Friday morning at nine o’clock she is far away Waiting to keep the appointment she made Meeting a man from the motor trade.
This has never been very clear to me. First, “motor trade” isn’t AFAIK a term used in American English, and I don’t know what the connotations are in British English. I’ve had the idea that he was someone who was going to help the runaway with transportation, although it seems unlikely that a teenaged runaway would be able to afford to buy a car. I had a vague idea he was a broker in bus tickets or something like that.
I see that other people have had the idea that he was her lover with whom she was running away, or that “man from the motor trade” is a British euphemism for an abortionist, although apparently George Harrison has debunked the latter interpretation. The man whom Melanie Coe, the inspiration for the song, ran away with was a croupier and had indeed formerly worked in the car business, but this is apparently a coincidence since it was unknown to Lennon and McCartney when they wrote the song.
Harrison also said “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’?” But this doesn’t quite ring true to me; it seems a bit odd to describe such a liaison as an “appointment”, or that she’d be “waiting” for such a character.
I first heard that song as a very young child and I always assumed it was a car salesman. Why wouldn’t someone make an appointment to meet a car salesman to look at cars? You can do that today.
She ran away from home, presumably taking nothing with her. How could she buy a car? (The real Melanie Coe owned a car which she left behind.) I mean, maybe that is what was intended, but it isn’t very consistent with the story, and it contradicts what Harrison said.
There’s quite a bit of discussion from the Beatles themselves here:
Many reviewers revealed the “man from the motor trade” to be an actual person. Paul stated, “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. 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’?’ Nice plush interior, that’s how you pulled birds. So it was just a little bit of sleaze.” In his book “The Lyrics,” Paul adds: "I realize now that you can easily imagine a 'man from the motor trade ’ showing up in a Philip Larkin poem with all those travelling salesmen. I she meeting a man from the motor trade to buy a car of for a romantic liaison? It’s left wide open.”
She had money in a bank account. She qualified for a loan. He was helping her out by giving her a car. She was meeting him for something having nothing to do with his profession.
Much like in the U.S., in the UK at that time, women generally couldn’t get credit, a loan, or even a bank account without a man (e.g., a husband or father) as a co-signator. That didn’t change until 1975.
Back to the song: I never thought much about the lyric. I agree that it was probably mostly chosen for the rhyme and meter, rather than having a specific, intentional meaning.
Plus …
In terms of the narrative, completely ignoring meter and rhyme, the US vernacular “used car salesman” fit in real nicely with the larger trope of a woman running away into uncertain prospects and probably making a bad decision or three along the way. She’s off on her own and her first move is to connect with a sleazy untrustworthy guy. For what? Who knows; she’ll figure that out when she gets there. The whole thing has a “make it up as she goes along” feel.
That was my understanding when the song first came out. Lonely unsophisticated girl falls for flashy older man and can’t see the potential trouble - it might well be the plot of many a “British New Wave” movie of the time.
I have always assumed that the man from the motor trade was the reason for and the one who she ran away with. I never thought about her probably looking to buy a car, because I thought the girl was under 18 and wasn’t already allowed to drive a car. So how old was she supposed to be, and what was the legal age for driving in Britain in 1967?
My take. He was the guy she was running way with, and “motor trade” is just McCartney filling in spaces in the lyrics with stuff he’ll fix later but never gets around to. I mean, it makes sense, if a bit vague, as a job, but the meter and rhyme is more important. (I always thought he was a mechanic it a dealership. I picture him meeting her in his beater car and blue coverall, with his name on the breast and a red shop rag hanging out his back pocket.)
I never really liked the situation. They write a song about some girl that’s just so unhappy because her parents, what, buy her too much stuff? Sure, lots of teenagers hate their parents for stupid reasons, but the song seems to take her side. Like, of course she’s making the right decision.
I think later she realized she made the wrong decision, and that her parents were right, but she could never admit to them. So she got a boring if stable job, and a string of nothing romances that all end too soon. (“Everyday she takes her morning bath, she wets her hair/wraps a towel around her as she’s heading for the bedroom chair/it’s just another day”)
But never could find a husband, so she died lonely in the church and was buried along with her name, but nobody came.
