The use of Holograms are nothing new in the music space as legendary yet deceased artists such as Tupac, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and many others were given the ‘holographic’ treatment over the years.
Recently, Paul McCartney, co-founder of The Beatles performed the ‘virtual duet’ at the famed and acclaimed Glastonbury Festival in June. The footage, as well as the audio for John Lennon material, was taken from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s 2021 film The Beatles: Get Back. In speaking with MOJO, Lennon’s son, Julian Lennon had this to say about the performance.
“I watched it on YouTube — and I kind of went, ‘Errrr … I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.’ It shocked me. He would go on to add that the performance ‘brought his father to life’ in that way but noted it was somewhat difficult to see [about the specticle].
However, Lennon would later state during the interview that he would appreciate the “virtual performance” for what it was as he would further proclaim: “I enjoyed it,” he said.
In a recent feature with Yahoo Entertainment, Julian also revealed how he planned on changing his legendary namesake as recently as 2020. Credit to the outlet for the following.
“Recently, in 2020, I decided that I was going to change my name because originally my name was John Lennon — John Charles Julian Lennon,” Julian explains. “And I’d had issues with that, especially at airports and security — not-so-great moments and comments that had gone by because of my name being John, whether people recognized me or not.”
Julian continued: “I decided that in 2020, after going through another learning process in life, I wanted to become Julian. I was sick and tired of being someone else’s John. And so, I changed my name to Julian Charles John Lennon. … And that was all related to ‘Jude’ and ‘Jules,’ which is my nickname daily. So, it just made sense to me, and also with what was going on with the Beatles and Get Back and my feelings about that too. It was all intermingled.”
