"She's Leaving Home"
Song by The Beatles
from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Released	1 June 1967
Recorded	17 March 1967
Genre	Pop, Ballad
Length	3:35
Label	Parlophone
Writer(s)	Lennon/McCartney
Producer(s)	George Martin
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band track listing
Side one "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" "With a Little Help from My Friends" "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" "Getting Better" "Fixing a Hole" "She's Leaving Home" "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" Side two "Within You Without You" "When I'm Sixty-Four" "Lovely Rita" "Good Morning Good Morning" "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" "A Day in the Life"

"She's Leaving Home" is a song, written by Lennon/McCartney and sung by Paul McCartney, and released in 1967 on The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney wrote the verse and Lennon the chorus.

Background

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 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.[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.

Coincidentally, Coe had met McCartney three years earlier when she was a contestant and prize winner on ITV's Ready Steady Go!.

Recording

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 (and the only time it was done with The Beatles' consent - Phil Spector's orchestration of Let It Be was done without The Beatles' knowledge). 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]

Cover versions

• In 1967, Harry Nilsson covered this song on Pandemonium Shadow Show.
• In 1972, Syreeta covered this song on Syreeta.
• In 1976, Bryan Ferry covered the song for the evanescent musical documentary All This and World War II.
• In 1983, Richie Havens covered this song on "Richard P. Havens 1983".
• 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.
• In 2001, BuddhaTrek covered this song on BuddhaTrek I.
• In 2004, Branimir Krstic, classical guitarist and composer http://www.branimir.net, arranged and performed the song on "Sgt. Pepper for Classical Guitar", the first full classical rendition of Sgt. Pepper.
• in 2005, Brad Mehldau and his trio performed a version on their album Day is Done.
• In 2007, the American Idol finale featured a tribute medley from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, in which the song was performed by Carrie Underwood.
• In 2007, Magic Numbers re-recorded the song for It Was 40 Years Ago Today, a television film with contemporary acts recording the album's songs using the same studio, technicians and recording techniques as the original.
• In September 2007, Brian Wilson, on 9/10-15, covered the tune as a final encore during his premiers at the Royal Festival Hall in London, England.

Notes

•  • [ e] The Beatles
Members	John Lennon Paul McCartney George Harrison Ringo Starr Pete Best Stuart Sutcliffe
Management	Allan Williams Brian Epstein Allen Klein Lee Eastman Neil Aspinall Mal Evans Alistair Taylor Apple Records
Production	George Martin Geoff Emerick Norman Smith Ken Scott Phil Spector Jeff Lynne Abbey Road Studios
Official studio albums	Please Please Me (1963) With The Beatles (1963) A Hard Day's Night (1964) Beatles for Sale (1964) Help! (1965) Rubber Soul (1965) Revolver (1966) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) Magical Mystery Tour (U.S., 1967 / U.K., 1976) The Beatles (The White Album) (1968) Yellow Submarine (1969) Abbey Road (1969) Let It Be (1970)
Official post-breakup albums	Live at the BBC (1994) Anthology 1 (1995) Anthology 2 (1996) Anthology 3 (1996) Yellow Submarine Songtrack (1999) Let It Be… Naked (2003)
Official compilations	1962–1966 (1973) 1967–1970 (1973) Past Masters, Volume One (1988) Past Masters, Volume Two (1988) 1 (2000) Love (2006)
Filmography	A Hard Day's Night (1964) Help! (1965) Magical Mystery Tour (1967) Yellow Submarine (1968) Let It Be (1970)
Videography	The Compleat Beatles (1984) The Beatles Anthology (2003) (2003)
	Line-ups Bootlegs Discography Love (Cirque du Soleil) Lennon/McCartney Influence Beatle boots The Quarrymen The Beatles' breakup London Beatlemania Fifth Beatle Paul is dead The Beatles (TV series) British Invasion Apple Corps Northern Songs The Beatles Anthology Yoko Ono Linda McCartney Cynthia Lennon Billy Preston Tony Sheridan Chas Newby Andy White Jimmy Nicol Astrid Kirchherr Klaus Voormann