Sean Ono Lennon earns first Grammy nomination for box set of father John Lennon's 'Mind Games'

Sean Ono Lennon is up for his first Grammy award for Best Boxed Set or Limited Edition Package with his boxed set of "Mind Games," his late father John Lennon's 1973 album.

Ono Lennon talks about his father's legacy and the album, which got mixed reviews when it was initially released.

This year you not only released the box set version of “Mind Games,” but you also won an Oscar for the short film based on your parent’s song “Happy X-mas (War is Over).” You were 5 years old when your father died, tragically. Do these projects help you connect with him?

"Yeah, it’s been an incredible process for me because as you said, I grew up without my dad around and his music was always my connection to him. But I never had the opportunity to really sit with the master tapes and listen to the recordings and between takes and the rehearsals and then also have the opportunity to do my own kind of take on the mixes so it has been kind of a magical process for me."

The critical response to the 1973 album “Mind Games” was mixed at best, some called it “sloppy” and “boring.” Did you think it got a bad rap?

"Actually, I grew up listening to this record a lot and 'Mind Games' specifically, the song had always been one of my top favorites of my dad’s. So I actually didn’t know the lore around the album kind of being critically less appreciated, I only found that out doing the research for the book and the box set … that people didn’t think of it as one of his best albums … for whatever reason it didn’t resonate with the zeitgeist of the moment possibly but I think it's a masterpiece of an album."

Tell us a little bit about your process, how you take the original tracks and update them.

"I feel like the mixes were done more for a 1973 car stereo, so they didn’t really translate to a modern speaker system, which has much higher fidelity and a much bigger frequency range. So, for me it’s just about going through every single mic, every single track we’ve got, listening to them … from beginning to end, alone, and then just getting a sense of what we’re dealing with."

Your father John Lennon said that he didn’t get the lyrics quite right on the song “Intuition.” What goes through your head as you work on that song for this project?

"It’s really kind of a relief to hear that. Because I’m a songwriter too and it just kind of humanizes him ‘cause often I think of him as a songwriter, and he just seems like he was living in another dimension and everything came out perfectly. But I can totally relate to that where you have a really good melody and you’ve been kind of playing around with it for a while, you have a couple of versus that you’d like but you just can’t finish it perfectly and you feel like it’s never been completely done right and I totally relate to that feeling and it’s actually really sweet to hear him say that. Even though I actually think he might be wrong in the case of this song because it’s so well written and it’s so well recorded."

You released an instrumental album this year. Do you sound like your dad when you sing?

"I spent years doing solo records where I tried not to sing like him. But if I really sing out, I kind of have that tone a little bit. I wouldn’t say I’m quite as good a singer as he is but I’m definitely recognizable as a Lennon."

You and your late father are both nominated for Grammys, you for the “Mind Games” box set, and he, along with the other Beatles, is up for two Grammys for the single “Now and Then.” 

"For me to be nominated for a Grammy the same year as my dad is just kind of a weird little miracle, so I feel very touched about it to be honest. Not to get sappy but I feel a little bit verklempt."

How does this “Mind Games” project update your father’s legacy?

"My mission was to make sure that people reconsider this album. Or discover it for the first time. But I think it’s a really beautiful record and the song 'Mind Games' itself just as a John Lennon composition, I think is musically and lyrically on the top shelf of all of his best songs he’s ever written … in terms of my dad’s solo records … I’m going treat every single one of them with equal importance because I think my dad was a really important songwriter and I don’t think the world actually can afford to forget about people like John Lennon or the Beatles so I’m going to keep working on the music."

Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Tamagawa adapted it for the web.