“This album is all about my mother,” says Sean Ono Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in an interview with People about Mind GamesLennon's solo album released in 1973 and re-released in July. For Sean, the record is a love letter from his father to his mother. And this despite the fact that it came out during the so-called lost weekend of the former Beatle, or the period of separation between the two which lasted 18 months.
Mind Games it is also an attempt to distance itself from the parents' previous phase of political activism, which culminated in 1972 with the release of the album Some Time in New Yorkthe move to America, and the threats of the Nixon administration.
«That record represents the moment in which my parents moved away from radical activism a little. I think they realized they didn't want to be part of that world anymore. With Mind Games my father returned to music as a high art form, which did not express his radical ideas of the time in a documentary way, and that was it.”
It was precisely all these “ruptures” that made many think that Mind Games it could be a separation album, either from an earlier phase of life, or of Lennon from Ono. But Sean Ono Lennon has another reading, which begins with the album cover, in which a tiny John walks on a field of grass, under an intensely colored sky, and behind him a mountain made up of the reclining profile of Yoko's face : «My mother is that giant mountain that you see in the background, and my father is that little man who goes away into nowhere. His whole life and art were imbued with the relationship with my mother.”
«These are mostly love songs for my mother. My father had declared to the world that “John and Yoko” were one word. I think his heart has always been with her. He loved her so much. They had a legendary love, and I think this album has it all. You just feel it.”
