She's Leaving Home

Song facts

From Wikipedia:

“She’s Leaving Home” is a Lennon–McCartney song, released in 1967 on the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney wrote and sang the verse and John Lennon the chorus while neither George Harrison nor Ringo Starr were involved in the recording. The song’s instrumental background was performed entirely by a small string orchestra arranged by Mike Leander, and was one of only a handful of Beatles songs in which the members did not play any instruments on the recording.

Background

Paul McCartney said of the song:

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 storyline. 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 song-writing, 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.

The newspaper story McCartney mentioned was from the front page of the Daily Mirror, about a girl named Melanie Coe. Although McCartney invented most of the content in the song, Coe, who was 17 at the time, claims that most of it was accurate. In actuality, Coe did not “meet a man from the motor trade“, although he had been before, but instead a croupier, and left in the afternoon while her parents were at work, while the girl in the song leaves early in the morning as her parents sleep. Coe was found ten days later because she had let slip where her boyfriend worked. When she returned home, she was pregnant and had an abortion.

By coincidence, Coe had actually met McCartney three years earlier, in 1963 when he chose her as the prize winner in a dancing contest on ITV’s Ready Steady Go!. An update on Coe appeared in the Daily Mail in May 2008, in the The Guardian in December 2008 and she was interviewed about the song on the BBC programme The One Show on 24 November 2010.

Recording

The day before McCartney wanted to work on the song’s score, he learned that George Martin, who usually handled the Beatles’ string arrangements, was not available. He contacted Mike Leander, who did it in Martin’s place. It was the first time a Beatles 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.

The stereo version of the song runs at a slower speed than the mono mix, and consequently is a semitone lower in pitch. This is mentioned in the booklet accompanying The Beatles in Mono CD box set, but no reason is given. A 2007 Mojo magazine article revealed the mono mix was sped up to make Paul sound younger and tighten the track.

Critical reception

When discussing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, composer Ned Rorem described “She’s Leaving Home” as “equal to any song that Schubert ever wrote.” Author Ian MacDonald considered “She’s Leaving Home” to be the best song on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band along with “A Day in the Life“. In April 1967, McCartney visited Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys in L.A. to preview Sgt. Pepper, playing “She’s Leaving Home” on the piano for him and his wife. “We both just cried,” Wilson said. “It was beautiful.“

Writers Lennon and McCartney received the 1967 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.

Live performances

Paul McCartney performed the song live for the first time by any Beatle on the (North America) second leg of his 2002 Driving World Tour. He later reprised the song on his 2003 Back in the World Tour. […]

From The Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations:

[a] mono 20 Mar 1967. edited.
UK: Parlophone PMC 7026 Sgt Pepper 1967.
US: Capitol MAS 2653 Sgt Pepper 1967.

[b] stereo 17 Apr 1967. edited.
UK: Parlophone PCS 7026 Sgt Pepper 1967.
US: Capitol SMAS 2653 Sgt Pepper 1967.
CD: EMI CDP 7 46442 2 Sgt Pepper 1987.

A short amount of instrumental work between the verses was removed after the mixing was done, so both mixes are edited. Reverb had been added during mixing, and the edits are a little more obvious in stereo [b], just before Paul starts singing the second and third verses. The two mixes are at different speeds, and we believe stereo [b] was slowed down when mixed (rather than the mono being sped up), partly because the orchestra sounds better in mono [a]. Possibly the tape was made at an off-speed, like many Sgt Pepper songs, and was played for stereo mixing at normal speed?

It’s almost like a little opera, and it’s one of the best-constructed songs they ever did. The lyrics are particularly telling. I am amazed that they could do this at their age because they could see the conflict between the young and the old.

George Martin – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

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 had left home and not been found. There were a lot of those at the time, and that was enough to give us a storyline. So, I started to get the lyrics. She slips out and leaves a note and then the parents wake up and then … It was rather poignant. I like it as a song, and when I showed it to John, he added the Greek chorus.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

It was John’s idea for the words of the old couple, ‘What did we do that was wrong?’ in the background. He was looking at the misused old people and also the conflict between them and the young girl. Originally, it was undoubtedly Paul’s song, but John contributed quite a bit in a way with the answering chorus. Mike Leander did the score for the song, because Paul wanted it done at a drop of the hat and I was recording Cilla Black on the day he wanted to go through it. So, it was the song that got away. It was the song I wanted to do.

George Martin – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

This record will alter everybody’s approach to record making. I have new thoughts myself now every time I go into the studio. Apart from my contribution, this is a work of art, but I am terrified of the next one.

Mike Leander – Arranger – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

‘She’s leaving Home’ is a great song, very simple, similar to ‘Eleanor Rigby’.

McCartney: It’s a much younger girl, but the same sort of loneliness. That was a Daily Mirror story again: This girl left home and her father said: ‘We gave her everything, I don’t know why she left home.’ But he didn’t give her that much, not what she wanted when she left home.

Paul McCartney – Interview with The Observer, November 1967

Last updated on September 1, 2023

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