Sean Lennon wears many hats these days. He's a producer, composer and front man for The GOASTT, which stands for "The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger."
The only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono began performing at the age of 5 as hasn't stopped since.
He's worked with Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz and Rufus Wainwright.
Windy City Times talked to the son of a Beatle about his current music videos, gay men in his life ( Elton and Rufus ), and a variety of projects.
Windy City Times: Hi, Sean. I am excited about talking to you today, and have interviewed your mom in the past.
Sean Lennon: That's cool. When was that?
WCT: A few years ago. It was possibly for an album you produced. You've made a lot of albums with her.
SL: No, just the last two. She made, like, 15 records in the '70s and '80s. She had been doing it for a long time. I did produce the last two albums and work on a few things when I was younger, too—basically since I started Chimera Music, the music label.
WCT: How is it working with your mother?
SL: It is fun. You know it's cool because that many people get to spend that much time with their parents or necessarily have the best relationship with their parents. I feel like it's an outlet for ourselves just to hang out and be creative as opposed to Christmas dinner or something.
WCT: How was your Mother's Day?
SL: Mother's Day was spent driving here to Austin. We arrived here last night at one in the morning from Oklahoma.
WCT: How did this project get started?
SL: GOASTT got started with Charlotte Kemp Muhl, my girlfriend. We have been dating for a while now, about seven or eight years. When we met we started writing songs just as a hobby. It was just something to do but we really liked the songs we were writing. We wrote this song called "The World Was Made for Men" and that wound up being on our first album, which is called The Acoustic Sessions.
It was just something we did on our dates. We would go back to her room and write a song. It was all for fun and just a side project. I remember looking around her apartment at her writings, poems and plays. I found a play she had written when she was 7 years old. Her handwriting was cute. It was written about a ghost that was haunting a museum. I thought it was such a surreal sounding title and we wanted a band name that sounded new, so we came up with Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger because it was so long and weird. It was not in any seriousness we were just fooling around.
Sometimes side projects just start without thinking too much about it and turns out the thing that you like best. That's what happened here.
WCT: How do you like making these videos? "Animals" seems very experimental.
SL: I guess it is experimental and, to me, it is very much like a lot of films that have already been made. [There's] Lucifer Rising, by Kenneth Anger, and some people think there is a Jodorowsky influence. He is a filmmaker from South American [with whom] my mom and dad produced a movie called The Holy Mountain. The video is actually a parody about a documentary on the Source family. Have you heard of them?
WCT: Not before this video.
SL: They were a vegetarian cult in the sixties that lived in L.A. We had fun getting dressed up as the Source family and just running around. I don't know if that would be experimental but to me it's like more of a tribute to the Source family.
WCT: I saw the "Moth To a Flame" video, also.
SL: That one I really like, actually. That was the first video we made and we actually wrote it before we had written the song. We made it like a silent film. It just matched up with the song so well that we put it together. We made it at my country house with no sense of what song would work with it. Years later we had "Moth To a Flame" and it matched up really well. We tend to make a lot of funny experimental films on our own. We have some that we still haven't matched with music yet.
WCT: You must have grown up in an arts community so this is a natural progression for you.
SL: Yes, I guess that's true because my mother is an artist. On the other hand, I went to pretty boring private schools in New York City that were not necessarily very artistic. I have a lot of friends that went to performing arts schools. I didn't do that. I never went to art school or college. I went to Columbia University, which is not necessarily an artsy place. The schools I went to were pretty conservative I would say.
I went to high school in a Swiss boarding school. It wasn't all finger-painting and hula hoops!
WCT: Elton John is your godfather?
SL: My dad was very good friends with him. They were best friends at one point, I think.
WCT: Rufus Wainwright must be a good friend after working so much with him.
SL: Yes, he is. We are really good friends. I have known him since I was 21 so more than 15 years I guess.
WCT: I love the work you did with Cibo Matto. The track "Moonchild" I wore out!
SL: That is so sweet. Thank you. They just put out a new album on my label. Did you know about that?
WCT: No, but I met them after they played Lincoln Hall, where you are about to play your concert.
SL: Oh, good. They have a new record and it's called Hotel Valentine. We put that out on the same label that we put out the GOASTT record. So both of those records came out this year. It is an exciting year for our label.
WCT: The new music they played at Lincoln Hall was very good.
SL: I think it is good. It might be one of the best things they have ever done for sure. We are both on tour right now. Our keyboard player Samuel is in both bands, which has been difficult for us. He's the bass player in Cibo Matto and the keyboardist in GOASTT, so he is well in demand.
WCT: He's everywhere. Have you been to Chicago much before this?
SL: Yeah, sure. I have been touring since I was really young. I used to be in the band Cibo Matto so we toured a lot. I toured as a solo artist as well and in my mom's band as her music director. The first tour I did with Cibo Matto [when] I was 19 years old.
WCT: Do you like being behind the scenes or in the front?
SL: In the front? That sounded like a euphemism and I won't explain why. [Laughs] I actually prefer not being the front person and being in the way because you can enjoy the music without having the responsibility of not carrying the whole show yourself. I don't mind being the front person but it is more work energetically, that's all.
WCT: Tell our readers about Mystical Weapons.
SL: That is an experimental band that I have with Greg Saunier. He was in a band called Deerhoof. I don't know if you know them but I am a big fan of that band. He and this girl Satomi Matsuzaki had this band Deerhoof. They are also fans with Cibo Matto. It is sort of an extended family.
I started Mystical Weapons with Greg as an improvisation. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to make a record with him this year, which I had planned to do but GOASTT is sort of taking over. That project is on hold for the moment. We will see you soon with GOASTT in Chicago!
GOASTT haunts Lincoln Hall, June 1. For tickets, visit lincolnhallchicago.com .
