The handwritten lyrics to the Beatles song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, a single in 1967, has been sold at auction in Los Angeles for a hefty US$237,132 (AU$223,172).
NME reports that the lyrics are written on a single sheet of paper that includes the song’s opening lyrics as well as a sketch, presumably by John Lennon, of four people in a room with curtains drawn across windows. The sheet sold at the Saban Theater in Beverley Hills.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds is, of course, the third track on the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and has for decades prompted much musing over what it means. One popular theory was that it was a lysergic hymn to LSD, what with the surreal lyrics and LSD apparently an acronym from the song’s title. Lennon always refuted that theory, stating that its inspiration came from a day when his first son, Julian, came home from school with a painting he had called ‘Lucy – in the sky with diamonds’.
The Lucy in question, one Lucy Vodden née O’Donnell, confirmed the story in a BBC interview in 2007 – she died two years later of lupus.
The song was also featured in the film Yellow Submarine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7F2X3rSSCU
