Paul McCartney Said 1 Song From The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Is a Little Sleazy

Paul McCartney said a song from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band features a sleazy line that was rumored to be about a real person. Paul said it was complete fiction. The song also shows off many of Paul’s main traits as a songwriter.

The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ has a sexual lyric about a plush interior

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul recalled the origin of a line from “She’s Leaving Home.” “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,” he said. “George Harrison said once he could only write songs from his personal experience, but they don’t have to exist for me. The feeling of them is enough.

“The man from the motor trade was just a typical sleazy character, the kind of guy that could pull a young bird by saying, ‘Would you like a ride in my car, darlin’?'” he added. “Nice plush interior, that’s how you pulled birds. So it was just a little bit of sleaze. It was largely mine, with help from John.”

‘She’s Leaving Home’ is reminiscent of tunes by The Beatles, Wings, and Paul McCartney

“She’s Leaving Home” isn’t one of the band’s more famous tunes, but it typifies a lot of Paul’s most prominent musical attributes. It’s a ballad and Paul is more known for ballads than any other member of the band. It also features his trademark sentimentality.

But the tune also has, in Paul’s own words, some sleaze. From the winking sexuality of “A Hard Day’s Night” to the raunchiness of Wings’ “Hi, Hi, Hi” to the slurred profanities of “Fuh You,” Paul really embraces burlesque humor. Given his style of humor, Paul could have written the famous “wink wink nudge nudge” sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

How ‘She’s Leaving Home’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’ performed on the pop charts

“She’s Leaving Home” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The song’s parent album, Sgt. Pepper, was No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks. Sgt. Pepper stayed on the chart for a total of 233 weeks. Aside from Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper was The Beatles’ most successful studio record in the United States. Fascinatingly, neither record was as popular as the compilation 1, which includes the Fab Four’s No. 1 hits.

According to The Official Charts Company, “She’s Leaving Home” did not make any commercial impact in the United Kingdom either. Sgt. Pepper was No. 1 in the U.K. for 28 weeks, staying on the chart for 277 weeks in its initial run. Upon rerelease, it hit No. 3 and lasted another 16 weeks on the chart. Interestingly, Sgt. Pepper was The Beatles’ biggest album in the U.K. but not the U.S.

“She’s Leaving Home” is pure Paul and that’s what makes it so great.