Julian Lennon – HuffPost 12.14.09

[Note: This is taken from my first interview with Julian Lennon, his discussing his starting up a music entity to accommodate new releases.]

Mike Ragogna: Would you discuss how you started plotting theReveloution?

Julian Lennon: 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.