TheBeatlesOnline

She's Leaving Home

Paul McCartney: Vocals
John Lennon: Vocals

Erich Gruenberg: (leader)
Derek Jacobs: Violin
Trevor Williams: Violin
Jose Luis Garcia: Violin
John Underwood: Viola
Stephen Shingles: Viola
Alan Dalziel: Cello
Dennis Vigay: Cello
Gordon Pearce: Double bass
Sheila Bromberg: Harp

Recorded March 17, 20 1967.

Available on:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Paul McCartney got the idea to She's Leaving Home in February 1967 after readng an article in the Daily Mirror about 17-year-old Melanie Coe who had ran away from home. Her father was quoted in the newspaper as saying:

"I cannot imagine why she should run away. She has everyting here."

What Paul didn't know when he wrote the lyrics to She's Leving Home is how accurate his specualation was. Nor did he know that he had actually met Melanie 3 years beforehand.

Melanie was a regular dancer on the live television show Ready Steady Go, which was first broadcast on British television in late 1963. On Friday October 4 1963 she won a mime competition on the programme, and by coincidence it happened to be the first time the Beatles appeared on the show. It was in fact Paul McCartney who presented her with the award. He of course, didn't know that he would write a song about her 3 years later.

Another strange fact is that most of the fictional story in She's Leaving Home actually matches the real story.

The only difference is that Melanie met a man from a gambling casino and not from a motor trade, and that she left her home in the afternoon when her parents were at work, and not in the morning while they were asleep.

"The amazing thing about the song is how much it got right about my life," said Melanie in Steve Turner's book A Hard Day's Write.

"It quoted my parents as saying we gave her everything money could buy' which was true in my case. I had two diamond rings, a mink coat, hand made clothes in silk and cashmere and even my own car."

"When the song says 'Something was denied', that something was me. I wasn't allowed to be me. I was looking for excitement and affection. My mother wasn't affectionate at all. She never kissed me."

Melanie was in her twenties when she realised the song was about her. Her mother had watched an interview with Paul McCartney on television, and he'd said that the song was based on a newspaper article.

"That's when I started telling my friends it was bout me," she says.

Many would think that it's producer George Martin who has arranged the lovely string sections on She's Leaving Home, but that's actually not the case. Martin had in fact already booked a session with another artist on the day that McCartney wanted to record the song. But Paul didn't have the patience to wait, so he asked freelance producer and arranger Mark Leander to help him instead. Paul first met Leander when he attended the session at Decca studios in London for Marianne Faithfull's cover version of Yesterday on October 11 1965.

However, what Paul didn't think of at the time is that Martin would be deeply hurt by the fact that he worked with another producer.

"It was just one of those silly things," said Martin in Mark Lewisohn's book The Complete Beatles Recoding Sessions.

"He was so damned impatient an I was up to my eyes with other work and I just couldn't cope. But Paul realises now, though he was surprised I was upset."

However, Martin seemed pleased with the final result. He said:

"I had to change the score a litle bit, not very much. Mike Leander did a good job."

She's Leaving Home

She (we gave her most of our lives)
is leaving (sacrificed most of our lives)
home (we gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone for
so many years (bye bye)

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband
Daddy our baby's gone
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly
How could she do this to me

She (We never thought of ourselves)
is leaving (never a thought for ourselves)
home (we struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home after living alone for
so many years (bye bye)

Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade

She (what did we do that was wrong)
is having (we didn't know it was wrong)
fun (fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always denied for
so many years (bye bye)
She's leaving home (bye bye)