Beatles Fact of the Day

The song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album was not titled as a drug reference. John wrote this song about a drawing his son, Julian, brought home from school one day. Here's the (true) story.

The Beatles used to frequent an antique & jewelry shop owned by the Richardson family. The Richardsons had a daughter named Lucy. She was enrolled in the same private school as Julian. He got home sick a lot, and when he did, Lucy came and sat with him while he drew pictures. Julian had a little thing for her (he admits) and one day he drew a picture of her with stars. He brought it home, John saw it and asked him about it. Julian told him it was "Lucy in the sky with diamonds". John was inspired by this and decided to write a song about it. The next time John went into the Richardson's store, he greeted Lucy by saying "Hello, Lucy in the sky with diamonds". The family took it as "John being John" as he played with words a lot, but when they saw it on the album they realized why he had called her that. So that is where the title really came from.

After the song was released, a rumor went around that "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" spelled "LSD", and therefor was a song about drugs. This was such a strong rumor that the BBC banned the song for drug references. After hearing this, John went back through every song The Beatles put out to see if there were anymore possible references. He also publicly denied that it was a song about drugs, but that's bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, the song was heavily influenced by drugs (just listen to it), and it could have even been LSD. The imagery used in this song was based on the book Alice in Wonderland (if that's not a drug reference who knows what is), and The Beatles also admitted to experimenting with LSD. On the Anthology, one of them claimed that tripping on LSD was like looking through a kaleidoscope, and the song does reference "a girl with kaleidoscope eyes", so I'm sure this is a song about drugs. But the fact of the matter is the title was not meant to spell "LSD", this was just an ironic coincidence.