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Beatles She's Leaving Home
When I first heard MLTs version of She’s Leaving Home, I was mesmerized, the singing and harmonies are so beautiful. They played it on the Billy Butler show I recall, and then later they released the Duo Session of the performance they recorded for the Beatles Fan docu-film “Here There and Everywhere“.
Here is an interesting story of the song from Melanie Coe’s perspective, the subject of the song whom Paul McCartney wrote about. It must have been very special for her to learn, a part of her life story was the inspiration behind Paul writing this song. This song made Brian Wilson cry, in the same way God Only Knows made Paul MCartney cry.
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5 Replies
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<div>Duo Session: She’s Leaving Home</div>
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Hi Jung,
when I heard “She’s leaving home” for the first time, I didn’t cry, I had to laugh. And it happened like this: It must have been around the time I was twelve or thirteen years old. Our English teacher announced that he wanted to present a song from The Beatles at the next lesson and that we will have to talk about this song (and of course sing it). I liked the idea very much, because that was the time when the Beatles came into my life. Most of the other kids didn’t like the idea. At that time, Queen and ELO were hot. „Lucifer“ and „A walk in the Park“ were played on the radio. But anything better than learning English grammar. Said and done. Our English teacher distributed the lyrics to the song, put the tape in the recorder and we listened to the song. There was quite a giggle as the high chorus sounded. Should we really sing that? Some of us were already moving rapidly towards break voice. The singing was canceled spontaneously and only the lyrics were translated and interpreted. So a nice idea turned into boring lessons once again. But it was still funny.
Yes, it’s interesting to see how everyday messages can turn into songs in the minds of musicians. Another good example is “A day in the life”. This was the time when the Beatles experienced a major musical upheaval. Their music became more sophisticated. The lyrics moved away from the pink soap bubble “I wanna hold your hand” to daily updated and also critical topics. A kind of maturing process.
Also an interesting development within The Beatles: while Paul increasingly was attracted by topics that were happening around him, John instead described things that were happening inside him, i.e. his personal experience and emotional states, like “Yer Blues” or this one:
(I hope the link works for you)
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Hi Jurgen
Yeah trying to get an elementary school class to sing “She’s Leaving Home” would certainly be a challenge given the highs, but it sounded like a good practice for English and exposure to a great song. That video is great, amazing graphics, thanks for posting it. It’s an interesting insight about Paul writing songs about things happening around him and John things going on inside. HELP is another example of John writing about introspection, as well as Nowhere Man I think.
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We were mesmerized by all of Sgt. Peppers when it was released. We were 14 at the time and the first time through listening to it the “gang” and I just stared at it at the final E chord in A Day in The Life. We could not understand what we had just heard. But, we played it every day after school at a friend’s house multiple times a night. After awhile, though still good, we had it pretty much memorized to the point where we had a mime play to go with She’s Leaving Home. Each of us had parts and we would make each other laugh by doing the mime and maybe changing the parts just to get to each other.
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Mike, I think Sargent Peppers was so ahead of it’s time, a lot of people I am sure when they first heard it “could not understand what we had just heard”, but has become one of the greatest albums ever written, the music is so timeless like “A Day In The Life”.
For me my “could not understand what I had just heard” moment that stand out is when I first heard “Pet Sounds” in the 70s. After getting used to their songs like Good Vibrations, California Girls….the songs on Pet Sounds were like from another planet for me. Now, it’s an album that is so addictive when I start listening to it. Sargent Peppers, and Why is the same way.
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