October 15 – Julian Had Big Name To Live Up To

Bernie Taupin said his partnership with Elton John was a crazy paradox in the mid-’70s: on the one hand, they were more successful than they ever dreamed they’d be and could do almost anything they felt like, both in their personal lives and musically. On the other hand, they realized they couldn’t get any bigger, so there was only one way to go… down. A similar paradox perhaps was brought to the forefront this day in 1984. That was when we heard the brand new Julian Lennon record, Valotte, and for many, it was like confronting a ghost.

On the one hand, Lennon was blessed by being exposed to some of the greatest musicians in the world as a kid. His dad John bought him a Les Paul guitar when he was 9 and taught him some chords and how to play it. His name ensured radio would pay attention to him far more readily than if he had an unknown name and was just another up-and-coming 21 year old singer.

The downside though was that people were at the ready to rip him apart, suggesting he was cynically using his Dad’s legacy to build a career for himself or that he was just a second-rate cover version of his own father. Critics and fans alike might have been kinder to him had he been Julian Smith, Julian Fernandez or just about anything other than the junior Lennon.

This must’ve been doubly frustrating for Julian as he famously had a bit of a rocky relationship with his famous father. He felt he always came second to his younger brother Sean in his dad’s eyes and says he felt closer to Paul McCartney as a kid. “Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit,” he recalls, “more than Dad and I did.” He adds that John “was a hypocrite. Dad could talk about peace and love…but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him.”

Despite that, there was absolutely no denying that the young Lennon’s voice sounded uncannily like his Dad’s and he even looked rather like a young John. Which depending on how you feel about John, I imagine, would influence your opinion of Valotte. It was a nice sounding pop record, recorded in the States at several studios after he wrote it on a holiday at the Manoir de Valotte in France (hence the name.) He brought in famous New York producer Phil Ramone because, surprisingly perhaps, he was a fan of Billy Joel and liked what Ramone had done on Joel’s hit albums. That resulted in a clear-sounding, professional album but some complained it sounded too old and “stodgy” for a young, fresh artist. In general, ciritics balked. The Village Voice , like most, noted the “eerie” resemblance to his dad but found the album “bland professional pop.” The Saturday Review went further, saying he had the “tortured cynicism and urgency that characterized his father’s (records)” and that Valotte sounded like “languid outtakes from Imagine.” One vote of approval came from his old pal, Paul McCartney who found it “very surprising – great!”

The public were somewhat kinder than the critics. The album sold fairly well, going platinum in the U.S. and hitting the top 20 there, as well as the UK, Canada and Australia. In North America he scored two top 10 singles off it, the haunting title track and “Too Late For Goodbyes.”

Julian’s continued to record on and off since but hasn’t matched the success of his debut, but he seems more at ease with that and with himself now. Although his last album came out, to little notice, in 2011, he’s established himself as a talented photographer and is likely making his Dad very proud by being an outspoken advocate for human rights and environmental causes. This year he produced a film, Women of White Buffalo, a documentary about the Lakota Indians.