Recording "A Day In The Life", "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"

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The previous day, The Beatles spent eight hours rehearsing their new song, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” but they did not record any formal take. On this day, March 1, 1967, they began the formal recording of the same song, but before that, they recorded a final overdub to “A Day In The Life.”

On February 22, “A Day In The Life” was mixed in mono, and on February 23 it was mixed in stereo. Although the track was completed, Paul McCartney decided, on this day, to record an additional piano part during the verse that goes “He blew his mind out in a car.” However, this brief overdub was never used.

Interestingly, a week after we did those mixes — which actually ended up being the masters used on the album — Paul decided that he wanted a different color on the ending and overdubbed yet another piano, although it was ultimately deemed extraneous and was never used. The fact that they were willing to continue to work on the track even at that point showed how committed the Beatles were to perfection by this stage of their career, and how willing they were to break all the rules. The song had already been mixed to everyone’s satisfaction… but that didn’t mean that one of us couldn’t still come up with an idea to try to improve it. No one rolled his eyes, and no one — not even John—said, “Bloody hell, we’ve already finished that song.” The spirit throughout all the Pepper sessions was always “If you’ve got an idea, let’s try it.”

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” was recorded in seven takes. Track one of the four-track tape had George Harrison’s acoustic guitar and occasional piano from George Martin. Track two had Paul McCartney on a Lowrey organ. Track three had Ringo Starr’s drums, and track four had John Lennon playing maracas and singing a guide vocal.

Take 7 was considered the best, after which track four was erased and replaced with a tamboura drone played by George Harrison.

Take 1, Take 4 (which was a false start) and Take 5 were released in the 2017 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” box set. A composite of Take 6, Take 7, and vocal overdubs recorded during the next session was released on the “Anthology 2” album in 1996.

Takes 6, 7 and 8. This is a unique combination of some different takes and sounds that comprised the original master of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, broke down to their constituent parts and newly remixed. The basic track is Take 6, taped on 1 March, in which John sang a guide vocal, not yet attempting the finished model. The sound of a tamboura has been added from Take 7, also 1 March, and the chorus vocals have been flown in from Take 8, a “reduction” of Take 7 that received vocal overdubs the next day. 

From the liner notes of “Anthology 2“

Take 7 was then subject to a reduction mix, named Take 8, reducing the four tracks into one. This was done with the tape machine running at 49 cycles per second rather than the usual 50, making it sound slightly faster upon playback.

The session, which had started at 7 pm, ended at 2:15 am.

Work on “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” continued the following day.

At seven o’clock on the evening of 1 March we started recording again, and finally laid down a first take, hardly more than a run-through. […] We had the rhythm — no voice. But this was special. This simple outline was eventually to become ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’.

By the time we reached Take 7, everyone knew the song. I wanted to finish the backing as near as I could that night, so I wiped John’s guide vocal and overdubbed a tamboura drone, with George, on to track four. By two-thirty in the morning we had a serviceable backing track.

George Martin – From “With A Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper“, 1995

By now, it was evident that John’s personality was changing. Instead of being opinionated about everything, he was becoming complacent; in fact, he seemed quite content to have someone else do his thinking for him, even when we were working on one of his own songs. By the spring of 1967, he was becoming increasingly disengaged, and that would more or less continue until the end of the Beatles’ career. No doubt Paul was aware of the situation, and he was seizing the opportunity to step in and expand his role within the band.

That manifested itself down in the studio as they worked on this song, with John’s lead vocal getting less aggressive and more dreamy with each successive take. That might have been a reflection of what he was smoking behind the screens, but Paul was clearly steering him in that direction, too.

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

Apart from George Harrison’s guitar work on the Beatles recordings, and the wonderful songs he wrote for them, his main influence was in coming up with ideas for sounds, particularly, sounds that would create or contribute to the mood of a song. The tamboura drone that gives “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ much of its languorous weight would never have been on the track without George.

George Martin – From “With A Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper“, 1995

I liked ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ a lot. John always had a way of having an edge to his songs. I particularly liked the sounds on it where I managed to superimpose some Indian instruments onto the Western music. There were specific things that I had written, like ‘Within You Without You’, to try to feature the Indian instruments,- but under normal circumstances that wouldn’t work on a Western song like ‘Lucy’, which has chord changes and modulations (whereas tambouras and sitars stay in the same key forever). I liked the way the drone of the tamboura could be fitted in there.

George Harrison – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

Last updated on February 8, 2024

Songs recorded

Staff

Musicians on "A Day In The Life"

?:

Piano

Musicians on "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"

Paul McCartney:

Lowrey organ

Ringo Starr:

Drums

John Lennon:

Maracas, Vocals

George Harrison:

Acoustic guitar, Tamboura

George Martin:

Piano

Production staff

George Martin:

Producer

Geoff Emerick:

Engineer

Richard Lush:

Second Engineer