In the interview he discusses awards, his parents’ relationship and separation, and creating a new Mind Games boxset as a love letter to his parents, and more.
Discussing the award winning year:
… This year has been strange in that way, because I’m normally completely ignored and despised by the world!
On John Lennon producing Mind Games:
I mean I wish I could talk to him about it. But in my mind, I feel like he would say he was proud of that, how much he’d learned and how he was finally able to run that ship all on his own.
Why do you think it wasn’t a huge hit when it came out?
For me to explain why something is and is not a hit is probably not my domain. It’s not my area of expertise. But I would say it has something to do with the fact that some time in New York City had probably taken away some attention and there were also a lot of very amazing albums in that year and in that decade, so there was a lot of competition. And well, you know, it’s not like he was touring and promoting very much. It was probably a confluence of things. But who knows? I think a lot of the best music becomes very popular and I think a lot of the worst music becomes very popular, and a lot of the best music doesn’t sometimes and it’s really hard to, even in retrospect, to understand exactly why but Rolling Stone hated Led Zeppelin, enough said right?
Did you learn anything new about your parents in the process of putting the box set together?
Well one thing I noticed was that my mum was on some of the tapes, you could tell she was in the control room. So a lot of people said oh like “Yoko wasn’t around for this record, why are they featuring her in the booklet” or something. And I think there’s a lot of history, there’s a lot of assumptions made about that time period because they were sort of on their way towards that famous separation that people called The Lost Weekend, right? In LA with May Pang. But the truth is, even when they were apart they were always talking, so I don’t think they ever really broke up, all his stuff was still in the apartment with my mum, it’s not like they had a real separation. And on top of it, all my dad was thinking about was her. You look at the album cover, it’s a collage of my mum literally the size of a mountain, and he’s this little tiny thing sort of fading into the background. And I think it’s clear what his view of my mum was in his life. She was monumental, obviously. And the whole album is about her. And she’s there in the studio. So I think that was not something that changed my mind so much but it sort of affirmed how deeply in love he was with my mum.
On Yoko Ono’s perspective of that relationship.
I think she never has moved on from that relationship.
Is this boxset a love letter to your parents?
Yeah, I’ve never put it that way but I would say it’s my best effort to try to be a good son.
Is it true you are going to be releasing the famous one to one concerts from the summer of 1972?
In answer to that question, yes we are. We have done our best to clean up the audio and make the mixes sound as good as possible and I pray and hope that some people appreciate what we’ve done. But you know for me it’s just been a joy, again you know it’s been really fun working on and so I hope people enjoy it.
That could be something for next year?
I think so, yeah.
