of my family; his music was always playing in the house. So, I love that record and had no idea that it was considered, I guess, underappreciated when it came out. I didn’t know that until I started working on the boxed set. Basically, we were doing interviews with musicians and we were putting a book together of interviews and kind of the background history, and that’s when I started to realize, “Wow, people at the time thought it wasn’t a great record!” That just made me more motivated to do a better job on the mixes. The mixes were for a time when people were mostly listening on little speakers in their car or something; it was a little bit mid-rangey and thin compared to what we can do today. I don’t want to insult the recording, because it was recorded very beautifully. But at that time, the mastering style was different. It wasn’t as a full-spectrum as what you can do today. Giving it a modern retouching really expanded the soundscape and broadened the spectrum of it, in a way that allows you to appreciate how good the recording really was, with some of the best musicians in the world playing some of my favorite songs that my dad ever wrote. The material was all there. It was just a question of kind of dusting it off a little bit.
Mind Games was the first album that your father produced himself.
Exactly. I think he was feeling really excited. You can hear how he really worked on the arrangements, especially compared to the previous record that he did, which was much more almost like a punk record, clearly recorded without a lot of rehearsals and without a lot of meticulous forethought. What happened is people didn’t really understand Some Time in New York City, which was more about activism than about music. My dad decided that he didn’t want to do that anymore, that he wanted to get back to focusing on making music that was more thought-out and polished and spending more time on the actual arrangement and the musicality of it. He worked really hard on Mind Games and was proud of the fact that he had produced his own album and didn’t need Phil Spector. It’s a beautiful piece of music, the whole thing.
Have you ever gotten any insight into how your father reacted to the negative response to the album? I imagine if it was a record he was so invested in, it must have bummed him out.
It’s known among John and Yoko fans that my dad would actually write to critics — open letters to the editorial department of newspapers. I think you can find them online, and they’re really funny. People ask me about how my dad would’ve interacted with social media, and I’m pretty sure he would’ve just been out there tweeting every day, because he was very forthright with his rejection of bad reviews. But he was also very funny about it, so he’d say, like, “You damn pseudointellectuals don’t know anything about art!” or whatever. And then he goes, Peace and love, John.” It was always kind of tongue-in-cheek. But he got really furious about bad reviews, although not sinister sense, and he would write a letter to the reviewer. They’re hilarious letters, just like the letter that he wrote to the queen of England when he returned the MBE, sort of serious and funny at the same time. … He was always very nice at the end, which is very sweet.
You’ve said that Mind Games wasn’t just your favorite album of your dad’s, but one of your favorite albums, period. What is it about this album that you love so much?
The album has Jim Keltner on drums, and Ken Ascher on piano, who wound up doing music for Jim Henson and becoming one of the most famous kind of songwriters or film score people out there, and Rick Morotta, who later wound up playing with Paul Simon on Graceland and millions of other famous platinum albums. The whole band is just tough. It’s this really all-star band, versus what happened before during Some Time in New York City. … The level of musicianship really increased on Mind Games. It almost feels like my dad was reacting to how misunderstood Some Time in New York City was, and he was just getting back to business. I think he worked very hard to make the songs as beautiful as they can be. “Mind Games” is known for the chord change. It is one of his best compositions. It almost sounds like Bach wrote it. It’s this beautiful descending kind of cyclical, chromatic chord change. It’s a song that I think he started writing maybe during the Let It Be period, and it’s one of his best ideas. He had it kind of kicking around in his head for a long time, and often those are the best songs — the ones that you take a long time to figure out exactly how to execute them. And he had a whole other lyric for it that was “make love not war,” which he does say in the end, but I think that the fact that he changed the lyric shows that he was really thinking … was really developing and refining the songs. Every song on the record is very beautiful.
What they represent to me is very personal, very intimate, because my parents were going through a kind of breakup. I mean, it wasn’t a breakup, but I say a separation around that time. You can hear my dad talking about how much he loves my mother. Even on the album cover, you can see that my mother is sort of this towering mountain in the distance that dwarfs him and he’s this little kind of lost figure in this field. You can tell that he’s trying to find her again, or in a way she’s the compass by which he navigates the world. The result of that, obviously, is they get back together — and then I’m born nine months after that! So, I think it has a personal kind of meaning and sentiment for me as well.
Yes, this record was made during what is known as John’s “Lost Weekend,” and there are different recollections of what that time period was like. Obviously, May Pang has done a documentary and book with her own account, and there’s a lot of mythology surrounding that era in general. What insight did you glean about it from working on Mind Games?
