Julian Lennon: Here Comes the Son
That night Julian Studies a videotape of the rehearsal and is dissatisfied with the way he moved: while singing, he walked around in circles, and now he thinks he looked like an Indian doing a war dance. Later, he takes a bottle of champagne to Carlos’ room, drinks for a while in silence, then says, “Listen, while we’re rehearsing, I want you to wear different-color socks. Let’s all wear different-color socks, as a good luck thing, you know?” He stays drinking champagne until five in the morning, and the next day, a little hung over, he sits erect at the keyboards, practicing “Valotte,” wearing one black sock and one white one.
Julian first played piano when he was thirteen, visiting his father and Yoko in Montauk, Long Island, after Sean, his half brother, was born. Their next-door neighbor had a piano, and Julian and his father went there one day. Lennon played a couple of tunes, then Julian asked, “Can I have a go?”
During that visit, his father’s protectiveness of Sean troubled him. “I used to get shouted at a lot, and Dad would yell at me for laughing too much. Like, ‘Be quiet, Sean’s sleeping.’ All sorts of strange things.” And Julian saw that his father was determined to be to Sean what he had not been to him. “I was a bit jealous,” he says, “but I never said anything.”
Now, in the studio, Julian tests the mike. The sound, which was thin the previous day, has been perfected. “Hey, that’s wild!” he says, his voice reverberating through the room. He jumps on his skateboard, spins around, then sails over to one of the soundmen. “You’re hired,” he says.
“It’ll just cost you sixty dollars,” says the soundman, “and all the 16-year-old girls I can eat.”
There is dead silence as the other technicians and Julian avoid the eyes of a woman in the room. Julian clears his throat. “We interrupt this vulgarity,” he says, “to bring you a message. Actually, what he meant to say was sixty dollars and all the sixty-year-old women he can beat.”
he is too shy to be a skirt chaser and too famous to have to be.
Later, electricians set up the lights, while Julian sits beside the road manager, Paco, the person Julian signals when he wants to leave a party or a bar, by touching his right hand to his left earring. Paco is also one of the people to whom Julian will speak, late at night, the jokes and one-liners gone, as he talks about his past, about his father, conversations that take the boyishness from his face, suddenly, bizarrely aging it, until he looks 30, even 40 years old; until he looks almost exactly like John Lennon.
By the third day of rehearsals, word leaks out that Julian is in Dallas, and when the band arrives at the studio, a local television crew is waiting. The sight of them irritates Julian. “Stay in the bus,” he tells the band, but they persuade him to go, then wordlessly form a protective human wall in front of him, shielding him from the camera until he is safely inside.
There, a giggling young woman who wants to meet Julian is introduced to him. Julian is not especially happy about this, but as he puts it, “I’m too nice not to be nice.” His attitude toward women seems devoid of rock & roll macho; for the most part, he is too shy to be a skirt chaser and too famous to have to be. For two years, he has lived with a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who is now 22. For a while, she was a model who did what Julian once described as “bare shots on beaches,” until he asked her not to. “I was hoping to look out for her interests, as well as mine,” he says. Now she is at home in London, in the house she and Julian share with Carlos and another friend who is Julian’s personal assistant. Lately, she has been designing clothes, which she makes on the sewing machine given to her by Julian, who now, in Dallas, is called for rehearsal.
He begins to refine the quality that will characterize his show, an impish clowning typical of him and of his father, whom he most resembles, he believes, “when I’m being stupid and putting on a silly face.” Now he struts across the stage, waving an imaginary hat like a vaudevillian, and acts out little moments in his songs.
What began as exuberant artlessness is becoming a performance by sheer repetition.
That night, the band visits a posh Dallas club where women strip to Julian’s songs “O.K. for You” and “Too Late for Goodbyes.” Later, some of the women come back to the hotel; some of the band members get to sleep, some don’t, and the next day, rehearsal is delayed an hour.
In the van, everyone is bleary-eyed, except Dean, who stayed in, got to bed early and spent the morning collecting chart figures. “‘Too Late for Goodbyes’ is at number five,” he says. There are pleased grunts; no one says anything. “We were stuck at six,” Dean explains to Alan Childs, the drummer, “but David Lee Roth moved down, so everyone else moved up.”
Julian’s eyes are half-closed behind his dark glasses; he is slumped in the front seat. Now he looks up quickly. “Where’s Madonna?” he asks.
