Calling his seventh album Jude was an act of reclamation for Julian Lennon. In a recent interview, the 59-year-old explained that, while 1968 song “Hey, Jude” is “a great chanting song, a favourite Beatles song”, for him it had always been “a harsh reminder of what actually happened in my life, which was that my father [John Lennon] walked out on my mother [Cynthia] and me. That was a truly, truly difficult time.” Paul McCartney wrote the ballad to comfort his bandmate’s six-year-old son (originally calling it “Hey Jules”). John, rather typically, assumed that his bandmate had written it for him, as a blessing on his new relationship with Yoko Ono. No wonder Julian finally changed his birth name – John Charles Julian Lennon – to Julian Charles John in 2020.
Emotional echoes of this complicated public history reverberate through Jude’s solid collection of mature mid-tempo rockers and ballads. Lennon’s lyrics .....
