The Philosophy of Modern Song – Witchy Woman

This article is part of our series looking at Dylan’s book “The Philosophy of Modern Song”.

By Tony Attwood

“A certain girl is a song” by Ernie K-Doe who recorded “Mother in Law” was the song I looked at in the last article in this series.

Now I do know that Bob didn’t actually mention Mother in Law in his “Philosophy” but instead picked upon “A Certain Girl”, which was not a hit – and which does not seem to exist as a recording on the internet.   If you know of a recording on line please do write in and give us all the link.

But I wanted to take a listen once more to K-Doe’s one and only hit before moving on to the song that Bob actually did cover from this artist.  It’s a short song – you can find it here on the internet – and if you have any thoughts as to why Bob chose this song, again I’d love you to write in and tell me – and anyone else reading this series.

It is a typical 1950s slow rock song with a constantly repeated bass note sung to the word “No” throughout the song.  In fact it is the antithesis of Bob songs – so I am not at all sure why Bob wanted to include it – but include it he did.   And to an extent, I wish he hadn’t because having listened to it, I can’t get it out of my head.  And really, I don’t like it at all!

So, moving on quickly, we come to the Eagles with Witchy Woman from 1972.   This is a much more melodic piece and one can appreciate why that might be included in Bob’s selection for his post-doctorate book.  For this song is built around an entertaining melody and some very unusual lyrics.  Just consider the first verses…

Raven hair and ruby lips
Sparks fly from her fingertips
Echoed voices in the night
She's a restless spirit on an endless flight

She held me spellbound in the night 
Dancing shadows and firelight
Crazy laughter in another room
And she drove herself to madness with a silver spoon

A central theme of the song is that the woman “has the moon in her eye”, and although the length of the song comes from a fair amount of singing “woo-woo,” the point is that this is the antithesis of what most songs about women are all about.

Normally, if you think of this theme that so dominates popular music, the songs are about how much the singer loves the woman or maybe about how much she has hurt him by ending the affair.  But here this song is about a woman who is not only a witch, but also completely mad – something that is a very unusual topic for a rock song.

So we have a really interesting melody, a perfect production of the sound, and lyrics the likes of which I have never come across before.

I think Bob was attracted by the notion of a song about a witch.  I have oft noted before that three subjects dominate the lyrics of popular music: love, lost love and dance.   But this song, by being about a woman who appears to be a witch, is quite different.

Now of course, it is possible to interpret the song to say that she is a witch, but she has such an allure that she attracts men as if she were a witch.  OK that might be the meaning, but even so, this song does take us into new territory, and I imagine that is why Bob selected it.

According to Wikipedia, the inspiration for the lyrics “came from a number of women, although Henley had one particular woman in mind – Zelda Fitzgerald, whose biography he was reading while writing the song.”   We might also note that Bob was apparently reading the book while suffering from a high fever, which might well have included how he interpreted the work.

There is a fair bit of speculation about how the image of the woman crept into the song on the Wiki article on the song where the composer confesses to the fact that he combined images of a number of women he knew into the chantress that he concocted for the lyrics here.

But however the song was created, it does show just how far by this time (1972) many songwriters had moved away from the “moon” and “June” type of lyrics, and indeed much of this transformation of pop and rock lyris can be put down to the lyrics Dylan produced in the 1960s which removed themselves totally from the tradition “love, lost love and dance” topics of previous days – something Dylan himself was partially responsible for of course.