It’s most likely one of the first conspiracy theories about The Beatles one comes across before you hurtle into the intense world of ‘Paul Is Dead’. “Did you know,” your mate’s cool older brother says, framed by his Che Guevara poster in a Che Guevara T-shirt while holding a Che Guevera mug, “’Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ is about drugs?” You gawk at him, and he explains, “It’s right in front of your face. Lucy. In the Sky. With Diamonds. L. S. D.” and he sits back on his Che Guevara bedsheets in smug superiority.

Turns out he’s as wrong about that as he was about NFTs. It’s not an unreasonable assumption. The Fab Four had more tabs to hand than an American vending machine. They had been experimenting with psychedelic drugs more generally since Bob Dylan introduced them to a lovely lady called Mary Jane.

Plus, there’s the song itself. A lilting, gorgeously dreamy track filled with evocative, impressionistic lyrics about travelling to a colourful dreamscape with “a girl with kaleidoscope eyes”. Let’s be real here: it’s probably not for nothing that a telltale double-track of John Lennon’s vocal comes in specifically on the words “so incredibly high.” However, the actual inspiration for the track is something more simple, more charming and a lot more innocent.

In 1966, Lennon’s first son Julian turned three and began attending a local nursery school. One day, he returned home with a drawing of his friend, Lucy O’Connell. He showed his father the drawing, and upon uttering the words “This is Lucy in the sky, with diamonds” something sparked in his dad. In an interview on the Dick Cavett show, Lennon said “I thought that’s beautiful. I immediately wrote a song about it.”