That he never really left [Yoko]. If you really look at the Lost Weekend, historically, he was always calling my mom and missing her, and my mom was one saying, “Don’t come back yet, you’re not ready,” because she just felt he had to go through whatever he was going through, which was almost like a return to his adolescence. He was partying too much and acting crazy in a way that my mother didn’t want to deal with. So, he was missing her the whole time and trying to come home, and my mom was like, “No, I can’t deal with you yet.” The reality is, it was a separation, but it’s not like they ever lost each other. They were always in love. May Pang has her perspective, and I have nothing against her personally, but I think everyone has their own subjective interpretation of the way events unfold. And I think the idea that my parents were in danger of ever being really truly separated is kind of an exaggeration. It sounds like my dad never lost focus on my mom. It’s clear that he’s not forgetting about her. The reality is, on a lot of the outtakes of the recordings, you can hear my mom on the tape, talking and helping him finish the song. So, she wasn’t missing from those sessions, either. It reminds me a lot of the way that people had over hyperbolized the breakup of the Beatles during the Let It Be filming, and now, decades later, if you watch Get Back, you realize that they weren’t really fighting, that my mom really didn’t sit on an amp, that it wasn’t as bad as people had made it out to be. I think things get exaggerated with these towering historical figures like the Beatles or whatever. People over-exaggerate the whole kind of drama of the Mind Games period, and I think they did that regarding with Yoko hanging out in the studio with the Beatles as well.
There are always going to be haters, but I am glad that it seems people have chilled out about Yoko over the years.
I feel like she’s living rent-free in a lot of people’s heads no matter what! [laughs] But I do think that the era of Yoko-hating — or generally speaking of woman-bashing — is behind us. And I do think that the world is reinvestigating my mom’s career for what it is, and she’s getting a lot of the appreciation that has been a long time coming and should have happened a long time ago. She had this incredible show at the Tate Modern, and there’s people all over the world have sort of realized what a remarkable artist she is in her own right. I think her time has come, for sure.
What was her response to your work on the Ultimate Edition of Mind Games?
Well, it’s not really the kind of thing that she’s that focused on, but I think that it’s a big deal for her to have allowed me to take over for that kind of work, because she did an amazing job of that kind of thing for so many years. And she’s retired now. So, that in and of itself, the fact that she’s allowed me to start doing that, is sort of its own statement.
How did you approach the main batch of this project’s Ultimate Mixes?
For me, it was a forensic, anthropological dig. I just sat alone and I listened to every single track, from beginning to end. I familiarized myself with what’s there. And then it’s just slowly about making decisions in terms of how to improve or maximize the best possible, most flattering textures of each instrument or microphone track. It’s slow and meticulous and caring. I try to go over it with a forensic level of meticulousness, and that also includes taking away things that we don’t need — noise or buzz or whatever that isn’t helping. Sometimes buzz is good, but not always. It’s using whatever technology is available to us, very specific EQs or noise-canceling algorithms or modern reverbs or whatever, just to help clarify everything. It’s like trying to put on a pair of glasses when you’ve been looking at something fuzzy your whole life. That’s all I’m trying to do, is bring out what’s already there.
What were your personal favorite mixes or tracks on this project?
I’ll be selfish and say it’s the songs that I changed the most are the ones I’m most proud of, because I had more involvement personally. For example, there’s a song called “Aisumasen,” which means “I’m sorry” in Japanese. I really think that I made a good choice in mixing it more like a song from the Imagine or Plastic Ono Band records, which means like a drier snare drum and a louder piano, which was not the way it was mixed on the original record. And then there’s another song called “Out the Blue,” which I did the same thing. Those two, to me, sounded more classic, and I think that those songs have never sound better. It’s subjective, obviously, but I feel like if you listen to those two songs and compare them to the originals, I think they’re better than they were before.
There are always going to be cranky Beatles purists who will argue that the original version was better. I’m sure Giles Martin gets flak all the time for every Beatles deluxe album reissue he mixes. What has been the public response to this Mind Games box?
I have to be honest: No one I really respect has been upset about it! The best musicians I know, who’ve listened to the mixes, have said that they think the record sounds better than it ever has. That’s what matters to me. There are some critics in the comments section of YouTube or whatever who think that somehow I’m trying to exploit the record or my dad, or somehow it’s a money-grab or something. There’s always people who say that kind of stuff. And frankly, I don’t think they understand how the economics work, because it’s certainly not a very profitable endeavor! It’s more about the meaning of it for me, personally, of what it means to go through my dad’s music and get to listen to the tracks. And as a musician myself, having spent my whole life learning how to play and mix music, it’s this incredible personal, almost spiritual journey, getting to have that intimate relationship with his recordings and learn about how he did things and try my best to bring my own knowledge and abilities to helping rediscover that music. It doesn’t mean that I’m trying to replace the original versions, and those will always be there forever for people to listen to. The project comes from a place of love and nothing else.
