Woman (Paul McCartney song)
Released 10 January 1966 (USA)
11 February 1966 (UK)
Format 7″ 45rpm
Recorded 1965
Genre Folk rock
Length 2:25
Label Capitol #5579 (USA)
Columbia (EMI) DB7834 (UK)
Songwriter(s) A side: Bernard Webb (Paul McCartney)
Under the Lennon–McCartney moniker, McCartney had written three previous Peter and Gordon singles (viz. “A World Without Love”, “Nobody I Know”, and “I Don’t Want to See You Again”). On this occasion, McCartney used the pseudonym Bernard Webb (though some Capitol pressings carry the name A. Smith instead) to see if the song would be a success without the Lennon–McCartney credit. McCartney commented at a press conference in August 1966, “People come up to them and say, ‘Ah, we see you’re just getting in on the Lennon–McCartney bandwagon’. That’s why they did that one with our names not on it…because everyone sort of thinks that’s the [only] reason they get hits. It’s not true, really.”
However, the publishing credit was Lennon and McCartney’s company Northern Songs, and according to Gordon Waller it took only two weeks’ time for the song’s real pedigree to be revealed, as the first review of the record said, “This Bernard Webb has an amazing talent. Could even be Paul McCartney!” “Woman” would be overtly introduced as written by McCartney when Peter and Gordon performed the song on the 11 April 1966 broadcast of the US TV show Hullabaloo.
Although Peter & Gordon had several hits which charted higher than “Woman”, Gordon Waller would cite “Woman” as the ultimate Peter and Gordon track and his personal favourite: (quote) “You can sing it without any music, you can sing it with one guitar, you can sing it with a band, or you can sing it with a bloody orchestra. I think it envelops a lot of our other songs from that period, which were basically all love songs.”
McCartney gave a casual performance of the song on piano during the Beatles Get Back sessions in January 1969. It can be heard on bootleg recordings.
The 1981 single “Woman” by John Lennon, is a different song. This is the only example of John Lennon and Paul McCartney each separately writing a different song with the same title.
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