Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

The story behind Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds begins with a drawing. The son of John Lennon, Julian, came home from school one day with a picture he had created. He called it "Lucy – in the sky with diamonds", and the image showed his classmate, Lucy Vodden, surrounded by stars. Lennon, upon seeing his son’s work, found it beautiful and was immediately inspired to compose a song. Paul McCartney also contributed to the writing, and together they credited it to the Lennon–McCartney partnership.

The recording of this piece took place in March 1967 at EMI Studios in London. To create its ethereal atmosphere, elements such as a Lowrey organ—modified with studio effects—and a droning sound from an Indian tambura, played by George Harrison, were used. The electric guitar, also handled by Harrison and fed through a Leslie speaker, along with a counter-melody on the Lowrey organ performed by McCartney, completed the arrangement. Despite the speculation that arose shortly before the album’s release regarding the song’s title initials and a possible connection to LSD, Lennon consistently denied this was his intention, attributing the song’s fantastical imagery to his reading of Lewis Carroll’s books, particularly Alice in Wonderland. Julian Lennon, for his part, recalled that his father would often show him everything he painted or built at school, and that this particular drawing sparked the idea.