8/22/2019 Shes Leaving Meaning

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Melanie Coe, who became an estate agency director, told Dave Simpson her story in a 2008 interview for The Guardian. Said Coe: "London was a very different place in the '60s. I went to a club called the Bag O' Nails [Soho] and I met everybody. You sat on the next table to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Hollies, because there weren't many clubs in London. I got in coz I was a cute little girland I dressed in the latest fashions. I'd go to Mary Quant and Biba, sketch thedress and get my aunt to make my clothes. Ready Steady Go! loved that. They held open auditions. I was 13. It went on what you were wearing and how you danced.I was asked to come every week. I met the Beatles at Ready Steady Go! George was great to meet - I looked a lot like Pattie Boyd, who later became his wife, ofcourse.I was always going out. I danced the night away and was a face in London. In those days, to be trendy everything had to be French. I bought the T-shirt of the moment, which was my star sign in French. I loved that T-shirt. One day I got home and my mother had cut it to ribbons. She wanted me to look like Princess Anne,not my idol, Marianne Faithfull. When my parents found out I had the pill theygrabbed me by the scruff of the neck and made me flush them down the toilet.I was 17 by then and ran away leaving a note, just like in the song. I went to adoctor and he said I was pregnant, but I didn't know that before I left home. My best friend at the time was married to Ritchie Blackmore, so she hid me at their house in Holloway Road. It was the first place my parents came to look, so Iran off with my boyfriend, who was a croupier, although he had been 'in the motor trade' like it says in the song. I think my dad called up the newspapers - mypicture was on the front pages. He made out that I must have been kidnapped, bec

ause why would I leave? They gave me everything - coats, cars. But not love. Myparents found me after three weeks and I had an abortion.I didn't realize for a long time that the song was about me. Years later Paul was on a program talking about how he'd seen a newspaper article and been inspiredby it. My mother pieced it all together and called me to say, 'That song's about you!'I can't listen to the song. It's just too sad for me. My parents died a long time ago and we were never resolved. That line, 'She's leaving home after living alone for so many years' is so weird to me because that's why I left. I was so alone. How did Paul know that those were the feelings that drove me towards one-night stands with rock stars? I don't think he can have possibly realized that he'dmet me when I was 13 on Ready Steady Go!, but when he saw the picture, something just clicked."