FSOTD #52-A *Rumors Run Wild, vol. 2*

As the legend goes, The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is an endorsement of acid.  That is, LSD.  Lucy/Sky/Diamonds.  If the acronym isn't convincing, just read the lyrics.  Similar, but not nearly as widely known, is the story behind Eric Clapton's "Lay Down Sally".   As the tale goes, when at the end of his longtime heroin habit Clapton was truly rehabbing (mid-70's), he met a woman.  She was a nurse involved in his recovery.  For over a year, they had steady contact, as did many others who were helping him build and maintain the resolve needed to kick.  But Eric became quite smitten with this particular female, an American who was purportedly a few years older than he.   Yet his many advances towards her both during and after the rehab stint - calls, letters, gift...the works - were all rebuffed.  Maybe for Eric, she was like a new Layla.  Who knows?  But there was never an affair.  Her name, of course, was not Sally, but the accepted notion is it began with an S.  The chief reason she spurned his affections?  Religion.  Sally was a Mormon.  The Church of Latter-Day Saints.  Commonly abbreviated LDS.   Lay Down Sally.   Eric used the very same technique of hiding a message in the song's title as did his friend John Lennon a decade earlier.  So the story goes.

But we are left to wonder just how religious one needs to be to know what Eric's fans have known since the sixties: Clapton is God.


Rumors Run Wild, vol.1, FSOTD #48
FSOTD