June 01, 2007

Lucy in the Sky and She's Leaving Home

Who were they?  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds wasn't (just) about LSD?  From the many leaving homes (the most poignant song by the Beatles alongside Eleanor Rigby, for me), who was the one whose story inspired She's Leaving Home?

Meet Lucy Richardson Vodden and Melanie Coe via The Times, UK.

Lucy, now a 43-year-old housewife from Surrey, was a classmate of John’s son, Julian, at Heath House nursery school in Weybridge. Her moment of fame came in 1967, when Julian came home from school with a drawing of a girl surrounded by stars. John asked him what it was. “It’s Lucy, in the sky with diamonds,” Julian said.
. . .
Ms Coe, who came home safely after a week and now lives in Spain, said: “I love the song but I can’t sit and listen to it. It’s too painful for me.” After a day out with her new boyfriend she felt a sense of anticlimax – “the sky was black and everything felt so dark and dreary” – and jumped on a bus to get away. She first heard the song when working in a Play-boy club. “I thought, ‘That sounds just like me.
See the article for the full story and other events or sights that inspired some of the songs.
Three that stand out for me are:
  • A Day in the Life was written after Lennon’s friend, Tara Browne, an Irish heiress related to the Guinness family, died in a car crash [*]
  • The name Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was inspired by the psychedelic bands of the US West Coast.
  • Lovely Rita is McCartney’s tribute to a retired traffic warden.  The song was also sparked by a news article
* Note the first comment below the story also

Here's to Sgt. Pepper!

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