Beautiful Boy Has a Beautiful Boy

Forty-six years ago, John Lennon sat in the Dakota with a guitar and wrote a lullaby for his five-year-old son. It closed side one of Double Fantasy. Most of us heard it for the first time in the terrible weeks after December 1980, when every station in the country was playing it, and it hasn't gotten easier since.

On Tuesday night, that little boy became a father.

Sean Ono Lennon and his partner Charlotte Kemp Muhl announced the birth of their son on Instagram, with a photo of the three of them and a caption only Sean would write. They had, he said, "created a Human Bean." The baby's name is Aurelius.

He is John Lennon's first grandchild.

The best part of the whole thing is how the news got out. Sean's older brother Julian couldn't keep it in. He posted on Facebook that while he was in London, the most amazing thing in the world had happened and he had become an uncle. Then he deleted it, presumably after realizing he'd scooped his own family.

For a pair of brothers who spent decades being written about as if they were estranged, Julian jumping the gun out of sheer joy is about the nicest thing that could have happened. He called his new nephew a beautiful boy. 

Charlotte, for her part, posted about being gloriously sleep-deprived, asked the internet for burping advice, and mentioned she's been playing the kid Aphex Twin and Stravinsky. Aurelius is going to grow up in a house full of music.

A little housekeeping, because a lot of outlets are getting this slightly wrong: you'll see Aurelius described as John and Yoko's first grandchild. He's John's first, without question. Julian has no children, and Sean is John's only other son.

Yoko, though, already has two grandchildren through her daughter Kyoko from her earlier marriage. She is now Aurelius' Aunt through Yoko. But, this is John's first grandchild.

Sean turns 51 next month, on October 9. He was born on his father's birthday, which the two of them shared. And he is now ten years older than John ever got to be. John was 40 when Double Fantasy came out that November.

He's spent the last couple of years stepping into the job of looking after the legacy. He told CBS last December that he's technically taken over as custodian of his father's estate, though he was quick to add that the world is a custodian too, and that he mostly sees his role as making sure younger listeners don't forget about John and Yoko and the Beatles.

He said he owes it to his parents. He's been doing the work: he shepherded the restoration of the One to One concert footage from Madison Square Garden in 1972, the only full-length shows his father played after the Beatles.

"Beautiful Boy" is a song about a father imagining a future with his kid. Before you cross the street, take my hand. It's a song full of plans. And then there weren't any, and that's the thing that has made it almost unbearable to listen to for four and a half decades. You're hearing a man describe a life he doesn't get.

Except now there's a grandson in New York with Lennon in him, and a father who is around, and a fifty-year-old man getting to do the ordinary thing his own father was robbed of. Somebody is going to hold that kid's hand crossing the street.

Congratulations, Sean. And welcome, Aurelius. Your grandfather wrote some pretty good songs. You'll get to them eventually.

I make shirts for people who grew up on this stuff. Have a look at the British Invasion collection below...