A few minutes later, at the studio, Julian checks to see if everyone is wearing different-colored socks, then disappears into one of the dressing rooms to sleep while the band works on three songs: “Stand by Me” and “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” which were done by John Lennon on Rock ‘n’ Roll, and “Day Tripper,” the only song in the show that his father wrote. The song begins, “Got a good reason for taking the easy way out,” which is why Julian chose it.
While the band practices and Julian sleeps, Dean answers queries from a British fan magazine that wants to know some of Julian’s favorite actors (Dudley Moore and Steve Martin) and Julian’s cure for a hangover (two headache tablets and three glasses of water before bed). Paco plans the drive from Houston to Baton Rouge with the help of a Rand McNally Dist-O-Map. And Mick Treadwell, the production manager, lists refreshments they want at each gig, including Julian’s favorite candy, Nestlé Crunch, and Stolichnaya and cranberry juice, currently his favorite drink.
In another room, a roadie listens to a cassette of John Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll so he can write out the lyrics for Julian. He tries to ascertain whether Lennon is singing “O now now” or “O wow wow” on “Stand by Me.” The roadie worries that the sound of Lennon’s voice may upset Julian, who is one dressing room away. This is a frequent concern among those who do not know Julian well; his close friends have learned it is unnecessary. Perry Cooper tells of the time he and Julian were driving from Long Island into New York and Perry turned the radio to a station that was playing a weekend-long Beatle tribute. Embarrassed, he hurriedly turned the dial, but then Julian reached out, lightly slapped his hand, turned the dial back and listened to the music all the way into the city.
When Julian begins rehearsal, he warms up on songs from Valotte, then, mike in one hand, typewritten lyrics in the other, he works on “Slippin’ and Slidin’.” John Lennon sang this song with a raunchy hoarseness that sometimes characterized his singing. “I’ve always been annoyed at myself for not being able to sing like that,” Julian says. But now, for the first time, he discovers that same sound coming out of him.
And as he moves around the stage, everyone sees what has happened in four days of rehearsal: what began as walking the stage, then pacing it, then strutting it, has become taking the stage absolutely. The band plays hard. Julians face gleams. When the song is done, there is total silence. “Goddamn,” Julian says, into the mike, “that’s hot shit.”
But then, one week before the opening in San Antonio, the slight cold Julian has been staving off gets worse. A doctor prescribes antibiotics, one pill every four hours, and a roadie goes for lozenges and cough medicine. Julian’s worst fear is that he will open his mouth and nothing will come out. He talks to Carmine Rojas, the band’s leader and bass player, about his strained vocal cords. “Don’t think about it,” Carmine tells him. “It’s mostly psychological.” Julian nods and says nothing. As much as he dislikes being alone, he also likes to keep his own counsel; in that sense, there is a part of him that is always alone, always private.
Now, on Thursday, the day before dress rehearsal, Julian and the band go to a party for local film and television people. Julian is followed by two bodyguards, who will protect him throughout the tour. When he first thought about touring, being so exposed frightened him. “Originally I had my own plans for security,” he says, “and it was going to be heavy, heavy. But if somebody’s going to do something to me, it’s going to happen. I don’t worry about it too much, ’cause I would just get, you know, depressed all the time.”
Now his bodyguards are alert, ready, as Julian arrives at the party and is besieged. “I’d love to take your picture,” says a woman from a local paper. “I’d love to say yes,” Julian answers, “but no.” He sits at the edge of the room, signing autographs until a local band begins to play. Then he says, “That’s enough, give these guys a chance.” Later, at the studio, Julian rests his head in his hand and sings three words: “I’m so tired.”
The next day, the last day in Dallas, the morning of the dress rehearsal for an invited audience, the hotel bill for the band has reached $24,600; the hotel gift shop has run out of sour cream potato chips, Julian’s favorite kind; and scattered about Dean’s room are gifts to Julian from the fans, including a 1965 Life magazine featuring a photograph of two-year-old Julian and his parents.
At four o’clock, three hours before the dress rehearsal, Julian calls Carmine. “Hey bro,” Carmine says, “how’s your voice?” “Same as usual,” Julian says. “What’s that mean?” Carmine asks. “Same as usual,” says Julian. “Ready for tonight?” Carmine asks. “Been thinking about it?” “Nah,” Julian says, “I been on the loo most of the morning.” Carmine laughs.
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