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Eagles - "Witchy Woman"




"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 No. 9 on the Billboard pop singles chart.


The inspiration for the title and lyrics about a seductive enchantress 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. According to Henley, he was suffering from flu with a very high fever and become semi-delirious, and every time the fever subsided, he would continue to read a book on the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, and the character in the song would be a mix of Zelda Fitzgerald "along with amorphous images of girls [he] had met at the Whisky and the Troubadour".





Zelda, the muse behind her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald, was known as a wild, bewitching and mesmerizing "Flapper" of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, and is sometimes thought to be the model for the character of Daisy Buchanan in his novel, The Great Gatsby. In "Witchy Woman", the line "She drove herself to madness with the silver spoon" may be 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.








Lyrics


Raven hair and ruby lips

Sparks fly from her fingertips

Echoed voices in the night

She's a restless spirit on an endless flight


Woo hoo witchy woman,

See how high she flies

Woo hoo witchy woman

She got the moon in her eye


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


Woo hoo witchy woman

See how high she flies

Woo hoo witchy woman

She got the moon in her eye


Well, I know you want a lover,

Let me tell you, brother,

She's been sleeping in the Devil's bed.


And there's some rumors going round

Someone's underground

She can rock you in the nighttime

'Til your skin turns red


Woo hoo witchy woman

See how high she flies

Woo hoo witchy woman

She got the moon in her eye


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