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She's Leaving Home
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "She's Leaving Home" | ||
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| Song by The Beatles | ||
| from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band |
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| Released | June 1, 1967 | |
| Recorded | December 6, 1966 – April 21, 1967 | |
| Genre | pop | |
| Length | 3:35 | |
| Label | Parlophone | |
| Writer(s) | Lennon-McCartney | |
| Producer(s) | George Martin | |
| Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band track listing | ||
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"She's Leaving Home" is a song, written and sung by Paul McCartney and John Lennon and released in 1967 on the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney wrote the verse and Lennon the chorus.
Contents |
Paul McCartney:
John and I wrote 'She's Leaving Home' together. It was my inspiration. We'd seen a story in the newspaper about a young girl who'd left home and not been found, there were a lot of those at the time, and that was enough to give us a story line. So I started to get the lyrics: she slips out and leaves a note and then the parents wake up ... It was rather poignant. I like it as a song, and when I showed it to John, he added the long sustained notes, and one of the nice things about the structure of the song is that it stays on those chords endlessly. Before that period in our songwriting we would have changed chords but it stays on the C chord. It really holds you. It's a really nice little trick and I think it worked very well.
While I was showing that to John, he was doing the Greek chorus, the parents' view: 'We gave her most of our lives, we gave her everything money could buy.' I think that may have been in the runaway story, it might have been a quote from the parents. Then there's the famous little line about a man from the motor trade; people have since said that was Terry Doran, who was a friend who worked in a car showroom, but it was just fiction, like the sea captain in "Yellow Submarine", they weren't real people.[1]
The newspaper story McCartney mentioned was from the front page of the Daily Mirror, about a girl named Melanie Coe. Although McCartney made up most of the content, Coe, who was 17 at the time[2] claims that he got most of it right. Her parents wondered why she had left... 'she had everything she wanted'. In real life, Melanie did not "meet a man from the motor trade", but instead a croupier, and left in the afternoon while her parents were at work. The adventure ended a week later.[citation needed]
Coincidentally, Coe had met McCartney three years earlier when she was a contestant and prize winner on ITVs "Ready Steady Go!."
The day before McCartney wanted to work on the string arrangement, he learned that George Martin was not available to do the score. He contacted Mike Leander, who did it in Martin's place. It was the first time a Beatle song was not arranged by Martin. Martin was hurt by McCartney's actions, but he produced the song and conducted the string section. The harp was played by Sheila Bromberg, the first female musician to appear on a Beatles record.[3][4]
- In 1967, Harry Nilsson covered this song on Pandemonium Shadow Show.
- In 1976, Bryan Ferry covered the song for the evanescent musical documentary All This and World War II.
- In 1988, Billy Bragg's version of the song, a double A-side with Wet Wet Wet's "With a Little Help from My Friends" which reached #1 in the UK.
- ^ Barry Miles, Many Years From Now, p. 316
- ^ Steve Turner, A Hard Days Write
- ^ George Martin with Jeremy Horsnby, All You Need Is Ears, p. 207-208
- ^ Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, p. 103