[2] Lennon's son Julian inspired the song with a nursery school drawing that he called "Lucy – in the sky with diamonds".

Shortly before the album's release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the nouns in the title intentionally spelled "LSD", the initialism commonly used for the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide.

Adding to the song's ethereal qualities, the musical arrangement includes a Lowrey organ part heavily treated with studio effects, and a drone provided by an Indian tambura.

"[5][6][7] Ringo Starr witnessed the moment and said that Julian first spoke the song's title on returning home from nursery school.

[19] The lead guitar part varies between sections of the song: over the bridges, Harrison duplicates Lennon's melody and intonation in the style of a sarangi accompanying an Indian khyal vocalist;[20] over the choruses, he plays an ascending riff on his Fender Stratocaster (mirrored by McCartney's bass), with heavy Leslie treatment given to the part.

[23] Rumours of the connection between the title of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the initialism "LSD" began circulating shortly after the release of the Sgt.

[30] This claim has been disputed by authors Alan Clayson and Spencer Leigh, who wrote in The Walrus Was Ringo: 101 Beatles Myths Debunked that the BBC never officially banned the song, despite the corporation's doubts about the subject matter.

[31] The Oxford Handbook of Music Censorship consulted with the BBC's surviving internal correspondence and memos from 1967, and mentioned no ban on any Sgt.

Pepper album, Disc and Music Echo magazine wrote that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was "easily remembered", that the song spotlighted John Lennon's "peculiarly insinuating" vocals, and that it "jumps along on a crashing clavicord-type sound.

Pepper album, author Nicholas Schaffner cited the song as an example of how the Beatles successfully captured the way "young people were trying to transcend, transform, or escape from straight society" in 1967.

He said that just as Harrison's "Within You Without You" represented the exoticism of Hermann Hesse's Siddartha, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was a "miniature pop version" of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in terms of conveying the sense of wonder the book evoked.

[40] According to musicologist Walter Everett, the song's lyrics inspired "derivative texts" throughout the late 1960s, namely John Fred & His Playboy Band's "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)", the Lemon Pipers' "Jelly Jungle (of Orange Marmalade)", Pink Floyd's "Let There Be More Light", and the Scaffold's "Jelly Covered Cloud".

"[citation needed] In their respective reviews for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine identifies it as "one of the touchstones of British psychedelia,"[42] while Richie Unterberger views it as "one of the best songs on the Beatles' famous Sgt.

"[43] In his book on the history of ambient music, Mark Prendergast highlights the track as one of the album's "three outstanding cuts", along with "A Day in the Life" and "Within You Without You".

[45] In a review for the BBC Music website, Chris Jones described the track as "nursery rhyme surrealism" that contributed to Sgt.

"[47] In 2013, Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock ranked "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" fourth on his list of the "Top 10 Beatles Psychedelic Songs" saying that, despite Lennon's insistence about the inspiration for its title, the track is "Three-and-a-half minutes of pure lysergic bliss, full of picturesque and surreal lyrics set to one of the Beatles' most trippy songs.

[50] For his part, Lennon expressed disappointment with the Beatles' arrangement of the recording, complaining that inadequate time was taken to fully develop his initial idea for the song.

"[51] According to author Ian MacDonald, in a scenario similar to Lennon's disappointment with "Strawberry Fields Forever", Lennon most likely rued the loss of "sentimental gentleness" he had envisaged for the piece, and, overly passive to his songwriting partner's suggestions, allowed the arrangement to become dominated by McCartney's "glittering countermelody".

[52] MacDonald views the bridge portions as the "most effective" sections, through their subtle use of harmonised drone and "featherweight bass", and bemoans the reversion to "clodhopping ... three-chord 4/4 rock" over the choruses.

He concludes by saying that the track "succeed[s] more as a glamorous production (voice and guitar through the Leslie cabinet; echo and varispeed on everything) than as an integrated song.

"[52] According to authors Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew,[16] and John Winn:[53] The Beatles Additional musician ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

A 3.2-million-year-old, 40% complete fossil skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis specimen, discovered in 1974 by Donald Johanson, Yves Coppens, Maurice Taieb and Tom Gray, was named "Lucy" because the Beatles song was being played loudly and repeatedly on a tape recorder in the camp.

The cover of the EP showed four-year-old Julian's original drawing, that now is owned by David Gilmour from Pink Floyd.

[60] English musician Elton John released a cover version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as a single on 15 November 1974.

It also appeared in the 1976 musical documentary All This and World War II as well as the 1995 remaster of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.

[78] All proceeds from record sales go to the Bella Foundation, an organisation in Oklahoma City that helps provide veterinary care to needy pet owners.