Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

[Revtim]

@Cardinal

OK, I read the Snopes page, and I’ll admit it’s pretty damaging to my theory, but I just can’t quite accept that he didn’t notice that entire time.

Is it reasonable at all to think that he’d had his records burned before because of his comments, and he just didn’t feel like going through it again?

I don’t think they weren’t burned for drugs references, but because of his “more popular than Jesus” comment.

[Stephe96]

While we’re on ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,’ does anyone know what the hell ‘semolina pilchard’ means?

[Stephe96]

Oops. That lyric is from ‘I Am The Walrus.’

Sorry about that. But the question still stands!

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@ccwaterback

This was my rant a couple months ago:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=233768

Oops. Apologies once again for my faulty memory.

But you’re still wrong about “Lucy”.

[Revtim]

@Stephe96

does anyone know what the hell ‘semolina pilchard’ means?

I think a pilchard is a fish, and a semolina pilchard is a fish made of semolina, a form of processed wheat.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

From someone close to John:

http://www.webweaverdesign.ca/beatles/other/walrus.html

This excerpt is from Pete Shotton’s excellent book ‘The Beatles, Lennon And Me’ (originally published as “John Lennon In My Life”, 1983, Stein and Day Publishers… not to be confused with “In My Life - John Lennon Remembered” by Kevin Howlett and Mark Lewisohn).

(If you’re not familiar, Pete Shotton was Lennon’s closest boyhood pal, an original member of the Quarrymen (until John broke the washboard over Pete’s head!), and a close friend and confidant of John’s to the very end.)

From page 217:

"One afternoon, while taking “lucky dips” into the day’s sack of fan mail, John, much to both our amusement, chanced to pull out a letter from a student at Quarry Bank. Following the usual expressions of adoration, this lad revealed that his literature master was playing Beatles songs in class; after the boys all took their turns analyzing the lyrics, the teacher would weigh in with his own interpretation of what the Beatles were really talking about. (This, of course, was the same institution of learning whose headmaster had summed up young Lennon’s prospects with the words: “This boy is bound to fail.”)
"John and I howled in laughter over the absurdity of it all. “Pete,” he said, “what’s that ‘Dead Dog’s Eye’ song we used to sing when we were at Quarry Bank?” I thought for a moment and it all came back to me:

        Yellow matter custard, green slop pie, 

        All mixed together with a dead dog's eye, 

        Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick, 

        Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick. 

“That’s it!” said John. “Fantastic!” He found a pen, commenced scribbling: “Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye…” Such was the genesis of “I Am the Walrus” (The Walrus itself was to materialize alter, almost literally stepping out of a page in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass’) Inspired by the picture of that Quarry Bank literature master pontificating about the symbolism of Lennon-McCartney, John threw in the most ludicrous images his imagination could conjure. He thought of “semolina” (an insipid pudding we’d been forced to eat as kids) and “pilchard” (a sardine we often fed to our cats). Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower…," John intoned, writing it down with considerable relish.

He turned to me, smiling. “let the f*ckers work THAT one out, Pete.”

Now that sounds like ccwaterback’s Lennon.

[mascaroni]

@London_Calling

What on earth are those sounds and lyrics describing if it’s not an acid trip; the whole thing is the personification of an acid trip.

What are you people not on drugs !

‘Cellopane flowers’…
‘Newspaper taxis’…
‘Plasticine porters’…

Although there’s no specific references to ‘Sticky Back Plastic’ I’ve always thought of it as Lennon’s tribute to Valerie Singleton…

[Ilsa_Lund]

@Cardinal

OK, I read the Snopes page, and I’ll admit it’s pretty damaging to my theory, but I just can’t quite accept that he didn’t notice that entire time.

Is it reasonable at all to think that he’d had his records burned before because of his comments, and he just didn’t feel like going through it again?

Burning records involves buying records.

