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- Written by Randal C. Hill Randal C. Hill
Lucy O’Donnell was 4 years old when she attended the upscale Heath House School in Weybridge, Surrey, England. One of her best friends there was John Lennon’s son, Julian, who arrived at school each day in a Rolls-Royce.
Years later, in a BBC interview, O’Donnell recalled, “I remember Julian and I both doing pictures on a double-sided easel and throwing paint at each other, much to the horror of the classroom attendant. Julian painted a picture of me.”
The lad’s 5”x7” paper artwork showed O’Donnell floating in an orange haze among stars that he called “diamonds.” That afternoon, the boy took his creation home and proudly showed it to his dad.
Lennon loved the image. It reminded him of a scene from Lewis Carroll’s classic Through the Looking Glass, in which Alice floats in a boat beneath a sunny sky. Lennon immediately summoned Beatles partner Paul McCartney to work up a song inspired by Julian’s picture.
Four days later, the two had “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” ready to be added to what would become the quartet’s LP masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (The name supposedly derived from the Dr Pepper drink, unavailable in the U.K. until 1982 and enjoyed by the Beatles whenever they toured America.)
Recording at London’s Abbey Road studios, the Fab Four spent 700 drug-fueled hours recording psychedelic-inspired music that would, in essence, sweep away traditional rock ’n’ roll and usher in sophisticated “rock art.”
Much of the creation of Sgt. Pepper was McCartney’s idea, including the wearing of marching-band uniforms and displaying the songs’ lyrics on the back of the 1967 album.
Although drugs had fueled the “Lucy” recording, the tune itself, according to Lennon, had nothing to do with lysergic acid diethylamide — LSD.
“Until somebody pointed it out, I never even thought of it,” he said later. “I mean, who would ever bother to look at the initials of a title?”
As 1974 drew to a close, Elton John’s version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” gave him his third No. 1 American single when his MCA Records disc topped the Hot 100 chart for two weeks.
His friend (and the song’s co-creator) John Lennon had provided some guitar work and backup vocals along the way, although Lennon forgot some of the chords during the recording session.
OK, so “Lucy” supposedly wasn’t about drugs, but no one can deny that many of the lyrics are “trippy”:
Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes
Lucy O’Donnell (later Lucy Vodden) appreciated the Beatles’ music but did once admit, “As a teenager, I made the mistake of telling a couple of friends at school I was the Lucy in the song. They said, ‘No, it’s not about you. My parents said it’s about drugs.’ And I didn’t know what LSD was at the time, so I just kept it quiet, to myself.”
Although Randal C. Hill’s heart lives in the past, the rest of him resides in Bandon, Ore. He can be reached at wryterhill@msn.com.