Sean Lennon
After eight years of contributing his musician sensibilities to others’ albums, the singer-songwriter comes back with a multimedia extravaganza with Friendly Fire
By Sheba White
Published: September 26th, 2006 | 12:39pm
There’s no pretense in Sean Lennon’s extensive artistic persuasions; he simply loves finding ways to merge the endless creative directions he thinks up. His enthusiasm to embrace every direction that takes his interest can be heard on his first CD, 1998’s Into the Sun, specifically in its sprawling influences, which range from Brazilian jazz to electronica to pop. It’s a surprising variety and range, but not when one considers that the multi-instrumentalist has worked with a slew of diverging artists — from performing as a bassist in Cibo Matto to being a contributing artist on the John Zorn–produced, Burt Bacharach tribute album, Great Jewish Music.
Friendly Fire, his highly anticipated second solo album, released October 3, 2006, finds the 30-year-old Lennon incorporating many of his newer interests into a multimedia project of video and music. The resulting effect is a lush 10-song CD accompanied by films that highlight the romanticism of the music’s more orchestral moments.
Fresh from the studio, where he has been finishing video edits for Friendly Fire with collaborator Michele Civetta (the trailer is available on his Web site, seanonolennon.com), and beginning work on a new feature-length film, which he is co-scriptwriting and starring in, I spoke with Lennon on the phone in mid-August about his new projects, his newfound artistic focus, and his tireless search for beauty.
Where does the name Friendly Fire come from?
Well, it’s one of those paradoxical phrases … it’s a strange phrase because it’s friendly fire, like when you kill somebody on your own team; there’s nothing friendly about it. Yet, it’s called friendly fire. I always thought it was an interesting phrase. So I kind of appropriated it to describe a relationship that I had with somebody where we hurt each other. That’s it.
This is a full project, in which you have video accompanying each song. A lot of the video has been described as having a narrative arc to it. Did you have that same kind of foresight when you were planning Friendly Fire? Did you already have a direction that you knew you wanted to go in?
No, I didn’t know for sure what was happening. But I think I’ve always wanted to do something that was multimedia, and especially because, you know, my mom being a multimedia artist, and to some degree my dad — well yeah — to a large degree my dad. I’ve always been a painter. I’ve always drawn. I’ve always been interested in film. And I’ve always wanted to do something beyond just sound. But I’d be lying if I said that I had an exact conception at the moment I sat down to record the album that I was always heading in that direction, though I’m really happy with the result. I feel like I was able to express more of what I wanted to express by accompanying the music with visuals.
I’ve seen the trailer, and it’s just so luxurious.
Cool. Yeah, for the film I actually did an animated film. I drew like 500 drawings. It was my first animation.
So you were storyboarding in a sense?
Well, more than that! I was drawing 21 frames for someone to just open their mouth or turn around, whatever. It was really frame by frame. It was intense! It was fun! I’ve always been kind of working toward that, because I’ve always been a visual artist. But I never really gave myself the opportunity. Somehow it all happened at once. I got to make a film. I got to make an animated film. I got to make a record and kind of combine them all. I think it happened at a really opportune moment, because the technology being what it is, I feel like it’s a good time to release something that exists on many levels.
Your music is deceptively happy. The melody is sort of whimsical, and then you get the lyrics, which are a bit more melancholy and introspective, so it seems like you had already begun planning that sort of interactivity.
I’m definitely an aestheticist. I mean aestheticism like Oscar Wilde was an aestheticist. I believe in beauty. Beauty isn’t saccharine beauty, like [pause], let me explain it … beauty isn’t just like a daisy in a field. Beauty is also the dirt and the worms. That’s true beauty.
I’m an aestheticist, meaning that I think the only purpose of art is to be beautiful. I don’t believe in political art. I don’t believe in art being more or less valid, because it’s truthful or untruthful. I think none of that matters. The only measure of good or bad art is whether it has a high aesthetic.
That may seem superficial to most people, but I don’t think it is. Because I think, again, that true beauty is not the daisy in the sun. It’s the daisy in the sun, and the earth, and the worms, and the dirt, and everything that combines to make a beautiful scene. The truth of life and death has to be there in order for something to be truly beautiful.
In the end, if something is beautiful, I like it. If it’s not beautiful, I don’t like it. And that’s true for film. That’s true for painting. That’s true for music.
How do you approach making music? Which do you approach first, the lyrics, the melody?
Whenever I try to “approach” things, I always fail, or they seem to slip away. What I try to do is just close my eyes, sit still, and listen. It’s like the universe just sort of whispers if you listen carefully — instead of trying to catch it, instead of trying to hunt the song down. It’s always going to run faster than you and get away. I feel like you just have to be quiet and listen. There’s melodies being whispered all the time. You just have to listen to them. Then put them down.
You’ve mentioned that you’re a musician, but I’ve never actually heard you call yourself a songwriter when interviewed. Why not?
Well, huh … I am a songwriter. I am surely a songwriter more than anything. But songwriting is such an immense undertaking and craft to learn and master that I feel like I’m still an apprentice. That’s probably why I’m faster to call myself a musician than a songwriter. I guess I would say that my goal is to be a songwriter.