What memories did you unpack, or what takeaways did you get, from diving into this project?
It’s the kind of work that is very good psychologically for me to do. It feels like I’m doing the right thing. I’m trying to do good by my own father. And at the end of the day, that leaves me feeling good and proud. It is very emotional sometimes, but to be honest, I am a professional musician, so once I get into that mind space, I’m really just thinking about it from a work perspective. I’m really just trying to make everything as good as possible, as good as it can be.
I think when any child of a famous musician goes into music, no matter what they do, there will be naysayers.
I think there’s just this culture that’s been around for a long time, but is sort of peaking right now, where people think that children should ignore their parents and change their name and move to another country and become monks or something. It’s just a little too extreme. A lot of people’s last names, when your last name is Smith, it’s because your parents were blacksmiths for hundreds of years and generations, and it was very normal to learn the trade of your parents. That wasn’t considered dishonorable; in fact, it was considered the more honorable thing to help your family with whatever their business is or what their trade is. That was very common for most people until quite recently, actually. It was actually considered dishonorable to not become a blacksmith if your dad and your grandfather were. So, I think the idea of somehow looking down on kids who inherit the vocation of their families means you’re wasting your time, in a way.
Did your mother ever warn you that it might be a tough road if you embarked on a music career?
My mom isn’t the kind of person who has those kinds of conversations, to be honest. That’s not where her head is at. She’s just not like that. She never talked to me about whether I should go to college, or which college I should go to, or whether I should be a musician or not. I never had any conversation regarding any life plan like that with her. She doesn’t think that way. … She never tried to convince me to do anything, and she also never tried to dissuade me from doing anything.
As a musician yourself, what did you learn about your dad’s work ethic that you might take into your own music career?
What I learned is how similar I am to him in terms of the work process. It was very relatable for me in that sense, the familiarity of the workflow, which I think most songwriters would recognize. I compare it to the Get Back documentary that Peter Jackson did. Every musician I know has commented on how it’s so amazing just seeing that the Beatles do things the way we do; it was nice to see them in their work process … [to] listen to the rehearsals of my dad in the studio with the musicians working out the slide-guitar parts. It humanizes it and demystifies it in a really beautiful way. It makes you realize that they were just people who just happened to be really good at what they did, but that it wasn’t some kind of Mount Olympus where they were throwing lightning bolts around at each other. They were just human beings, and they were musicians in ways that are very familiar to me.
Are you planning Ultimate Editions for some of your father’s other albums?
Of course! Some people say, “Why did you make such a big deal out of Mind Games? It wasn’t even his best record!” Look, he only made six records. I think my dad is one of the most important composers of the century that he lived in, so I’m going to treat every single solo record as if it’s the most important record in the world. And you can get mad at me for that, but I don’t know what you’d expect. If you look at Mozart on Spotify, there’s entire boxed sets of the lesser-known sonatas because he’s an important composer. So, I’m not going to ignore any John Lennon record. I’ll say that every single one is incredibly important to me and to the history of music and culture, as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to work on each one with as much love and thought as possible.
Who are all these people you keep talking about getting mad at you? And why? You think they’d be more mad if you were doing absolutely nothing to uphold and celebrate your dad’s legacy.
Well, that’s the thing. I think those kind of people probably would be mad no matter what.
So, if you win the Grammy Award, what you will say in your acceptance speech?
I haven’t thought about it, to be honest! I didn’t even realize that I’d be allowed to make a speech! I tend to be just off-the-cuff, generally, I’m not really a speechwriter. When we got the Oscar [in 2024, for Best Animated Short for “War Is Over!”], I just made it up. I just improvised. I didn’t write anything. It happened to be Mother’s Day [in the U.K] that day, and my mom wrote that song “War Is Over” with my dad, so I was thinking, “Wow, this is so amazing that I can give this present to my mom.” I feel thankful to her for so many things, so all I said was, “Can you guys wish my mom a happy Mother’s Day for me?” And that was it.
Your film won an Oscar, and you may be winning a Grammy soon. What’s next?
A Tony! Ha, no, I’m kidding. I’m very fortunate that I get to do so many things. I have my own music, my own solo record that I’m going to work on this year. I also have my dad’s next project I’m going to work on. There’s also films that are made about my parents that I get to be peripherally involved in, as a sort of producer. I also have a record label; I get to produce bands and record music for other people. I’m also actually finishing up a documentary right now that I directed about threeASFOUR, some artist friends in New York. So, I’ve got a lot on my plate. My ambition is just to finish everything, and not to say yes to so many things that I can’t finish them.
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