It began with a phone call from Yoko to Sean at summer camp. She warned Sean
that "People" Magazine was coming out with a story about Mom and Dad and that it
was going to be bad. She apologized to him for not being able to stop it. She
said he replied, "Mommy, can we please fight this thing?" She agreed - and he
said he'd do anything he had to do to fight it.
Sean told the New York Post, "At first, I thought (the book) was very serious, but then I realized it was just a big joke."
His first public appearance was with his Mom,his brother and family friend, Elliot Mintz on Westwood One's "Lives of John Lennon: Fact or Fiction" on September 14. Sean told Mintz that his Dad was not an anorexic recluse, and expressed disbelief that anyone could be so dumb as to believe it: "I really doubt that anyone out there is going to believe that my Dad had the legs of a bird and that you could pour water into his collarbones. I don't know, my comment on that is that it's just so outlandish and blatant lying that it's stupid."
Mintz then quoted from the book about John throwing one of the cats and kicking Sean in what Goldman referred to as his "pampered ass." Sean replied, in a laughing, mocking tone of voice: "I can't recollect my Dad ever kicking me in the ass. The worst he's ever done that I can remember is yell at me, but kicking me in my 'pampered ass', hmmm, I can't remember this at all, but maybe since Albert had all this quality time in the bedroom with my Dad, I'm sure that he knows better than I do. I can't remember my Dad throwing the cat down the hall, ever. My Dad loved the cat, actually. How the hell would (Goldman) know what went on inside the house?"
Mintz reminded Sean that these stories came from Fred Seaman and Marnie Hair. Sean: "Then you ask them and they tell you, 'I never said that' and the people who do say 'I did say that' such as Mrs. Hair, well, they're just more sickly than the character described in this book. (John) was a great person as a Father. I think he did enough fathering..he did 20 years of fathering in the five years that I knew him. He was always around. Some fathers aren't as real as he was."
Sean appeared solo on "The Today Show" during a three-part series on "Imagine: John Lennon." He was thoughtful, serious and very sure of who he is and how he feels being in the unique position as the son of two very famous people. He hit back at Goldman, but we also saw a very content 12-year-old who is pretty happy with his life. Sean talked to music correspondent, Rona Elliot about Goldman.
SEAN: "It hurts to have somebody be like that, because he's such a jerk. That's why I wanted to fight back. Albert Goldman is relying on the fact that usually my Mother and I, or rather my Mother, has never fought back against a book written about my Father. He was relying on the chance that maybe my Mother wouldn't fight back on this. He thought wrong, because we have to because it's just such garbage."
Rona Elliot commented that Sean seems to be such a normal kid:
SEAN: "That's all I can be. If I acted like some stuck-up John Lennon's kid
who's going to live in the spotlight of his Father, I can't imagine myself
doing that. It's just not me."
Elliot asked Sean how he lived through the trauma of the death of his Father:
SEAN: "Subconsciously I knew that it was either flip out or take control of
yourself and be normal. you could just try not to deal with it and go
completely mad like a lot of people do with worse situations, but it's either
not be a normal person or just try to deal with your life, and that's what I've
done."
SEAN: "Nowadays, kids don't know what John Lennon was. I'm glad this film came out because it does put him in a better light than a lot of kids see him, or at least makes kids understand what he is other than a Beatle from the 60's."
Sean on being a rebel like his Dad - could Sean be rebellious?
SEAN: "That was all he could do then. He was a lot more intelligent than a lot
of the people around him then. He was very poor. He was rebelling against his
life because it wasn't fun, it wasn't good, so he had to become something else.
I don't need to be (a rebel). There's nothing to rebel against."
On his memories when watching "Imagine" - what struck him as being the essence
of his relationship with his Dad?
SEAN: "Footage of just me and my Father - I'd always sit on his lap - just
being together, because that was what it was like. We would always be together.
It takes a lot of guts or feeling towards your child to just completely drop
out of a career, you know, a pretty successful career, and just drop it and
become a househusband. I just knew he was there, knew he was my Father and
knew that I loved him."
What was John's biggest contribution to society?
SEAN: "His music affected everybody. Almost everybody in the entire world.
It's amazing the impact that music can have on people."