Sean Lennon blasts rock 'n roll, political art, but champions beauty

MONTREAL (CP) - The death of rock 'n roll has been greatly exaggerated before, but when John Lennon's son says it's in a perilous state, maybe it is time to worry.
Singer Sean Lennon told a news conference on Friday that there is little room for innovation in the genre that his father helped make famous as a member of The Beatles.

"I mean rock 'n roll is already kind of played out," he said at a news conference at the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

"I wouldn't even be doing it if my mission was to be a pioneer."

The real appeal of rock 'n roll for Lennon lies more in the aesthetic challenges of songwriting than in the desire to forge new sounds.

"I'm only worried about creating beautiful songs," he said. "I'm not trying to reinvent songwriting."

The singer will play at the city's annual jazz festival while also promoting his new album "Friendly Fire" - his first since the 1998 release of Into the Sun.

In a cramped hotel room overlooking the festival's main outdoor stages, Lennon parried questions in both English and French, touching on subjects as diverse as his mother's parenting tactics, post-modern capitalist economies and the history of artistic individuality.

He even apologized at one point for the cerebral turn his news conference took.

"I'm sorry if what I'm saying is boring," he said, before returning to the current state of music.

"Pop music and rock 'n roll, it's not such a vital art form anymore in the way that it was in the '60s," Lennon said.

He points to the Internet as a medium where cutting-edge work is being done. And while admitting that his music has a niche appeal, Lennon hesitates about placing himself within contemporary musical currents.

"I'm trying to do something more classical," he says. "I'm trying to continue a tradition that I inherited from my family."

Lennon's new album is indeed more of a turn inward than socially engaged, expressing the emotional turmoil of a tragic love affair.

Given the introspective nature of the album, it comes as little surprise that Lennon reserves a healthy dose of skepticism for political songwriting, though it may come as a shock to those reared on music from the 1960s era.

"I generally find political art to be pretentious and stupid," he said. "I think it takes a really clever person to sing about politics and not be pedantic."

Bob Dylan and his father were able to pull it off, he admits.

But in today's era of Hollywood activism, beauty should be the artist's only concern.

"I think that art that doesn't have a purpose, that's just really beautiful, is a useful thing."

So maybe rock 'n roll isn't dying, but in the hands of its progeny it has adopted a different attitude since it defined a generation 40 years ago.

Lennon will play concerts in Montreal on Saturday and in Toronto on Sunday.

The Montreal jazz festival runs until July 8.

The Canadian Press, 2007