If it’s not about LSD, what does ‘Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds’ actually mean?
It’s most likely one of the first conspiracy theories about The Beatles one comes across before you hurtle into the intense world of ‘Paul Is Dead’. “Did you know,” your mate’s cool older brother says, framed by his Che Guevara poster in a Che Guevara T-shirt while holding a Che Guevera mug, “’Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ is about drugs?” You gawk at him, and he explains, “It’s right in front of your face. Lucy. In the Sky. With Diamonds. L. S. D.” and he sits back on his Che Guevara bedsheets in smug superiority.
Turns out he’s as wrong about that as he was about NFTs. It’s not an unreasonable assumption. The Fab Four had more tabs to hand than an American vending machine. They had been experimenting with psychedelic drugs more generally since Bob Dylan introduced them to a lovely lady called Mary Jane.
Plus, there’s the song itself. A lilting, gorgeously dreamy track filled with evocative, impressionistic lyrics about travelling to a colourful dreamscape with “a girl with kaleidoscope eyes”. Let’s be real here: it’s probably not for nothing that a telltale double-track of John Lennon’s vocal comes in specifically on the words “so incredibly high.” However, the actual inspiration for the track is something more simple, more charming and a lot more innocent.
In 1966, Lennon’s first son Julian turned three and began attending a local nursery school. One day, he returned home with a drawing of his friend, Lucy O’Connell. He showed his father the drawing, and upon uttering the words “This is Lucy in the sky, with diamonds” something sparked in his dad. In an interview on the Dick Cavett show, Lennon said “I thought that’s beautiful. I immediately wrote a song about it.”
If that sounds a little too cute for you, we do have Ringo Starr’s word that it happened, as he was there at the time. Lennon began work on creating a world for Lucy to live in, taking inspiration from his beloved Lewis Carrol, who would also inspire Lennon to write ‘I Am The Walrus’.
Lennon wrote the majority of the song, with him and McCartney finishing the song off ‘Lucy in the Sky…’ together in time to put the song on their next record, 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. Part of the urban legend that the song is a homage to LSD is the assertion that the BBC banned the song, but no record of this ban exists. In fact, the only song off Sgt. Pepper to be banned was ‘A Day In The Life’ for Lennon’s lyric about how he’d “love to turn you on.”
So, where does the legend come from? Paul McCartney did say in a 2004 interview with the Washington Post that people “overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles’ music.” To me, though, it smacks more of folks trying to “darken” a song that is otherwise one of the more whimsical parts of The Beatles’ back catalogue. Especially one written by the angsty artiste of the group John Lennon.
There’s room for all kinds of art, though. The Beatles themselves prove that. Great art doesn’t come solely from moody songs about the state of the world or romantic woe. As ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ proves, you can find just as much depth and beauty in a light, happy song about your toddler’s best friend flying through a sparkling sky.
