She's Coming Back

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You may recognize these lyrics from Sir Paulie and the late great Johnnie but you may not know where they could go.

She's Leaving Home:
Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside she is free
She (We gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband 'Daddy our baby's gone
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?'

She (We never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
Home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)

Friday morning at nine o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade

She (What did we do that was wrong)
Is having (We didn't know it was wrong)
Fun (Fun is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years (Bye bye)

She's leaving home
Bye bye

OK, you’ve sung along and hummed along and remembrance of that wonderful carefree hippy drippy days when sunshine and butterflies and wandering into adventures filled your thoughts, but not me.

Back in the early 70’s I decided to take the non-concept album that was “THE” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and write it to the standards…. Or should I say perhaps values I understood.

So I rewrote the entire album.

Some of it is pretty perverted (warning to the young readers) so it says something about me, but don’t hold that against me. Remember this was the 70’s. This was the time of anti-war, women’s lib, black panthers, and the KKK running rampant. Most of the Kennedys had been shot and they were the hope of the future, then the soldiers started shooting us. Being married and not knowing why with a house and a car and a job and trying to figure out what the future held, so I started expressing myself through music.

My “Mansland” at that time was the basement, so with a Hagstrom triple pickup hollow body electric and a Ovation acoustic and a Vox bass and a Frafisa organ plugged into a Fender bandmaster amp, I started rewriting the wonderful sweet Beatle tunes into a indescribable mess of words wrapped around a warped sense of time and place.

The results, with some assistance from cases of Heineken beer, were: “Private Salt’s Homely Farts Rubber Band”. Sure, not a unique title, but it worked for me. I was probably inspired by Frank Zappa’s “We’re only in it for the Money” or some other cynicism approach to this faded dream that life would be full of glowing dreams and poetry full of bliss only to find reality was a five day work week, paying bills, and living with someone who you didn’t expect to be living with for so long.

If the reality of the future may have been true, the song might have sounded like this:

She’s Coming Back

Sunday morning at 1:15 as she steps inside

Silently closing the big front door

Leaving her date that kept asking for more

She goes downstairs to her bedroom clutching her underwear

Counting the money she’d made that night

Drinking more till she is tight.

She (we gave her all of our dough)

Is coming (gave her so much of our dough)

Back (we gave her dough, but still she won’t go)

She’s coming back, oh no

Papa grunts as his wife struggles into her pantyhose.

Picks up the clothes scattered here and there

Stumbles over trash at the top of the stairs

And falls down and calls to her husband,

“Howard, I did it again….

This time I think that I broke my knee.

What does this happen to me?”

 She (we always thought of ourselves)

Is Coming (tried just to think of ourselves)

Back (we worked real hard just to get her to leave)

She’s coming back, oh no

Sunday evening at 5 o’clock she is out again

Down at the bar where she deals her trade

Wanting to spend the money she made.

She (where did we go that was wrong?)

Is Coming (we never tried to go wrong)

Back (back with more money than we’ve ever seen)

Using her body to commit something naughty and who knows what

She’s coming back, oh no

I had written before about taking a song apart and look at the lyrics, so don’t ponder this too much. It was over three decades ago but holds true to today. I’ve never been an empty nester, but I did return to my parent’s home for a while and understand the difference in their values and the stress I must have put on them.

Sometimes things don’t work out as planned.