| "She's Leaving Home" | |
|---|---|
 Sheet music cover | |
| Song bythe Beatles | |
| from the albumSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | |
| Released | 26 May 1967 (1967-05-26)[1] |
| Recorded | 17 and 20 March 1967 |
| Studio | EMI, London |
| Genre | |
| Length | 3:26 (mono), 3:35 (stereo) |
| Label |
|
| Songwriter | Lennon–McCartney |
| Producer | George Martin |
"She's Leaving Home" is a song by the English rock bandthe Beatles, written byPaul McCartney and John Lennon, and released on their 1967 albumSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.Paul McCartney wrote and sang the verse andJohn Lennon wrote thechorus, which they sang together. NeitherGeorge Harrison norRingo Starr were involved in the recording. The song's instrumental background was performed entirely by a smallstring orchestra arranged byMike Leander, and is one of only a handful of Beatles recordings in which none of the members played a musical instrument.
Paul McCartney said of the song in hisPlayboy magazine interview in December 1984:
I wrote that. My kind of ballad from that period. My daughter likes that one. One of my daughters likes that. Still works. The other thing I remember is that George Martin was offended that I used another arranger. He was busy and I was itching to get on with it; I was inspired. I think George had a lot of difficulty forgiving me for that. It hurt him; I didn't mean to.[4]
McCartney was inspired by a story on the front page of theDaily Mail, about a girl named Melanie Coe.[5] Although McCartney invented most of the content in the song, Coe, who was 17 at the time, has said that most of it was accurate. In actuality, Coe left with her boyfriend, acroupier. She did not "meet a man from the motor trade", although her boyfriend had previously been in that trade.[6] She 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.[7] When she returned home, she was pregnant and had an abortion.[8]
Coincidentally, Coe had actually met McCartney three years earlier, in 1963 when he chose her as the prize winner in a dancing contest on ITV'sReady Steady Go!.[9] An update on Coe appeared inThe Guardian in December 2008,[6] and she was interviewed about the song on theBBC programmeThe One Show on 24 November 2010.[10] In May 2017,Rolling Stone magazine carried an interview with Coe to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the album's release.[5]
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 story line. 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, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 1997
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, 1967
"She's Leaving Home" was recorded during the sessions for the Beatles'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The day before McCartney wanted to work on the song'sscore, he learned thatGeorge Martin, who usually handled the Beatles' string arrangements, was not available. McCartney contacted Mike Leander, who did it in Martin's place. This was the first time a Beatles song was not arranged by Martin. Martin, though hurt by this,produced the song and conducted thestring section in a session on 17 March 1967 that generated six takes.[11] The melody is composed in amodal scale, typical of English traditional music. The harp was played bySheila Bromberg, the second female musician to appear on a Beatles record, after cellist Joy Hall, who performed on "Strawberry Fields Forever".[12][13] Three days later, McCartney's lead vocal and Lennon's backing vocal were recorded, with the two singing together on each of two vocal tracks, their voices overlapping to match the narrative.[11]
The stereo version of the song, finalised on 17 April 1967, runs at a slower speed than the mono mix, completed on 20 March 1967, and consequently is a semitone lower in pitch.[14][15] A 2007Mojo magazine article revealed that the final mono mix was sped up to make McCartney sound younger.[16] The subsequent stereo mix was not sped up, remaining in the original tempo and key. In 2017, for the 50th anniversary edition ofSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,Giles Martin and Sam Okell remixed the stereo version of the song to match the adjusted speed of the mono version.[17] The six-disc version of the anniversary edition also included the previously unreleased first mono mix of "She's Leaving Home", which contains a brief cello phrase at the end of the first two choruses that was removed from the released mixes of the song.[14]
In April 1967, McCartney visitedBrian Wilson ofthe Beach Boys in Los Angeles, where McCartney played "She's Leaving Home" on the piano for Wilson and his wife. Wilson recalled: "We both just cried. It was beautiful."[8] As the credited composers of "She's Leaving Home", Lennon and McCartney received the 1967Ivor Novello award forBest Song Musically and Lyrically.[18]
ComposerNed Rorem once described "She's Leaving Home" as "equal to any song thatSchubert ever wrote".[19] In one of the few non-laudatory contemporary reviews ofSgt. Pepper,[20]Richard Goldstein, writing inThe New York Times, cited the song as an example of the album's reliance on production over quality songwriting. Goldstein said:"'She's Leaving Home' preserves all the orchestrated grandeur of 'Eleanor Rigby', but its framework is emaciated ... Where 'Eleanor Rigby' compressed tragedy into poignant detail, 'She's Leaving Home' is uninspired narrative, and nothing more."[21] AuthorIan MacDonald considered "She's Leaving Home" to be one of the two best songs on the album, along with "A Day in the Life".[22] In his comments onSgt. Pepper and its legacy, musicologist Allan Moore highlights these contrasting views as two music critics judging the work from "opposing criteria", with Goldstein opining during the dawn of thecounterculture of the 1960s, whereas MacDonald, writing in the 1990s, is "intensely aware of [the movement's] failings".[23]
In 2018, the music staff ofTime Out London ranked "She's Leaving Home" at number 10 on their list of the best Beatles songs.[24]
According to Ian MacDonald:[22]
A version of the song byBilly Bragg withCara Tivey reached number one on theUK Singles Chart in 1988, as part of a double-A side with "With a Little Help from My Friends" byWet Wet Wet.[25] Both tracks were taken from the charity fundraising albumSgt. Pepper Knew My Father.
