Lennon has always lived in the shadow of his famous father, who left the family while Julian was still young. He has had a mixed career as an artist, becoming popular in the mid-1980s, with songs such as Too Late for Goodbyes, and again in the late 1990s.
It was commonly speculated that any reunion of The Beatles would feature Julian in his father's place, though the death of George Harrison has made such a reunion unlikely.
Julian was responsible for the name of one of his father's most famous songs, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, a phrase Julian used to describe a picture he had drawn, a watercolour painting of a girl (his classmate Lucy) surrounded by stars. Later, Paul McCartney wrote "Hey, Jude" as a way of consoling Julian because of his parents' divorce.