Like so many popular songs of the ’60s (and pretty much every other decade), “Walk Away Renée” by the Left Banke was inspired by young, unrequited love. The backstory, however, might be a little messier than some, as it involves one band member’s hopeless crush on another’s girlfriend.
When the Left Banke formed in New York City in 1965, the members were all still teenagers, influenced by the Beatles and other British Invasion bands of the time. Sometimes, when they first started playing together, bassist Tom Finn would bring his girlfriend, Renée Fladen, to rehearsals. That was all it took for keyboard player/songwriter Michael Brown to fall head over heels for the young woman.
“A bunch of teens got an apartment together around Tin Pan Alley, in the Broadway area, and Renée lived there part time when she wasn’t living with her mother,” Finn explained in an interview with Dawn Eden.
“Most of the kids were like half runaways in those days, and there was a ‘crash pad’ there, as we used to call it,” Finn continued. “I guess I brought her to the studio one day were Michael met her and fell in love with her.”
Fladen was just a teenager, too, but Finn remembered her as being particularly mature for her age.
“For a kid of 16 or 17 she was just sort of free and liberal and open minded, sexy, everything, you know? She was just very different for that time, so she just bowled Mike over. I was brokenhearted when she lost interest in me after a while,” he admitted.
At just 16 years old, Brown wrote “Walk Away Renée” about Fladen, in addition to two other songs.
“Around that time, maybe within another month he wrote ‘Pretty Ballerina’ about her, even though she wasn’t a ballerina, and ‘She May Call You Up’ was written on the same day, or maybe the same week, as ‘Pretty Ballerina,’ and he never mentioned at the time that they were about her,” Finn said.
When it came time for Brown to record his harpsichord part for “Walk Away Renée,” Fladen showed up at the studio…much to his horror.
“My hands were shaking when I tried to play, because she was right there in the control room,” Brown said later, per Far Out. “There was no way I could do it with her around, so I came back and did it later.”
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
Released in July 1966 as the Left Banke’s debut single, “Walk Away Renée” went all the way to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100; later that year, “Pretty Ballerina” peaked at #15. (The Four Tops also had a hit with their cover of the song.)
A decade later, in 1976, another band had a career-defining hit with a song inspired by “Walk Away Renée.” As late Boston frontman Tom Scholz once explained, the wistful melancholy of the tune influenced “More Than a Feeling.”
“There was another song out that, whenever I heard it, caused me to pine miserably for this particular girl. That song was called ‘Walk Away Renée’ by The Left Banke,” Scholz said.
Of course, as any classic rock fan knows, in “More Than a Feeling,” it’s Marianne who walks away…following in Renée’s footsteps, as it turns out.
Related: 1977 Classic Rock Hit With Soaring Guitars and ‘Dazzling’ Harmonies Was Recorded in a Basement
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