(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / Bent Rej)
Wed 24 September 2025 1:30, UK
Shortly after his brother scored a hattrick in the cup final and got off with Claire Smith on the same sunny Sunday, the inescapable shadow of inferiority caused Andrew Sloan to flee the town we grew up in, and seek solace in the anonymity of Norfolk. So, imagine what it’s like arriving into the world as the heir to John Lennon and all he entails!
Life was never set to be easy for Julian Lennon from the outset. Beyond the looming legacy of his father, his family’s business was also always a headline-grabbing public affair. And things got even harder when his dad was tragically murdered when Julian was only 17-years-old.
But despite that, he looked to defy any sense of negativity about his future, and became steadfast in his mission to impart some empowering joy. Less than four years on from the assassination of his father, when he was only 21-years-old, Julian looked to release Valotte, perhaps the most scrutinised debut album of all time.
The critics weren’t too kind on the tender starlet. “They really put me through the wringer,” he told Gannett News in 1999. “These journalists would go on about how I sound like my father or The Beatles. No kidding! Of course, I sound like my bloody dad. So I had to deal with the putdowns for years and the strange expectations.”
The irony is, has there been a band since The Beatles who haven’t, in some way, been comparable to The Beatles regardless of whether they’re a genetic match or not? Moreover, the most direct comparison between poor old Julian and his dad was the size of the success that they achieved early doors.
Valotte would soon surpass platinum status in 1984, thanks, in part, to a tender, radio-friendly approach that had a great deal more synth and soupy sentimentality than his father’s mainstay mode of gritty grievance and proto-grunge.
While subsequent records received dwindling returns, the retrospective view is that Julian overcame evident hardships (alongside great fortune, of course), to build upon his father’s legacy without ever really leaning into it. He even famously stated, “Dad was a hypocrite. He could talk about peace and love to the world but he could never show it to his wife and son,” showcasing a noted desire for sincere tenderness in his own music.
However, in 1988, just a Julian’s musical output was sadly beginning to tail off, Keith Richards, who was a 45-year-old father of five at the time, levelled a blow at the son of his supposed old friend. “Ziggy Marley I find very interesting because he’s not just ‘the son of’,” he told Rolling Stone.
He thought the bespectacled Beatle’s first child was guilty of the inverse. “[Ziggy] avoided being, I hate to say this, Julian [Lennon]. He’s taken from his father and built on it, but he’s not just ‘the son of Bob Marley.’ He’s got his own things to say, and he’s serious about it,” he said. It’s certainly a harsh comparison that drew murmurings of unkindness at the time.
In typically measured fashion, Julian, on the other hand, simply reflected on the rivalry between the Stones and The Beatles by commenting, “They’re both great at what they did… they were mates.” I’m still mates with Andrew Sloan and I would never call his son merely ‘the nephew of’ his dashing, match-winning older brother.
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