John Lennon

The 1960's was a decade filled with memorable experiences, lasting impressions, and a whole new momentous era that would set the stage for years to come. Teenagers are found at the local roller skating rinks on Friday nights, the Ed Sullivan Show is one of the most highly watched television shows across all of the United States, and the thriving British rock and roll band, known as the Beatles, are dominating the music charts all across the world. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr - acknowledged as strictly the "Fab Four," - soon began to flourish in the world of music. Their enhanced tunes had all of America standing on its tippy toes, anticipating what would come next from this group of four, talented musicians.

One of the Beatles most significant and influential albums to this date was released in 1967, bearing the name Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Tracks such as When I'm Sixty-Four and Within You Without You soon progressed their way up to the top of the charts. "Hippie" related songs managed to dominate a majority of this specific album, with one unique track, titled Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, causing an incredible amount of controversy and questioning. Listeners soon started to believe that John Lennon deliberately chose this song for the album because the initial letters of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds formed the acrostic, "LSD," which was a powerful and harmful drug that swooped the nation during the 1960's through the 1970's.

Not once did John Lennon claim that he had intentionally created the song lyrics based on his acid trips. For all of his life, he averred that the title, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, came from a picture that his four-year-old son, Julian, had drawn in school one day. He had stated that he had no idea that the title formed the abbreviation LSD until someone had pointed it out to him after the release of the album. Throughout an abundance of radio, magazine, and televised interviews, John Lennon was constantly asked if he was well aware of the acrostic that came from this particular song. In an interview with Playboy magazine, Lennon said, "My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Simple." Was it really all that simple though?

It wasn't long before music critics around the world started to question Lennon on his subliminal attempt to incorporate drug-related lyrics into his profound music. Although none of the Beatles publicly admitted to taking LSD until two weeks after the release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the public was well aware that this wasn't a mere coincidence. To many, it was obviously a song that integrated Lennon's acid trip imagery and his psychedelic designs.

"Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers, that grow so incredibly high." Is John Lennon simply talking about a fresh bouquet of roses, or perhaps, is this his way of including his use of marijuana into this particular song? It wasn't an underlying secret that the Beatles were well adept to the drug scene of this time, so why would Lennon try to hide the fact that he had used LSD on occasion? Not only was this song about the specific drug, LSD, it also dealt with the whole category of drugs and being able to get "high." Lyrics such as, "Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, Waiting to take you away, Climb in the back with your head in the clouds, And you're gone," pretty much give way