Lucy O'Donnell

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album '' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. It was written primarily by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. Lennon's son Julian inspired the song with a nursery school drawing that he called "Lucy – in the sky with diamonds". Shortly before the album's release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the nouns in the title intentionally spelled "LSD", the initialism commonly used for the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide. Lennon repeatedly denied that he had intended it as a drug song, and attributed the song's fantastical imagery to his reading of Lewis Carroll's '' Alice in Wonderland'' books.

The Beatles recorded "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in March 1967. Adding to the song's ethereal qualities, the musical arrangement includes a Lowrey organ part heavily treated with studio effects, and a drone provided by an Indian tambura. The song has been recognised as a key work in the psychedelic genre. Among its many cover versions, a 1974 recording by Elton John – with a guest appearance by Lennon – was a number 1 hit in the US and Canada.

Background and inspiration

John Lennon said that his inspiration for the song came when his three-year-old son Julian showed him a nursery school drawing that he called "Lucy – in the Sky with Diamonds", depicting his classmate Lucy O'Donnell. Julian later recalled: "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." Ringo Starr witnessed the moment and said that Julian first uttered the song's title on returning home from nursery school. Lennon later said, "I thought that's beautiful. I immediately wrote a song about it."

According to Lennon, the lyrics were largely derived from the literary style of Lewis Carroll's novel '' Alice in Wonderland''. Lennon had read and admired Carroll's works, and the title of Julian's drawing reminded him of the "Which Dreamed It?" chapter of ''Through the Looking Glass'', in which Alice floats in a "boat beneath a sunny sky". Lennon recalled in a 1980 interview:

It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty-Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that.

Paul McCartney remembered of the song's composition, "We did the whole thing like an ''Alice in Wonderland'' idea, being in a boat on the river ... Every so often it broke off and you saw Lucy in the sky with diamonds all over the sky. This Lucy was God, the Big Figure, the White Rabbit." He later recalled helping Lennon finish the song at Lennon's Kenwood home, specifically claiming he contributed the "newspaper taxis" and "cellophane flowers" lyrics. Lennon's 1968 interview with ''Rolling Stone'' magazine confirmed McCartney's contribution.

Lucy O'Donnell Vodden, who was married to Ross Vodden and lived in Surbiton, Surrey, died 28 September 2009 of complications of lupus. Julian had been informed of her illness and renewed their friendship before her death.

Composition

Most of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is in simple triple metre ( time), but the chorus is in time. In the song, the structure modulates between musical keys, using the key of A major for verses, B-flat major for the pre-chorus, and G major for the chorus. It is sung by Lennon over an increasingly complicated underlying arrangement which features a tambura, played by George Harrison; lead electric guitar put through a Leslie speaker, played by Harrison; and a counter melody on Lowrey organ played by McCartney and taped with a special organ stop sounding "not unlike a celeste". Session tapes from the initial 1 March 1967 recording of this song reveal 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.

Recording

The recording of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" began with rehearsals in Studio 2 at Abbey Road on 28 February 1967. The instrumental backing was finished the following evening. On the first take, track one of the four-track tape contained acoustic guitar and piano, track two McCartney's Lowrey organ, track three Ringo Starr's drums, and track four a guide vocal by Lennon during the verses. Take eight replaced the guide vocal with Harrison's tambura. The four tracks of this take were then mixed together and recorded on the first track of a second four-track tape. On 2 March, Lennon's double-tracked vocals, accompanied by McCartney on the choruses, were recorded to tracks two and three. McCartney's bass and Harrison's lead guitar occupied track four. The lead guitar part varies between sections of the song: over the bridges, Harrison duplicates Lennon's melody and intonation in the style of a sarangi accompanying an Indian khyal vocalist; over the choruses, he plays an ascending riff on his Fender Stratocaster (mirrored by McCartney's bass), with heavy Leslie treatment given to the part. Eleven mono mixes of the song were made at the 2 March session, but they were rejected in favour of the final mono mix created on 3 March. A stereo mix was made on 7 April.

Outtakes from the recording sessions have been officially released. The Beatles' ''Anthology 2'', released in 1996, contained a composite remix, with ingredients from takes six, seven and eight, while the first take of the song was featured on the two-disc and six-disc versions of the 50th-anniversary edition of ''Sgt. Pepper'' in 2017. The six-disc collection also included take five and the last of the eleven mono mixes made on 2 March 1967.

LSD rumours

Rumours of the connection between the title of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the initialism "LSD" began circulating shortly after the release of the ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' LP in June 1967. McCartney gave two interviews in June admitting to having taken the drug. Lennon later said he was surprised at the idea the title was a hidden reference to LSD, countering that the song "wasn't about that at all," and it "was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until someone pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? ... It's ''not'' an acid song."

McCartney confirmed Lennon's claim on several occasions. In 1968 he said:

When you write a song and you mean it one way, and someone comes up and says something about it that you didn't think of – you can't deny it. Like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," people came up and said, cunningly, "Right, I get it. L-S-D," and it was when ewsapers were talking about LSD, but we never thought about it.

In a 2004 interview with ''Uncut'' magazine, McCartney confirmed it was "pretty obvious" drugs did influence some of the group's compositions at that time, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", though he tempered this statement by adding, " 's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles' music."

Claims have circulated that the BBC
...