{"id":496635,"date":"2026-03-26T15:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/496635\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T15:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:50:12","slug":"the-beatles-song-that-fooled-the-world-and-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/496635\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles song that fooled the world, and themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Thu 26 March 2026 9:22, UK <\/p>\n

The Beatles<\/a> were one of the greatest pop acts of all time. <\/p>\n

From the moment they hit the airwaves through to the swell of Beatlemania and beyond to their status as bona fide rock gods, the Fab Four were held in the highest of esteem by their public, something which continues to this day, nearly six decades after they made their name. However, that doesn\u2019t mean the band were always pleasant to their audience.<\/p>\n

In fact, for the mos tpart, the band endured a difficult relationship with their fans. As well as having to deal with literal screaming hoards at nearly every juncture of their day, the demand of pleasing the fans with their art was also a seemingly endless condition to their success. <\/p>\n

But they wouldn\u2019t always play ball. Often using clever lyrics and subtly placed songs to spark their furious intrigue, The Beatles would use their work to annoy their fans with ease, such as in \u2018Glass Onion\u2019, which contained the line \u201cthe walrus is Paul\u201d that sent millions of fans into song deconstruction overdrive.<\/p>\n

This process was certainly part of the fun that John Lennon and Paul McCartney would have with their lyrics, knowing that every single vowel would be pawed over. However, there is one song that both The Beatles and their audience misunderstood, the one song that fooled everybody, depending on who you believe. <\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

\u2018Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds\u2019 is undoubtedly one of the band\u2019s most famous songs. Not only does it have the bombastic orchestral arrangements and Lewis Caroll-esque lyrics that Lennon had been perfecting in the mid-to-late sixties, but it seemingly championed a brand new way of songwriting. It goes without saying that this new approach was helped in no small part by the advent of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. But though audiences heralded the band for their explicit references to acid within the song, the original writers were completely baffled by this take.<\/p>\n

The title and its initials are about all you would need to spark theories that this song was about acid. The band were already prompting deep academic study with their newfound way of songwriting anyhow that the mere whiff of a subversive sub-plot was all a song needed to be put under the muso microscope. The fact that it came equipped with some of Lennon\u2019s most visually inspiring and kaleidoscopic lyrical imagery only added to the misconception.<\/p>\n

However, Lennon was always resolute in his defence that he had no idea the song\u2019s title spelt out LSD: \u201cI had no idea it spelt LSD. This is the truth: my son came home with a drawing and showed me this strange-looking woman flying around. I said, \u2018What is it?\u2019 and he said, \u2018It\u2019s Lucy in the sky with diamonds,\u2019 and I thought, \u2018That\u2019s beautiful.\u2019 I immediately wrote a song about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lennon did, however, admit that the song was hugely inspired by Caroll, an author who had begun to infiltrate a lot of the Liverpudlians\u2019 work: \u201cThe images were from Alice in Wonderland,\u201d he told David Sheff in 1980. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was Alice in the boat,\u201d he continued, \u201cShe is buying an egg, and it turns into Humpty-Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep, and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere, and I was visualising that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me \u2013 a \u2018girl with kaleidoscope eyes\u2019 who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn\u2019t met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be Yoko In The Sky With Diamonds.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had no idea it spelt LSD. This is the truth: my son came home with a drawing and showed me this strange-looking woman flying around.<\/p>\n

John Lennon<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD,\u201d the singer continued, apparently unaware of the connotations of the piece. \u201cUntil somebody pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? It\u2019s not an acid song. The imagery was Alice in the boat. And also the image of this female who would come and save me \u2013 this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko, though, and I hadn\u2019t met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a track that was largely written by Lennon but also sought advice and guidance from Paul McCartney who remembered writing the song for The Beatles Anthology, saying: \u201cI showed up at John\u2019s house and he had a drawing Julian had done at school with the title \u2018Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds\u2019 above it. Then we went up to his music room and wrote the song, swapping psychedelic suggestions as we went.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while the song may not have been \u2018about drugs\u2019, it was certainly inspired by them. \u201cI remember coming up with \u2018cellophane flowers\u2019 and \u2018newspaper taxis\u2019 and John answered with things like \u2018kaleidoscope eyes\u2019 and \u2018looking glass ties\u2019. We never noticed the LSD initial until it was pointed out later \u2013 by which point people didn\u2019t believe us.\u201d<\/p>\n

These explanations leave us in a slightly strange place. While taken at face value, it seems obvious that the songwriters of \u2018Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds\u2019 were not trying to send a coded message to their followers about LSD, the song still feels strangely connected to the experience. Lyrically, it is one of the band\u2019s most unusual pieces and certainly toys with the same ideas that acid-rock was using at the time. <\/p>\n

Our theory is that the band were so engrossed in their defence of the song that they wilfully forgot the designated inception of the track, fooling not only the censors of the day, nor just their audience, but even themselves.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Thu 26 March 2026 9:22, UK The Beatles were one of the greatest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,25396,128,6470,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-496635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-john-lennon","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-paul-mccartney","12":"tag-the-beatles","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}