LONDON (AP) - The BBC has banned the radio and television broadcasting of a song from the Beatles' new record on the ground that it "could encourage a permissive attitude to drug-taking."

The song, A Day in the Life, on the long-playing record Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, is the first Beatles number ever to be banned by the BBC.

In the song, John Lennon and Paul McCartney tell of catching a bus, having smoke and going off into a dream.

The Beatles criticized the ban at a dinner party at the home of their manager, Brian Epstein, to celebrate the release of the new album.

McCartney said: "The BBC have misinterpreted the song. It has nothing to do with drug taking. It's only about a dream.

"The laugh is that Paul and I wrote this song from a headline in a newspaper. It's about a crash and its victim," said Lennon.

"How can anyone read drugs into it is beyond me. Everyone seems to be falling overboard to see the word drug in the most innocent of phrases."

A spokesman for the BBC said, "We have listened to this song over and over again. And we have decided that it appears to go just a little too far, and could encourage a permissive attitude to drug-taking."

End of article. Copyright by the Associated Press, June 9, 1967. All rights reserved.