LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is a song credited to Lennon–McCartney that appears on the Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. John Lennon started production of the song, and then Paul McCartney contributed to it in a songwriting session. Lennon’s son Julian inspired the song with a nursery school drawing he called “Lucy—in the sky with diamonds”. Shortly after the song’s release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the title nouns intentionally spelled “LSD”. Lennon consistently denied this, insisting the song’s fantastical imagery was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books, a claim repeatedly confirmed by Paul McCartney. (More from Wikipedia)
Regarding the Sgt. Pepper album highlight “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, Wikipedia has this to say: “[John] Lennon’s son Julian [Lennon] inspired the song with a nursery school drawing he called ‘Lucy — in the sky with diamonds’. Shortly after the song’s release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the title nouns intentionally spelled LSD. Lennon consistently denied this, insisting the song was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland books, a claim repeatedly confirmed by Paul McCartney. Despite persistent rumors, the song was never officially banned by the BBC.”
John Lennon though was up front about intending “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” to be a psychedelic song, and the lyrics are about as good as it gets psychedelically, both from the imagery and from the word usage:
Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high
Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you’re gone
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high
Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you’re gone
Perhaps because of the possible LSD reference in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, rumors of drug references in other lyrics by the Beatles also became manifest. Wikipedia reports: “Concerns that some of the lyrics in Sgt. Pepper refer to recreational drug use led to the BBC banning several songs from British radio, such as ‘A Day in the Life’ because of the phrase ‘I’d love to turn you on’, with the BBC claiming that it could ‘encourage a permissive attitude towards drug-taking.’ . . . They also banned ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ because of the lyric which mentions ‘Henry the Horse’, a phrase that contains two common slang terms for heroin. Fans speculated that Henry the Horse was a drug dealer, and ‘Fixing a Hole’ was a reference to heroin use. Others noted lyrics such as ‘I get high’ from ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, ‘take some tea’ – slang for cannabis use – from ‘Lovely Rita’, and ‘digging the weeds’ from ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’.” I had heard about “Horse” but not “Henry”; maybe any word starting with “H” could refer to heroin.
(June 2015)
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