A runaway girl ... and the REAL Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

‘I GET high with a little help from my friends’ was taken as a reference to marijuana, but Lennon later insisted that the song — sung by Ringo Starr — really was ‘about a little help from my friends, it’s a sincere message’.

LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS

NOT, as is widely believed, a reference to LSD — the Beatles were genuinely surprised when this was suggested — the song was inspired by Lennon’s four-year-old son Julian, who came home from school with a painting he’d done. ‘What is it?’ Lennon asked. ‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds,’ replied Julian. Lucy O’Connell, above, was a classmate.

GETTING BETTER

McCARTNEY was walking on Primrose Hill in London with his dog Martha and friend, the journalist Hunter Davies (who wrote the only authorised biography of the group in 1968). As the sun came out, McCartney said that the weather was ‘getting better’. It sparked the idea for one of the album’s gems.

FIXING A HOLE

THE word ‘fixing’ was initially believed by critics to refer to heroin but McCartney said the lyrics were largely a reference to his favourite drug marijuana, and the song’s imagery drew on repairs he’d recently been making to his Scottish farmhouse.

SHE’S LEAVING HOME

McCARTNEY was inspired to write this track by a story in the Daily Mirror on February 27, 1967, about a girl called Melanie Coe, right, who ran away from home. ‘In the story, the girl left home and her father said: “We gave her everything, I don’t know why she left home,”’ McCartney explained. Coe said the lyrics truly reflected her relationship with her family, especially the line ‘something inside that was always denied’. McCartney’s guess that she had gone off with a boyfriend was true, but he was a croupier and not in ‘the motor trade’.

WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU

GEORGE Harrison spent a lot of time in India and would sit in the Abbey Road studios for hours practising all the instruments he brought back. This track was probably the worst received on the album, but Lennon said: ‘This was one of George’s best songs. His mind and his music are clear.’

BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR KITE!

THE Beatles were filming a promo for Strawberry Fields Forever in Sevenoaks, Kent, on January 31, 1967, when Lennon bought a Victorian circus poster, above, that provided the inspiration and many of the lyrics for this song.

WHEN I’M SIXTY-FOUR

McCARTNEY originally wrote this when he was a teenager, living in Liverpool with his dad Jim. The Beatles used to mess around at The Cavern and sing ‘64’ when electrical equipment failed. But with new lyrics and a 1930s sound, George Martin turned it into one of the best-loved tracks.

LOVELY RITA

ACCORDING to Beatle lore, McCartney was either inspired by a friendly encounter with a traffic warden called Meta Davis in Garden Road, North London, or by a newspaper story about a retired traffic warden. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison played combs lined with paper on it.

GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING

A LENNON contribution, which he later dismissed as ‘garbage’, this was inspired by an irritating Kellogg’s Cornflakes TV advert. He famously liked to work with the television on in the background.