Working with Sean Lennon & Brian Wilson to Celebrate John Lennon’s 80th Birthday

We’ve had the opportunity to work with and get to know great musicians, like Brian Wilson, Brad Mehldau, Pat Metheny, Ambrose Akinmusire, Jimmy Webb, Renee Fleming, and many others, and it’s always a highlight.

Knowing John Lennon’s 80th birthday was approaching, we reached out to John’s son and musician Sean Lennon. Knowing Sean is such a fan of Brian Wilson’s, I proposed doing something special for John’s birthday to include Brian. Sean was thrilled that Brian would be a part of the celebration and we created a social media project. I called up Brian and we talked about John Lennon. Brian’s a man of few words, but he loved John and the Beatles and said some really nice things. During this time, Sean and I were texting back and forth and he couldn’t be more excited about Brian’s participation.

In fact Sean has been working on a deluxe box version of a new compilation album for John’s 80th birthday, called “Gimme Some Truth.” He also commissioned a special Instagram filter promoting the album, so we ran Brian through it and the Story went viral. We posted on Brian’s Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts (consistent with thee new album’s branding of course!), reaching over 500,000 fans. Sean’s shared Instagram post has more than 47,000 “Likes” to date.

Some work days are more fun than others! Sean sent this nice note:

“Wow this is incredible!!!!! So I can’t really express in words how cool this was. Anyone who knows me at all, knows this was a big deal for me.”

Brian Wilson

"John was a great singer. I liked all of his songs, he really wrote good songs. "Norwegian Wood," I just liked the chords, you know? And "In My Life," yeah (sings) 'In my life, I loved you more.' He...