[Small_Clanger]

HeHeHe - mascaroni

Are you going to explain the Valerie Singleton/sticky-back-plastic reference to the Non-Brits? They might be thinking of VS as a sort of Timothy Leary figure

[Lamia]

I’m no Beatles expert, but I can believe that Lennon really didn’t notice until it was pointed out. The title of the song isn’t “Lucy, Sky, Diamonds”, it’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. Even if you’ve decided to reduce the title to its initial letters (which, as Fish points out, people didn’t do nearly as often before the Internet, and Lennon had no reason to do to his own song), if you’re not actually looking for a drug connection then “LITSWD” makes more sense as an abbreviation. Okay, so “in”, “the” and “with” aren’t capitalized in the title, but I’ve never seen anyone refer to the Lord of the Rings books or films as just “LR”.

[RM_Mentock]

When I was in high school, the year after Sgt. Pepper’s came out, my English teacher made a billboard that said Literature + Society = Drama. The capital letters were four feet tall, and the other letters were only about a foot tall. No one ever accused her of a drug reference, either. Everybody knew.

[London_Calling]

@mascaroni

Although there’s no specific references to ‘Sticky Back Plastic’ I’ve always thought of it as Lennon’s tribute to Valerie Singleton…

This is insane but I didn’t know what ‘sticky back plastic’ was until I was in my thirties. And nor, at the crucial time, did my mother. I was deprived.

Loved Val. Loved J. Noakes more, though.
Down Shep!

[mascaroni]

@London_Calling

This is insane but I didn’t know what ‘sticky back plastic’ was until I was in my thirties. And nor, at the crucial time, did my mother. I was deprived.

Loved Val. Loved J. Noakes more, though.
Down Shep!

No one knew what Sticky Back Plastic was… it didn’t exist outside of the Blue Peter studio…
'I’ve got the empty washing up liquid bottle… I’ve got the glitter… I’ve got the sharp knife (and the parent to use it)… Doh! Sticky Back Plastic…

I can’t believe you didn’t mention Peter Purves…
Alright, it’s a bit of a dodgy name, but when he showed us how to make a football rattle (cite: Blue Peter Annual 1969) he painted it in the Navy Blue and White of Spurs…

Agreed on Noakes though, if I ever had a hero it would be him…

Small Clanger:

For the benefit of non-UK dopers I’d just like to explain that Valerie Singleton was the British version of Timothy O’Leary…
'Turn On, Tune In, Make A Completely Rubbish Pen Holder For Your Father Out Of An Old Washing Up Bottle And Some Sticky Back Fucking Plastic…

and clear that elephant shit up…

[sqweels]

IIRC it was Timothy O’Leary’s elephant that started the great San Francisco earthquake.

Of course I’m not not on drugs.

BTW, another song that the Beatles admitted was about LSD (along with “Day Tripper”) was “She said, She said”. “She” was a rather pushy Peter Fonda who introduced himself at a party by saying “I know what it’s like to be dead” which precipitated an argument about LSD.

[Cardinal]

@Revtim

I don’t think they weren’t burned for drugs references, but because of his “more popular than Jesus” comment.

I didn’t say they were burned for anything connected to drugs. I’m aware of the burning generating comments

[Marley23]

I thought Day Tripper was about a girl who, as they say in the vernacular, wouldn’t go all the way.

[Cardinal]

Burning records involves buying records.

Are you implying that people were so dumb as to go and buy records for the express purpose of burning them?

That’s so dumb that it’s actually a joke in the old Bloom County strip. Mr. Geezer (whoever) goes looking for records to burn and buys out the local stock of Blondie.

[LSD-25]

Talking of LSD-inspired Beatles songs, there’s Got To Get You Into My Life, McCartney claimed it was about marijuana but the lyrics seem to reflect an acid trip rather than smoking a joint -
**
I was alone, I took a ride,
I didn’t know what I would find there.
Another road where maybe I
Could see another kind of mind there.**

Also, the orchestral “climax” at the end of A Day In The Life is supposed to represent the peak of an acid trip, according to George Martin.

There are many others, but a lot of them are open to interpretation.