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Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
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- Disambiguation: Lucy in the Sky redirects here. For the heroine of this name, see Karolina Dean.
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song by English rock band The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney for the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Inspiration for the song came from a drawing by John Lennon's son, Julian, which Julian called "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". The song was also a spark of controversy when released, including being banned by the BBC because of the supposed reference to the drug LSD, with the letters of the title spelling Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
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Encyclopedia
- Disambiguation: Lucy in the Sky redirects here. For the heroine of this name, see Karolina Dean.
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song by English rock band The Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney for the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Inspiration for the song came from a drawing by John Lennon's son, Julian, which Julian called "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". The song was also a spark of controversy when released, including being banned by the BBC because of the supposed reference to the drug LSD, with the letters of the title spelling Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Lennon would later deny the reference during an interview with Rolling Stone.
Arrangement
The song has a complex arrangement typical of later Lennon-McCartney compositions; much of the song is in compound duple metre (6/8 time), except the chorus, where it switches to 4/4 time. The song also shifts between musical keys, using the key of A major for the verse, B? major for the pre-chorus or bridge section, and G major for the chorus . It consists of a very simple melody (reminiscent of a nursery song), sung by Lennon over an increasingly complicated underlying arrangement which features a tamboura, played by George Harrison, and a counter melody on Lowrey organ played by Paul McCartney being taped with a special organ stop to give it a sound like a celeste.
In later interviews, Lennon expressed disappointment with the Beatles' arrangement of the recording, complaining that adequate time was not taken to fully develop his initial idea for the song. He attributed this outcome to his extensive use of LSD at the time, which made him unusually passive and pliant in the studio.
Lyrics and title
Session tapes from the initial 1 March 1967 recording of this song reveal that Lennon originally sang the line "Cellophane flowers of yellow and green" as a broken phrase, but McCartney suggested that he sing it more fluidly to improve the song.
Julian's drawing
According to the Beatles, one day in 1966 Lennon's son, Julian, came home from nursery school with a drawing he said was of his classmate, a girl named Lucy. Showing the artwork to his father, young Julian described the picture as "Lucy — in the sky with diamonds."
Julian later said, "I don't know why I called it that or why it stood out from all my other drawings, but I obviously had an affection for Lucy at that age. I used to show dad everything I'd built or painted at school, and this one sparked off the idea for a song about 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds'."
His son's artwork appears to have inspired Lennon to draw heavily on his own childhood affection for Lewis Carroll's "Wool and Water" chapter from Through the Looking-Glass. At least one lyric was influenced by both Carroll and skits on a popular British radio comedy programme (The Goon Show) making references to "plasticine ties", which showed up in the song as "Plasticine porters with looking glass ties". A parody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", recited by the Mad Hatter, appears in Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Carroll's work has also been cited as having influenced Lennon's "I Am the Walrus" which refers to a character from Through the Looking-Glass and his two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.
Who was Lucy?
The Lucy referred to in the song was probably a classmate of Julian's at Heath House School named Lucy O'Donnell, born in Weybridge in 1963. She has met up with him on a few occasions in the last few years, and occasionally appears on daytime shows for the anniversary of the "Sgt. Pepper's" album. She is featured in the book "A Hard Day's Night". She now lives in Surbiton in Surrey, and owned a nanny agency for children with special needs until she was taken ill with
psoriatic arthritis and lupus some years ago.
Lucy was made into a fictional character for the movie musical, Across the Universe, which uses the songs of the Beatles to tell the story. Lucy is an American teenager who comes from a middle-class family and she falls in love with Jude, a British dockworker who comes to America to find his biological father.
Reference to drugs and the title of the song
Paul McCartney recounted trading lyric ideas with Lennon in an interview, saying, "We never noticed the LSD initial until it was pointed out later, by which point people didn't believe us." This is confirmed by a 1971 interview of Lennon, where he described searching for acronyms in other song titles only to find "they didn't spell out anything." George Martin also denied the song was about LSD in the book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn. However, Lewisohn goes on to say "there can be little doubt that this was the very substance that provoked such colourful word imagery to flow out of Lennon's head and onto paper." McCartney agrees in a 2004 interview, where he noted that Julian's painting had inspired the song, but that it was "pretty obvious" that the song was also inspired by LSD. For his part, Lennon attributed the colourful prose not to the drug, but to the writings of Carroll. George Martin also accredits the influence of Carroll and Dylan Thomas on Lennon.
Elton John version
The most successful remake was a single recorded in 1974 by Elton John at the Caribou Ranch with background vocals and guitar by John Lennon (who used the pseudonym Dr. Winston O'Boogie). The single topped the Billboard pop charts for two weeks in January 1975 and also appeared on the ephemeral 1976 musical documentary, All This and World War II. The Elton John version was also highly unusual as it was one of the rare instances where the tempo was increased during the fade out.
The B-Side of Elton John's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was also a John Lennon composition, "One Day (At at Time)," the original of which John Lennon released on his Mind Games album in 1973. As with the A-Side, Lennon appears on the B-Side, playing guitar.
During their collaboration, Elton John appeared on John Lennon's song "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night". Lennon promised to appear live with John at Madison Square Garden if it became a number 1 single. It did, and on Thanksgiving Night, 28 November 1974, Lennon kept his promise. They performed "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", and "I Saw Her Standing There".
According to pop mythology, it was at this concert Lennon serendipitously reunited with Yoko Ono after the infamous Lost Weekend. This scene was fictionalized in the movie John and Yoko: A Love Story (1985). This would also be John Lennon's last major concert appearance before his death in 1980.
Those live versions recorded at the Madison Square Garden were released a number of times. The Lennon-sung "I Saw Her Standing There" (credited to The Elton John Band featuring John Lennon) was originally released in 1975 on the B-Side of Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom" single. In 1981, all three live songs were issued on "28 November 1974," an Elton John E.P. In 1990, the three songs were made available on the Lennon box set. In 1996, they were also incluced on the remastered edition of Elton John's Here and There album.
Of the song, Elton John once said, "It is a song that I never do in a set at a concert simply because it reminds me too much of John Lennon. This is the same with Empty Garden". Today, John does occasionally perform it. The single was later released on the 1996 re-release of Elton John's album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.
Personnel
Part 1:
Part 2:
- John Lennon – vocal, acoustic guitar, bongos, Mellotron
- Paul McCartney – Mellotron, bass, electric guitar, timpani, bongos
- George Harrison – electric slide guitar, svarmandal, timpani, maracas
- Ringo Starr – drums, percussion
- Mal Evans – tambourine
- Neil Aspinall – guiro
- Terry Doran – maracas
- Tony Fisher – trumpet
- Greg Bowen – trumpet
- Derek Watkins – trumpet
- Stanley Roderick – trumpet
- John Hall – cello
- Derek Simpson – cello
- Norman Jones – cello
- Personnel per Ian MacDonald
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