Cranberry sauce and Pepper

Think you know everything about Beatles’ popular album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Think you know everything about Beatles’ popular album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Think again

Yes, the album is replete with drug references. But the title of the dreamy, surreal Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds was not an acronym for LSD. It came from Lennon’s son Julian, not quite 4 at the time, who brought a drawing home from school and told his father it was “Lucy in the sky, with diamonds.” Lucy was a classmate named Lucy O’Donnell.

As Good Morning Good Morning ends, we hear various animal sounds—pigs grunting, sheep bleating. The last sound is of a hen clucking, followed by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise). The hen’s cluck ended up on the same key as the first guitar note of the Pepper reprise, so the hen seems to “become” the guitar.

Story continues below this ad

When Lennon and McCartney wrote With a Little Help From My Friends for drummer Ringo Starr, they included the line: “What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you throw tomatoes at me?” Starr, remembering the countless jelly beans with which fans pelted the group, refused to sing it. The composers changed the second part to “Would you stand up and walk out on me?” The drummer agreed.

Strawberry Fields Forever, originally planned to be part of the album, contains one of the first supposed clues connected to the “Paul is dead” rumour that became an urban legend in the late 1960s. As the song fades, Lennon’s voice can be heard through the din that sounds a bit like “I buried Paul.” Wrong. What he said was, “cranberry sauce.” We have no idea why.
Christopher Ave (NYT)