Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds & Beatles Background
John Lennon got his primary inspiration for this song from his son, Julian Lennon. Julian had a painting of his classmate Lucy at his nursery and described it as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". This theme stuck in John's mind and he developed the music from there, also adding in more dream-like ideas influenced from his love for surrealism. (With reference to 'A Hard Day's Write' by Steve Turner)
It is also interesting that there were persistant rumours of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" sending a cryptic message about LSD. Despite John's denial, this accusation was quite believable as the Beatles were into drugs and LSD was the latest fad then. Ever since they started tripping out on drugs, it was very evident the type of drug they took affected the kind of music they produced. They tripped from alcohol in 1964 to marijuana in 1966 to acid (LSD) and finally heroine in the last few years.
This text I came across (Rock and Roll: an introduction by Michael Campbell) draws specific relations between this song and the drug very aptly. "The verse creates a dreamy state. The lyric contains numerous psychedelic images (e.g., "marmalade skies") and the music floats along in waltz time. It gives the impression of a person in the middle of an acid trip. By contrast, the chorus is straight-ahead rock and roll, which conveys a sense of normalcy. The repetition of the title phrase suggests a second persona in the song: someone observing the person who's tripping in the verse."
Aha! This explains the surprising shift to the tonal functional harmony of T PD D T in the refrain section from the non-standard function verses! (refer to section on harmonic and functional analysis) Way cool.
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15 comments:
hey lucas here! well done on the analysis... although all the technical terms are wayyy too deep for me.. i guess its how it should be :) and i see you've put my book to good use :) it'd make any Beatles fan proud :)
Hiya Joyce!
Listening to the music, I thought it sounds quite eerie. It sounds like a person is in a state of high, sort of a dreamy feel to it. No wonder it is known to have connections with drugs in John Lenon's life.
Oh, John Lenon was actually a member of the Beatles! I've always thought he was a solo artiste. I remember last semester for history when we did History and Biography, we looked briefly into his biography. Lots of controversy surrounds his life and music. :)
Wow… a pretty intricate piece you chose…
I’d prefer to look at this piece from another angle…
I wouldn’t try to fit this piece into the harmonic phrase model we’ve learnt, because Lennon doesn’t really come across to me as trying to fit into tradition, but rather to have tradition fit his style.
Here are two of his most overt borrowings from tradition:
(1) Use of the lament bass figure in the verse, truncated for most of the part (hence I wouldn’t see the verse as a tonic expansion harmony)
(2) Lots and lots of IV-I harmonic progression… which is what the next part of this thread is discussing
Aurally, I hear the Refrain in the key of D, for the following reasons:
(a) The placement of the D harmony on the hypermetric downbeat,
(b) The Gmaj – Cmaj – Dmaj progression that fits well with my plagal cadence schemata when translated as a IV-(bVII)-I progression (the bVII being more passing in function than anything else), and
(c) The repetitiveness of the IV-I progression that reinforces this perception.
Lennon does a few atypical things in the Refrain. I did expect him to have prepared for the Dmaj Refrain section with an Amaj harmony (dominant preparation) on the word “gone” (b. 36).
A lesser composer would also have reharmonized the “Ahhh…” in the final bars of the piece (bs. 54-55) with an Amaj – G9 – Dmaj, creating a V-IV-I progression to reinforce the Dmaj tonality. Lennon however, deliberately leaves the piece hanging with an imperfect I-V cadence.
Since we’re on harmony, I’ll give my take on the large-scale harmonic structure of the piece:
Verse – Bridge – Refrain
Amaj – Bb maj – Dmaj
V – bVI – I
Oh, the various phrasings and how the melodic and harmonic phrases of the verse align look pretty interesting too... anyone game enough?
Oops... excuse me, the bVII I mentioned is more neighbouring than passing in function
hey Joyce! Nice blog you got here. Well done, you've turned into a professional musician. Keep up the good work! God bless!
Wow, I can see this posting has attracted quite a bit of responses, great! (Welcome, Sam)
Joyce, the possible (plausible) link to LSD tripping is cool, makes me wonder if the weakly functional progression, in contrast to the very conventional refrain progression, is deliberate to suggest a sense of trance-like irrationality.
Sam, your hearing of IV-I in D major with an intervening bVII is curious, don't you hear a more straightforward I-IV-V as Joyce had interpreted?
Hi Dr Chong,
the IV-I came out because the refrain sounded in the key of D maj to me, rather than A maj, for reasons which I stated in the earlier thread.
So I guess the question should be: What key is the refrain in, or for that matter, what key is the entire piece in?
Also, if one was to take the key of the refrain to be in Gmaj and interprete the harmonic progressioin of the refrain as I-IV-V, it would be difficult to fit the final Amaj harmony into the Gmaj tonality as Amaj is too distantly related to Gmaj. Interpreting the refrain as being in the key of Dmaj would better contextualize the final Amaj harmony.
Hi Joyce!
The piece ending in the key of A maj definitely feels like its hanging in the air. However, notice that it says "repeat and fade". So actually, the A maj chord does not mark the end of the piece. I believe there will not be any final resolution in any sort of tonic as the song just ends by fading away.
I would like to know where the repeat is from. As in, which are the few bars that are heard over and over again til they fade. Then perhaps it's possible to explain the A maj chord in relation to the key of the few bars that keep on repeating.
*jean*
Hi Sam,
Thanks for your insightful comments. It made me hear the refrain from a very different perspective.
I can hear the IV-I progressions very distinctly when thinking of it in Dmaj as you have described, and it also seems more logical to hear it as Dmaj in the context of the ‘big picture, but at the same time I also hear it as a I-IV-V progression when thinking of it in Gmaj. I guess it just depends on which key you hear it to be in?
Thanks.
Hi Jean,
Thanks so much for your comment about the “repeat and fade” section. I simply thought of it as a repeat and brushed it aside.
To answer your question exactly, the entire refrain section repeats 2.5 times. In the recording, it does not actually end with an Amaj chord as seen in the score in b.55 (refer to Fig. 7). Instead, it ends with the D7 chord with “Lu-cy in the sky- with dia-monds…” and it fades and ends there on the Dominant of Gmaj.
The Amaj chord would then just be V/V.
Hi Joyce,
The introduction was kind of eerie as what Jean had mentioned. Haha. Because it doesn't even sounds like a typical pop song/oldie. I guess I'll touch on the ending instead.
If I had not seen your analysis, I would simply think of it as a A maj. chord. This is because the repetition is so common in pop music nowadays such that no one ever go and listen to the ending so carefully. =)
Hey joyce!
wow! abt jean's 1st post abt lennon, i think his life revolved around drugs and his wife. She was the one of the main reasons why lenon split with the beatles. I love the way you linked the acronym with the title and came up with this explaination. really cool!
May i add that in addition, I suppose Lennon wrote this song to portray the reality world (chorus) and the dream world (verse) he gets sucked into when doing drugs.
The 2nd persona mentioned could possibly be his consciousness and efforts to prevent himself from tripping. But these efforts are futile.
This could have been a reflection/music biography of his life at that period.
Hi Yif!
Yep that may be a possibility. Very interesting. Thanks!
Joyce
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