Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

It was 46 years ago today (February 28th, 1967) that the Beatles began
sessions for “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” As opposed to their first album in
1963, in which the majority of the album was recorded in one marathon 11-hour
session, the Beatles were now afforded the luxury of open-ended studio time, and
spent the night’s session only rehearsing the song without the tapes rolling.

The initials of the song’s title are the same as those of the hallucinogenic drug LSD and that caused enough controversy to get the song banned from British airwaves. Lennon, who wrote the majority of the lyrics, always insisted that the song was written after his then-three-year-old son Julian, who came home from school with a crayon drawing of a schoolmate. When Lennon asked him what the picture was of, Julian answered, “Lucy in the sky with diamonds.”