Julian Lennon

Julian Lennon was born in Liverpool.

Initially, the fact that John Lennon was married and had a child was concealed from the public, in keeping with the conventional wisdom of the era that female teenage fans would not be as enamoured of married male pop stars.

Lennon inspired one of his father’s most famous songs, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, whose lyrics describe a picture the boy had drawn, a watercolour painting of his friend Lucy O’Donnell from nursery school surrounded by stars.

Following his father’s infidelity with Yoko Ono, Lennon’s parents divorced when he was five.

The pair were later reconciled, but Julian was still hurt when John gave an interview shortly before he was killed by Mark Chapman in 1980, in which he implied that Julian was an unplanned child who “came from a bottle of whiskey”.

Paul McCartney wrote “Hey Jude” to console him over the divorce; originally called “Hey Jules”, McCartney changed the name because he thought that “Jude” was an easier name to sing.

After his parents’ divorce, Lennon had almost no contact with his father until the early 1970s when, at the instigation of his father’s then girlfriend, May Pang (Yoko Ono and Lennon had temporarily separated), he began to visit his father regularly.

On 1 April 1987, Julian Lennon appeared as The Baker in Mike Batt’s musical The Hunting of the Snark (based on Lewis Carroll’s poem).

The all-star lineup included Roger Daltrey, Justin Hayward and Billy Connolly, with John Hurt as the Narrator.

The performance, a musical benefit at London’s Royal Albert Hall in aid of the deaf, was attended by Prince Andrew’s then wife, the Duchess of York.

In 1991, Harrison played on Lennon’s album Help Yourself but was not directly credited.

A song off the album, “Saltwater”, reached number six in the UK and topped the Australian singles charts for four weeks.

Also during this time, he contributed a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” to the soundtrack of the television series The Wonder Years.

In 2006 he ventured into Internet businesses, including MyStore.com with Todd Meagher and Bebo founder Michael Birch.

By 2007, however, relations between Sean and Julian had improved so much that Julian accompanied Sean, also a musician, on a tour of Croatia and Slovenia.

In 2009 Lennon created a new partnership with Todd Meagher and Michael Birch called the Revolution, LLC.

Through this company, Lennon released a tribute song and EP, “Lucy”, honoring the memory of Lucy O’Donnell, the little girl who inspired the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, with 50% of the proceeds going to fund Lupus research.

Julian’s childhood difficulties did, however, produce one of the Beatles’ most famous songs.

Paul McCartney wrote Hey Jude as a message to Julian when he was on his way to see Cynthia as the marriage was ending.

In 2012 Lennon worked with music film director Dick Carruthers on the feature length video documentary “Through The Picture Window”, which followed Lennon’s journey in the making of his album Everything Changes and includes interviews with Steven Tyler, Bono and Paul Buchanan from The Blue Nile.

“Through The Picture Window” was also released as an App in all formats with bespoke videos for all 14 tracks from the album.