Recording "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"

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Press interview with Paul McCartney • Jun 16, 1967 for Life Magazine (pmc.local)

A tall, lean young man in a quiet gray suit and modest tie hovers at the piano. This is George Martin, producer and arranger of the Beatle music. He is a recognized musical scholar and the offstage presence who has come to be called the Fifth Beatle. Paul and John explain to him that they have spent this day writing a song which they want to record tonight. “All right, let’s hear it,” he says. Paul pounds out a strong assortment of chords and John sings, falsetto, the melody which is to be called “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. They go through it half a dozen times while Martin nods, quickly familiarizing himself with the composition and making notes.

At this embryonic stage, the song sounds like the early Beatle works which dealt in jackhammer 4-4 arrangements and lyrics which were seldom more eloquent than “Yeh, yeh, yeh.” But before they are done with it on this long evening and on many more, it will undergo extraordinary changes.

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies,” sings John over and over again, while George Harrison begins finding a guitar accompaniment and Ringo, sipping orange drink, slaps out a rhythm. I began to understand the remarkable process of the Beatle music. It begins absolutely from scratch. The Beatles (who can neither write nor read music) are composing even as they record.

Last updated on August 26, 2023

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