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Lucy Vodden, Who Inspired a Beatles Song, Dies at 46

LONDON (AP) — Lucy Vodden, who provided the inspiration for the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” has died in London. She was 46.

Her death, after a history of lupus, was announced Monday by St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, where she had been treated for more than five years, and by her husband, Ross Vodden.

Ms. Vodden’s connection to the Beatles dates back to when she was Lucy O’Donnell, a schoolmate and friend of Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son. Julian, then 4, came home from school with a drawing one day, showed it to his father, and said it was “Lucy in the sky with diamonds.”

At the time John Lennon was gathering material for his contributions to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the landmark album released in 1967. He seized on the image and developed it into what is widely regarded as a psychedelic masterpiece, with haunting images of “newspaper taxis” and a “girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”
Read entire article at NYT