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When the Beatles' album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in 1967, its centerpiece track was the song that featured John Lennon's ethereal, high-pitched voice singing drug-inspired lyrics to the accompaniment of a celeste-like organ lead played by Paul McCartney. It wasn't long, however, before listeners quickly discovered the hidden pun in the song's title, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: The initial letters of certain words spelled out the acrostic LSD. Although none of the Beatles publicly admitted to taking LSD until two weeks after Sergeant Pepper the public knew that the song's title was obviously more than mere coincidence. A song incorporating acid trip imagery, released on an album featuring psychedelic designs, at a time when LSD was very much in the news, couldn't possibly have been given a title like that by accident. Everyone was in on the joke. John Lennon, while never denying that the song itself was inspired by the countless acid trips he had taken, quickly explained that the title, in fact, had been mere coincidence. It was taken, verbatim, from the name John's four-year-old son Julian had given to a drawing he made at school (shown below), Lennon claimed; Lennon himself had no idea that the title formed the abbreviation LSD until it was pointed out to him by someone else after the album's release. Needless to say, this explanation was not widely accepted. Lennon's response, as Schaumberg wrote, . . . didn't satisfy the wise ones of our generation. Oh no, wink wink, nudge nudge, they knew what he meant all along, snicker snicker. Other chroniclers of Beatle history offer the same general statements of public disbelief. Schaffner, for example, says: Philip Norman's Beatle biography offers much the same reaction: Looking back at this matter nowadays, however, there is little question but that John's explanation was an accurate and honest one. He did not merely claim that the title was a coincidental invention of his own but offered a specific, external explanation of its origins; he provided this explanation at the time the song was released; he maintained the same explanation for the rest of his life; and his explanation is corroborated by others. John quickly produced a typical Lennon mockery for the benefit of those who doubted his story, as described by Schaumberg: Examples of John's consistency are provided in some of the various interviews he did in subsequent years. For example, his interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 1970, in which he stated: Immediately after that response, John was specifically asked about the song's title by the interviewer: John told much the same story during his 1972 appearances on The Mike Douglas Show, and in September, 1980, only a few months before his death, John was still offering the same story of the title's origin in an interview with Playboy magazine: Besides John's consistency in offering the same explanation over the years, his credibility is enhanced by his reputation for candidness and honesty, and the fact that his story is entirely in keeping with the material he typically used as inspiration for songs at the time. These points are best highlighted with excerpts from the writings of other Beatle book authors: We need not rely solely on John's words to corroborate his explanation, however. His childhood and lifelong friend, Pete Shotton, who was a frequent guest at the Lennon home, verifies that John's son Julian actually did produce and name the painting that John claimed was the inspiration for the song's title: If John Lennon (and Pete Shotton) were both lying, they never let on to their friends and colleagues, because everyone close to the Beatles — including Paul McCartney, George Martin, and Peter Brown — tells the same story. Since John Lennon is unfortunately no longer around to contribute further to this narrative, we'll leave the final word on the subject to Paul McCartney:
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