She’s Leaving Home was one of the most spellbinding moments on the Beatles’ 1967 magnum opus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. A heartstring-tugging document of coming of age angst, its sweeping orchestral arrangement supported a lyric that was inspired by a very real story
The Paul McCartney-penned narrative gently expanded on a young girl’s decision to leave her stuffy, conservative parents’ home and – at Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock (as the day begins) – sneaks out to join the man (from the motor trade) that she was going to start her new life with.
Marrying sentiment with rebellion, She’s Leaving Home balances a sympathetic, and nostalgic, longing for the past with the increasing rejection of conservatism then rife within 1960s youth culture.
This was characterised by its parent-perspective chorus lyric – sung in typically spine-tingling fashion by John Lennon.
We’re not the first to say it, and we won’t be the last, but it’s wonderful stuff all round.
But the unlikely, fateful layers behind its origin deepen its magic…
Firstly, there’s that newspaper story that McCartney based his lyric on.
Within the February 27th 1967 edition of the Daily Mail, a story that ran with the headline ‘A-level girl dumps car and vanishes’, detailed how a young schoolgirl – Melanie Coe – had disappeared from her family home in London’s Stamford Hill. Not even taking her car (an Austin 1100) or any of her wardrobe full of clothes – only the clothes she was wearing that day.
This had lead her extremely worried parents to contact the national press, with her father telling the paper that, “I cannot imagine why she should run away. She has everything here… even her fur coat.”
Melanie, whose hasty exit was spurred by finding out that she was pregnant, would later turn up safe and sound.
She wasn’t aware that the newspaper story had inspired She’s Leaving Home until many years later.
In later life, she explained to the press that while her parents did in fact provide her with all the material possessions she could ever need, what she wanted most of all was some kind of emotional closeness. “As a 17-year-old I had everything money could buy – diamonds, furs, a car – but my father and mother never once told me they loved me,” Coe told the Daily Mail in 2007echoing the dynamic presented in McCartney’s lyric.
McCartney, working with John Lennon and George Martin, furnished the tale he’d read in the newspaper that day, taking some creative liberties with the finer details, but immortalising Melanie’s story forever.
But the tale doesn’t end there – in fact, weirdly, it doesn’t even begin there.
Strangely enough, Paul McCartney had actually met Melanie Coe years before she decided to leave her parents’ home.
Just over three years prior, Melanie Coe (then just aged 13) was a dancer on the BBC’s youth culture-oriented 1960s staple Ready Steady Go!. During a show aired on October 4th, the Beatles (then on the cusp of Beatlemania) made their debut.
After performing three songs on the show, hosted by Keith Fordyce and Dusty Springfield, a Beatle was required to assist with the judging of an all-important dance and lip synch contest. ‘Mime-time’.
Who would step forward? Paul, of course.
Among four eager young female contestants – Melanie Coe.
As Paul watched the three participants give it their all and jig along to a rendition of Brenda Lee’s Let’s Jump the Broomstick, the girl that stuck out to him the most was – you guessed it – Melanie.
A giddy Melanie was beside herself as she was gifted the Beatles LP, and shook Paul’s hand.
Coe would later remember that, “Paul came over and shook my hand and handed me a Beatles album, which was the greatest thing that could happen to any little teenage girl.”
Little did Melanie know that an even better thing – having her life forever captured within a Beatles masterpiece – was just a few years ahead.
You can watch the full episode of Ready Steady Go! from October 1963 – including that unlikely meeting of McCartney and Coe – below:
The lingering question we have is: did Paul remember Melanie when he opened the Daily Mail and set his eyes on that story in early 1967?
It seems unlikely.
McCartney has remained silent on the matter – but Melanie recalled that on the day, Paul was rather a distant figure.
“We had spent a long day in the studio filming. John Lennon was aloof and unapproachable, Paul shook our hands but Ringo and George were sweethearts, chatting to us all day,” recalled Coe.
But the odds are, a semblance of familiarity – even subconsciously – must have registered when Paul saw Melanie’s face.
“Something probably clicked in Paul’s mind when he read the story about me running away from home three years later,” Melanie told the Daily Mail. “It was pretty unusual back then.”
