Sunday, November 07, 2021

Julian Lennon: Saltwater

People were talking about this song on Twitter a couple of weeks ago#, because it has turned uo on a vintage edition of Top of the Pops. I remember watching that edition and was shocked to learn that I had done so 30 years ago.

In those days I was still a serious chess player. Many of the county league matches took place in schools, and on the rare occasions I was in control of the game I would prowl while my opponent pondered and study the children's work on the classroom wall. My impression was that they had global warming and the hole in the ozone layer, which concerns Julian Lennon here, hopelessly mixed up.

Has the depletion of the ozone layer been solved? You don't hear about it now, but that may be because we have moved on to more urgent or more fashionable problems.

I remember when acid rain was a big worry. Again, you never hear of it today, but there are times when you are caught in a shower and rainwater tastes foul.

Like Jeff Buckley, Julian Lennon is always discussed in relation to a father who neglected him. Like Harper Simon, he cannot help sounding (or looking) like his father, even if Saltwater is always threatening to turn into Strawberry Fields Forever.

Wikipedia quotes Julian saying he remembers playing with Paul McCartney more than he does playing with his father.

McCartney wrote Hey Jude for and about him, but in his book on The Beatles Craig Brown records that John Lennon assumed it had been written for him.