I think they’re two separate things. They’re different crafts and require different skills. They do help each other, but they aren’t mutually exclusive. You can be an incredible virtuoso violinist and never write a song in your life. You can be a great songwriter and not play an instrument in your life, like Michael Jackson. For me, they go together. That’s just me, and that’s true for a lot of people.
For me, the reason I play different instruments is not to satisfy some sort of boredom. It’s because every time I play a different instrument and develop a relationship with the specific characters of that instrument, it opens some part of my brain to newer melodies, ideas, and new whisperings.
On your first album, Into the Sun, you played most of the instruments. But you brought in a lot of musicians on Friendly Fire. Why?
I was really bored with the narcissism of it. I mean Sean on drums; Sean on bass … [laughs] It was fun as hell, but it’s almost one-dimensional, because it’s just me. It’s much more interesting to play with people, and I’m really just grooving on that now.
Did working with the other musicians change your initial ideas about each song?
Totally! If you’re in a band, it’s like a living organism. It’s like a super-organism, like a cloud of bees, or something that flies together as a cloud, or a school of fish, or a flock of birds. You know you’re separate individuals, but you’re sort of swimming in the same direction. Yet there’s room to breathe between each other. And there’s a dialogue in that breath. The result is always something unexpected and hopefully better than what it could have been otherwise.
On Into the Sun, you had a lot of bossa nova elements. On Friendly Fire, it seems to be going in a different direction. What’s different about this CD for you?
I was 20 when I wrote and recorded Into the Sun. I did it very fast, in like six weeks, the whole thing. I wrote all the songs in the studio, pretty much. And I was in a relationship with Yuka [Honda, formerly of Cibo Matto], the producer. And um … it was a very sort of optimistic view of the universe that I had. Everything felt sort of romantic to me. And I’m a huge of fan of Brazilian music and Brazilian jazz. You know that’s definitely the perfect form — song form — to sort of express that kind of romantic idealism. And now I’m older and I’ve experienced more and the reality of life has made me express different things, has led me towards some things that might not be as optimistic, might be more truthful and grounded … [pause]
Or complex?
A complex reality of the inevitability of … death.
[laughs] Of death, did you say?
[Laughs] Yeah, I mean death metaphorically, but also death literally. It’s gonna happen. [laughs]
In the past, you’ve described your sound as: “the demise of a relationship as perceived by a white gardenia blossom — ”
— sitting unnoticed in a cup of rain water.
How would you describe the overall sound of Friendly Fire?
That is actually to describe Friendly Fire specifically, because it’s the demise of the relationship. Whereas Into the Sun was sort of the gardenia in the garden before it was plucked, basking in the sunlight. I had my tongue placed firmly in my cheek when I said that. I’m not taking myself so seriously. I’d be a total asshole if I really believed that [laughs]. What I mean is that I am also serious enough that I want to give the feeling of somehow being a fly on the wall witnessing something meaningful taking place. That’s all.
What was the most challenging aspect of making it?
Oh, God, honestly making the films was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had this idea — “I’m gonna make 10 films, one short film per song on the record and it’s going to have this overall narrative structure that unites them all.” That’s my big idea, right? Thinking that this is gonna be something that I’m just gonna do, you know? For some reason I wasn’t smart enough to see that it would be nearly impossible.
In the last two months I’ve slept as much as I normally do in a week. And you know, just getting it done in time to put it out with the record. There’s so much more involved in making a film, because it’s a three-dimensional art form. There’s music, there’s sound, dialogue, people, sets, editing, there’s blah, blah, blah. Stuff that had never even occurred to me. I was just like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do this.”
Had you worked on films before?
No, not really, but I’ve always been a student of film — I mean in my mind. [laughs] In my imagination. This is definitely my first attempt.
It sounds like you’re really excited about the prospects of merging the two.
Well, yeah, that’s actually true. I don’t think I can conceive of songs without visuals anymore. I’m very interested in pursuing this concept further. I’m not trying to make any pretensions that I invented the idea. Obviously film is a marriage of sound and visuals, ever since silent movies ended. But what I’ve tried to do — and what I am going to be trying to do with the music and visual marriage — is not make feature films. I’m trying to do something so that it isn’t a music video — meaning that it’s not just a promotional tool for a song. But that it isn’t a film trying to say, “This is a story that begins and ends here,” but something in between that’s an intuitive, dreamlike expression of what the implications are of the music.
I’m really not that interested in … despite the fact that I’m sitting here promoting my record to you. I mean obviously I’m going to do it. And I hope that people are interested in listening to my music and seeing the film — being a commercial artist. I’m much more interested in making art. Instead of making a music video that was like an advertisement for some song to try and get on the radio, I just wanted to take those funds and apply them to something more artistic.
So what’s next in your plans?
I’ve written a screenplay with some friends of mine that’s an adaptation of this book called Coin Locker Babies. We’re going to be making that film, which is actually a feature. Michele Civetta, who directed the Friendly Fire film, he and I are going to be making Coin Locker Babies next. So that’s a big project for me, that’s a feature. And I’m going to be playing Hashi, this anemic sort of singer-songwriter guy. It’s not going to be a stretch.
Sheba White is a Minneapolis writer living and working out of Chicago. Her work has previously appeared in Venus Zine, bookslut.com, and New City.
Issue #31
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