Eagles - Witchy Woman (1972)

Witchy Woman is a song written by Don Henley and Bernie Leadon, and recorded by the American rock band Eagles. Released as the second single from the band's debut album Eagles, it reached #9 on the Billboard Pop singles chart and is the only single from the album to feature Henley on lead vocals.

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"Witchy Woman" was started by guitarist Bernie Leadon who wrote it while he was a member of The Flying Burrito Brothers. Upon joining the Eagles, Bernie and Don Henley completed writing the song in the signature Eagles style and it was one of the first songs Henley wrote for the Eagles. While the inspiration for the title and lyrics was based on various women they had met and remembered as seductive enchantresses, Henley had Zelda Fitzgerald particularly in mind after reading her biography. The muse and sometimes genius behind her well-published author husband F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda was known as wild, bewitching and mesmerizing and was the quintessential "Flapper", as her husband dubbed her, of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. In his novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald embodies Zelda's uninhibited and reckless personality in the character of Daisy Buchanan. Theories and speculation on Zelda's behavior were widespread, with lyrics in "Witchy Woman" referring to Zelda's partying excesses being detrimental to her psyche: "She drove herself to madness with the silver spoon", is a reference to Zelda's time in a mental institution and the special slotted silver spoon used to dissolve sugar cubes with Absinthe, the popular 1920s alcoholic beverage distilled from the wormwood tree and called "the green fairy" for sometimes inducing hallucinations. The song was conceived while Don Henley was living in an old house near the Hollywood Bowl, with his flat mate, Henry Vine (aka 'Blitz').