A Conversation with Julian Lennon on the Revolution and “Lucy” – HuffPost 12.14.09

Mike Ragogna: Julian, this is like your twentieth interview of the day?

Julian Lennon: (laughs) It’s been a looong day, but I’m fine.

MR: Are you all talked-out yet?

JL: No, this is partly the beginning of the onslaught. You know, it’s been a while since I’ve done any interviews so I haven’t quite condensed any of my answers yet (laughs). Go for it!

MR: Nice. You’ve taken on quite a mission here.

JL: On a few levels, yes.

MR: You’re not only promoting a new Julian Lennon release, but you’re also behind theRevolution LLC.

JL: Yeah, yeah.

MR: Would you discuss how you started plotting theReveloution?

JL: Yes, I’d been speaking with the other founding members over six months to a year now. In fact, one of them, a friend who came up with the initial idea for it, I’d been speaking to for years and years. I’d been out of the business, so I wasn’t particularly interested at that point. It was only after, I guess it was about five years ago, that I’d started writing again, and then after last year, I finished the album and thought, “Okay, where do I go from here?” since we had the demise of the music industry as we know it and the labels as we know them. There are still a few hanging on for dear life, and I did meet with all of the labels that were left. But it’s certainly not set up the way it used to be though we’re in a much more beneficial position now for the artist’s sake.

MR: Traditionally, all artists end up unhappy with their label at some point.

JL: I’d made some poor decisions myself in the past, but I’d never really had a great relationship with any label I’d worked with either. With the last album, Photograph Smile, ten years ago, we tried to do it independently with viral marketing, but it was a little too early. It just wasn’t set-up well enough to do what we’re trying to achieve today. Anybody can get a song out there virally these days.

But there’s still the issue for me–and this is where theRevolution, in part, comes into play as well as the subsidiary Artist’s Alliance that is more like the managerial arm–that even though the world is your oyster now as far as the internet and viral marketing, it all still needs to be managed and looked after and organized and that’s a lot of work. And so I thought I didn’t want to follow through with the old school regime, although there are still elements that are in place. There is still a need for traditional marketing and distribution, people still want that hard copy CD, you know, they want to see it in their hands. But I honestly feel that that will dissipate too, slowly. I wouldn’t say five years, but I would venture to say it won’t be too long. Nonetheless, it still exists, and it’s still an important factor and has to be dealt with. But really, the new way forward, without a doubt, is what the internet brings.

MR: So your company’s outreach will succeed mainly through the internet?

JL: We can reach so many people and be involved so many ways with so many projects. It’s just astounding, I think if you can think it up, you can almost do it these days.

MR: And many labels aren’t too keen on investing lots of money on anything that already isn’t a proven hit, so you’ve got the chicken and the egg scenario.

JL: Meeting with all the companies, I thought there had to be a different way forward. I thought I don’t want to go it alone, I don’t think I can, I need someone who has a bit of knowledge of where I need to go. I think all of the founders of this new company, from their respective backgrounds–like Michael Birch, one of the founding members of Bebo, and Todd Meagher who brought the original model that shifted a little bit with my inclusion–bring things to the table.

MR: Are the three of you the core of the company?

JL: There’s also another partner in the shadows at the moment that’s possibly coming on board who’s a dear friend of mine. He’s been involved in the back scenes of the industry as a lawyer and many other things. We all bring something to the table, and we’ve been able to achieve things by going out and meeting the big boys like the bosses and the founders of iTunes, YouTube, Yahoo, the list goes on. I’m literally meeting them face-to-face, one-on-one, trying to make it so that all of us can work together in trying to do the best that we can for music and artists that we care about.

MR: How did they respond to your proposals?

JL: The main guy at iTunes is a lover of albums and a lover of music, and I was so happy to hear that. He said that he was the one who came up with the idea of downloading LPs so you get all the downloads of the liner notes, etc., etc., plus extra video, which is what saddened me initially about downloadable music. You never knew who was producing it, you never knew who was playing on it. I feel that I’m at the right place at the right time because I consider myself a serious songwriting artist, especially with the last album and this one. It’s an ongoing concern, and I’d like to see more of that continue which is the longevity of the great singer-songwriters. I’d be able to help those artists, new and old, still remain in the light so to speak, so they don’t disappear in the light of the one-hit-wonders that just reach #1 or Top Ten and then disappear out of our lives forever.

MR: You’re pulling a lot of aspects together under one roof.

JL: It’s all interconnected. It’s all related one way or another from all directions, whether it’s the songwriting element or the business element, the emotional element… For me, it’s really all tied-in. And everything comes from one place as far as I’m concerned in regards to music and what we’re trying to do with theRevolution.

MR: What’s the back story on your new song “Lucy” that’s being released through theRevolution?

JL: I decided to fly to New York to follow up on some meetings in regards to theRevolution. I was going to spend, literally, a week in New York, a week in L.A.–I hadn’t been there in quite some time, maybe a year or two. At that time, I was meeting with the founding members about a potential developing artist for theRevolution. His name was James Scott Cook, a great singer-songwriter who was a bit of a rocking, modern day crooner. I was literally going in to support him to sing a few little background doo-doo-doos and da-da-das, maybe some oohs and ahs. I learned during the recording process that Lucy Vodden, my old school friend from when I was in kindergarten, had passed away from Lupus. This saddened me a great deal. The song we were actually working on at that particular point in time was called “Lucy” too.

James and I talked it over and I said, “Listen, why don’t we make this a duet, make it a charity single.” So we went forward with that idea on the project, and then during the process, I also learned that James’ grandmother who’s 89 has been suffering with lupus for most of her life. Here’s the real clincher–her name is Lucy also. So the fact that we were recording a track called “Lucy,” hearing of Lucy’s passing, and also that James’ grandmother also was named Lucy and had Lupus too, it was all too much of the stars aligning. We finished setting up theRevolution, did all the meetings, they all came together on this and said what a wonderful story it was. It’s a wonderful story, it’s like this is relating a story to your grandchildren except it’s continuing the legacy of Lucy, The Beatles, and “Lucy In The Sky” for generations to come. In the process, we’re helping to finance, hopefully, some good research for the St. Tom’s Lupus Trust in England and The Lupus Foundation in America. If we can do it with two new artists of theRevolution and as a precursor to our albums coming out next year, then it’s a win-win for everybody.