Julian Lennon

Early April 1963, not far from Penny Lane. Outside in the cool night air, the young girls wait for a glimpse of John Lennon.

Inside Sefton General Hospital, Lennon dashes through the corridors to see his son, Julian, for the first time.

Gingerly, he enters the room where Cynthia Powell Lennon sits in bed, Julian on a pillow beside her. He stops, stares at his child, then at his wife. “Who’s a clever little Miss Powell, then?” he says. He picks Julian up. He holds him in his trembling hands.

“Who’s going to be a famous little rocker,” he says, “like his dad?”

Yoko Ono married John Lennon when Julian was five years old and living with his mother and grandmother in a small house in Kensington.

Then, as always, he adored his father, loved his attitudes, his style, his music, his thinking. But when Julian was eight his father moved to New York, effectively abandoning him.

Left with his mother, Julian eventually came to accept that his father shared an exclusionary and consuming love with Yoko Ono.

When Julian was 20 he was talked into recording a demo.

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