"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