Sean Tarō Ono Lennon (Japanese: 小野 太郎, Hepburn: Ono Tarō; born October 9, 1975) is a British and American musician. He is the son of the musical artists John Lennon and Yoko Ono and half-brother of Julian Lennon and Kyoko Cox. Over the course of his career, Lennon has been a member of the bands Cibo Matto, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, the Claypool Lennon Delirium and his parents' group, Plastic Ono Band. Lennon has released three solo albums: Into the Sun (1998), Friendly Fire (2006), and Asterisms (2024). He has produced numerous albums for various artists, including Black Lips and the Plastic Ono Band. Lennon served as executive producer and music producer for One to One: John & Yoko (2024). The film centers on the only full-length post-Beatles concert John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed, the "One to One" benefit show in 1972.
Sean Taro Ono Lennon was born at Weill Cornell Medical Center in the Lenox Hill, Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, on October 9, 1975, his father's 35th birthday. He is of Japanese descent on his mother's side and English, Welsh and Irish descent on his father's side. Julian Lennon is his half-brother, Kyoko Chan Cox is his half-sister, and Elton John is his godfather. After Sean's birth, John took a hiatus from music and became a stay-at-home dad. John was murdered on December 8, 1980, when Sean was five years old.
Lennon attended kindergarten in Tokyo and, at his request, was educated at the exclusive private boarding school Institut Le Rosey in Rolle, Switzerland, and earlier at New York's private Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Dalton School. Lennon attended Columbia University for three semesters, majoring in anthropology before dropping out to focus on his music and tour with his mother.
In October 1984, when Steve Jobs was visiting Manhattan, he attended Lennon's birthday party and gave him one of the first Macintosh computers as a present. That same year, he sang "It's Alright" on Every Man Has a Woman, a tribute album to his mother.
Lennon's parents started his musical career as his debut into the music world came at age five, when Lennon recited a story on his mother's 1981 album, Season of Glass. From childhood into his teen years, Lennon continued to collaborate with his mother, contributing vocals and receiving production credit on her solo albums It's Alright, Starpeace and Onobox. At age 16, Lennon co-wrote the song "All I Ever Wanted" with Lenny Kravitz for his 1991 album Mama Said, and worked with Kravitz on a cover of his father's song "Give Peace a Chance" in protest of the Gulf War. By 1995, Lennon had formed the band IMA (with Sam Koppelman and Timo Ellis) to play alongside his mother on her album Rising. Lennon also made appearances in film, featured in the cast of Michael Jackson's 1988 Moonwalker and portraying a teenager experiencing visions of various M. C. Escher prints in Sony's 1990 promotional short-film Infinite Escher.
Lennon holds dual citizenship with the United States through birth, and the United Kingdom by virtue of his father being British born.
In 1996, Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto were invited by Ono to remix the song "Talking to the Universe" for a Rising remix EP Rising Mixes. They met Lennon and invited him to join them on tour as a bass player. This eventually led to Lennon's contributing to their side-project Butter 08 and to his becoming a member of the group. He continued to play with them on tour, joining them on television and providing bass guitar and vocals on their EP Super Relax. Through his association with Cibo Matto, Lennon was approached by Adam Yauch (of Beastie Boys), who expressed an interest in his music and persuaded him to sign a record contract with Grand Royal Records. Regarding Grand Royal, Lennon has said:I think I found the only label on the planet who doesn't care who my parents are and what my name is. It's a good feeling to know that I wouldn't have gotten the offer if they wouldn't have liked my songs. That's pretty rare in the music business!
Lennon's solo debut, Into the Sun, was released in 1998. A music video for "Home", a single from the album, was directed by Spike Jonze and enjoyed extended airplay on MTV. The album was produced by fellow Cibo Matto member Yuka Honda, whom Lennon had begun dating at the time and whom he claimed was his inspiration for the album.
Lennon went on tour (often backed by Cibo Matto) supporting Into the Sun. During this period, he appeared on radio programs such as The Howard Stern Show and KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. Lennon later recalled promoting the album as a bitter experience due to the media focus on his family rather than his own music. In 1999, Lennon's EP Half Horse, Half Musician was released featuring new tracks such as "Heart & Lung" and "Happiness" as well as remixes of songs from Into the Sun. Along with Half Horse Half Musician, 1999 saw the release of Cibo Matto's second album Stereo Type A. Lennon stepped out of his traditional role as the group's bass player, this time playing a much wider range of instruments (such as drums, guitars, and synthesizers). Despite being well-received, Stereo Type A was followed by an extended Cibo Matto hiatus.
In 2000, Lennon contributed vocals to Del tha Funkee Homosapien (a single stanza on the Deltron 3030 track "Memory Loss"), Handsome Boy Modeling School and Jurassic 5. In 2001 on national television, Lennon performed several classics by the Beatles, "This Boy", "Across the Universe" and "Julia" alongside Robert Schwartzman, Rufus Wainwright and Moby for Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music. In the following years, Lennon faded out of the spotlight to focus more on his role as a producer.
In 2000, Lennon had a guest appearance on the Soulfly album Primitive on the song "Son Song". After the folding of Grand Royal Records in 2001, Lennon signed with Capitol Records, yet no solo material surfaced until February 2006, when "Dead Meat" was released as the first single from his new album, Friendly Fire. A promotional trailer for the CD/DVD package of Friendly Fire was leaked online in early 2006. The trailer featured scenes from the film version of the album, a DVD of music videos comprised into a film. The videos were actually screen tests for Coin Locker Babies, another project on which Lennon was working which became a cinematic counterpart to his new album.
Friendly Fire was released in October 2006. The theme of the album is love and betrayal, and it is dedicated to the memory of a close friend who died. The night the album was released, Lennon made his first major television appearance in five years, performing "Dead Meat" live on the Late Show with David Letterman. Lennon has since appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Sharon Osbourne Show. When questioned about the eight-year gap between solo albums in interviews, Lennon said that he did not feel like a solo artist during those years and that he wanted to experience music anonymously without the spotlight on him and his girlfriend.
Since the release of Friendly Fire, Lennon has toured extensively around the world and while in France, he remixed his song "Parachute" in collaboration with French artist -M-. The remix is titled "L'éclipse" and was featured as a bonus track on the French release of Friendly Fire, while the single "Dead Meat" was featured in an episode of the TV drama True Blood.
With the release of new material and subsequent touring Lennon launched a website featuring music, videos, and a forum for his fans. Various members of the forum have created a fan-made cover album titled Truth Mask Replica.
Muhl and Lennon premiered the band the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger during a live performance at Radio City on Valentine's Day, 2008. The duo, commonly referred to as the GOASTT, released their debut single, "Jardin Du Luxembourg", on July 6, 2010, and their debut album, Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (Acoustic Sessions), on October 26, both on Chimera, their own label. In conjunction with the debut, they performed six songs during an hour-long interview on WNYC and four songs for a Tiny Desk Concert on NPR. Lennon has also collaborated with Muhl with a group called "Kemp and Eden" who premiered at The Living Room in the spring of 2012. On April 29, 2014, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger released their most successful album to date, titled Midnight Sun. The album was selected as one of the Top 50 best albums of 2014 by Rolling Stone. The album's release was followed by tours with the Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, Beck, Florence and the Machine, Dinosaur Jr., and Primus.