“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” inspiration according to Lennon

The Beatles were the most successful band of all time with an estimated amount of more than 600 million records sold worldwide and countless hits. One of their biggest classics is “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, from their 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

To celebrate the 56th anniversary of the recording of the track, John Lennon’s official Twitter account shared what the late musician said inspired him to write the song that was a collaboration between him and Paul McCartney.

What inspired “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” according to John Lennon

“My son Julian came home with a drawing and showed me this strange-looking woman flying around. I said, ‘What is it?’ and he said, ‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds,’ and I thought, ‘That’s beautiful.’ I immediately wrote a song about it.”

“The images were from Alice In Wonderland. 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 visualising that.”

“There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me – a ‘girl with kaleidoscope eyes’ who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko. So maybe it should be Yoko In The Sky With Diamonds.”

He continued:

“It was purely unconscious that it came out to be L.S.D. Until somebody 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.”

“The imagery was Alice in the boat. And also the image of this female who would come and save me – this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko. She was my imaginary girl that we all have,” John Lennon said.

Seven years later, the song was covered by Elton John with a guest appearance of John Lennon. That version was a number 1 hit in the United States and Canada.

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