26. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds |
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Album: |
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Writer |
John Lennon |
Length: |
3:46 |
Notes: |
Katie Beatles covers are like buses, you know, two coming along at once and all that. So, hot on the heels of "Cry Baby Cry" we have "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds". There are two versions to tickle your fancy: on "B-Sides" there is a live version and on the bonus edition of "Piece By Piece" there is an acoustic version. I can't decide which is best so I let them fight. Now I've talked about this song in the past but I feel I need to repeat myself here since these are the track notes after all. Many people considered this song to be about being on drugs, taking the letters L, S and D from the title as a massive clue. John Lennon always denied this. Paul McCartney, whilst not confirming it, seems happy to be ambiguous and maintain the air of mystique about the song. Lennon said he wrote it after seeing a painting his son Julian brought home from school, which he'd called "Lucy, in the sky, with diamonds", after a girl in his class called, funnily enough, Lucy. He added that the trippy hippy lyrics were inspired by Lewis Carroll and all that Alice in Wonderland giant rabbit stuff. You know, the kind of weirdness you might see if you were on drugs. If you ask me (and I'm pretty sure you haven't) it's about all of the above. A mind like Lennon's would have picked out the LSD from Julian's words straight away. After all, it was a drug not unknown to the Beatles. He would have seen it as a perfect opportunity to write a song about drugs and pass it off as a child's wild imaginings. So that's what he did. And he got away with it. All he had to do was deny the drugs reference and nobody could prove otherwise. Clever lad. Elton John had a massive hit with his version in the early seventies, no doubt equally tickled to get away with covering a song about drugs. But of course, we are casting no such aspersions on our Katie—her version is purely to celebrate those wonderful Lennon lyrics. |
YouTube: |
Ooh, we actually have some choice of YouTube vids with this one. How about a tv appearance introduced by Sharon Osbourne? |
Lyrics: |
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