The author is dead, so is the songster. But the words live, as does the music. The tragic end of John Lennon, a key member of The Beatles, only adds poignancy to the songs he wrote, the music he and his partners made. But there are moments when events almost overwhelm the music. Lovers of the music The Beatles created know that the song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, in the famous LP, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was inspired by a picture Lennon’s son, Julian, had brought home from school. He told his dad, “That’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds”. Lucy was his friend in school. Lennon Senior turned his son’s comment into a song that stole a million hearts away. Those who chose to delve deep into the origins of The Beatles’ music and Lennon’s lyrics have wondered often if Lucy in the sky with diamonds referred to LSD, as the lyrics are replete with psychedelic images: “tangerine trees and marmalade skies”, “rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies”, “plasticine porters with looking glass ties”, and so on. A child’s drawing and drug-induced visions came together in a milestone song.

But when Julian Lennon got in touch with Lucy Vodden, his schoolmate, after 40 years, the song acquired a different dimension that transcends its original inspiration. Lucy today is 46 years old and is stricken by lupus, a chronic disease that affects the body’s immune system and gets it to attack the body’s own tissues. Julian, who lives in France, sent his friend flowers and rekindled their childhood friendship. He offered to help her cope with her illness. Lucy may no longer be in the sky, climbing in the back with her head in the clouds, but she has got a friend who will be with her even when she is sixty-four. The human angle — important and touching though it is — aside, these developments only reiterate how great music comes back with different meanings.

Lucy can now “get by with a little help from her friend(s)”. The quoted words hark back to another song from the Sgt. Pepper’s album. That song too, legend has it, has allusions to marijuana: “I get high with a little help from my friends.” (The album was released in June 1967, and so it is not surprising at all that it has references to drugs.) While the world, since the LP hit the charts, has been talking about the space between people, two human beings have come together, obliterating the distance age had created, through a piece of music that in its time made a piece of history. This coming together of Lucy and Julian is perhaps the best tribute that could ever have been paid to the music that The Beatles made. It is testimony too, if one were needed, to the power of music. Music connects people, be it the music of Bach or The Beatles. There may be a diamond in the sky, whatever the cynics say.