Witchy Woman vs The Indians

Eagles - Witchy Woman (Link to "Live in Japan" video.)

They say that a guy who shines shoes for a living walks around all day, and notices nothing but shoes. Similarly, a musician listening to the radio hears nothing but his instrument of choice. I'm what some call a "Rhythm guitarist", so I always listen for the John Lennon parts and the Keith Richards chords (note: on most Stones records, Keef clips the big E string of his guitar, and tunes the 5 strings remaining to an open G chord, as in the intro to "Honky Tonk Women").

 It's a peculiar way to go through life, I grant you, but ,on the bright side, it does make crappy pop singles more interesting to dissect. I was in that dreamy headspace when my beloved 70's station (Mesquite's KEOM, staffed entirely by high school students born 20 years after most of these records were made. Weird.) played  the first hit single by what I'm told is The Biggest Band in the History of Civilization, The Eagles. I'm pretty much in The Big Lebowski camp regarding the works of Henley, Frey,  Leadon, Schmidt, Felder, et. al., but the song came on, and I listened.

Witchy Woman. So, this broad not only has raven hair and ruby lips, but it is reported that sparks fly from her fingertips. This turd was a hit ten years prior to the birth of MTV, yet I dimly recollect seeing it in some sort of primeval rock video, featuring a singing drummer(!) who sported a 'fro like Bernie on Room 222. He later grew up to become Don Henley, Inc.

So. Oh yeah, the rhythm guitar part. It's a bright chord "Chink-chink"-ing  on beats two and four:

"Raaaa-ven (chink) hair (chink)

And ru (chink)-by lips (chink)"

       A precursor to The Great Reggae Scare of the Mid-Seventies (I Shot the Sheriff. Yeesh).

This insistent "chink"-ing runs like a thread through the entire song, all except for the hook. So now I'm committed to listening to this turkey, when a line worthy of Dylan hits me.

"Crazy laughter from another room

She drove herself to madness with a silver spoon"

You either get that, or you don't. I'm not gonna 'splain ya.

 So I was drawn in by a hypnotic rhythm guitar part, and by a lyric that gave me the shivers. Like Henley, I know about being a fish-out-of-water Texan in Hollywood, with its attendant silver-spoon-madness-induced laughter. A moment later, just as I'm rethinking my Anti-Witchy Woman Stance, things turn ugly. Mighty ugly. THE DUMBEST GODDAMN AMERICAN INDIAN GROOVE YOU EVER HEARD kicks in. I say the dumbest ever, assuming you never heard "Cherokee People" by Paul Revere and the Raiders, or the soundtrack to a Roy Rogers serial western.

Kee-rist! The early 1970's was absolutely the end of the 250-year epoch of goofing on Indians. I grew up in a Dallas suburb next to something called "The Reservation", so-called because of streets called Arapaho, Cherokee, Mohawk, Seminole, and Commanche. Your classic White Man Move: Steal the real estate, chop down the trees, then name streets after them. And not just streets: The Washington Redskins. Think deeply about that one for a minute. Go ahead-I'll wait.

You back? Okay. The first I ever heard of taking a revisionist look at all this was the night goofy-ass Marlon Brando refused the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of don Vito Corleone. I (and all of America) watched with my jaw hanging open, as the announcer boomed out the winner, but, instead of Brando, up to the mic walked one Sacheen Littlefeather. She was, in my memory at least, dressed in traditional Indian princess garb, and she read a scripted complaint of the treatment of Indians in Hollywood. Wow. I mean WOW. Soon after, she appeared in a Playboy Pictorial which lives on in my mind seven presidents later. Remind me to Google her.

Just as Brando was first to the party with Method Acting, so he was ahead of the game on this deal, too. For it was a mere 15 years after Sacheen's Playboy spread that I worked on a lavish film produced by Robert Redford, no less, which was ultimately scuttled,  on grounds that the film's leading man contained insufficient quantity of Cherokee blood to satisfactorily portray the hero, Jim Chee. One minute, old Jewish comedians comprise the Heckahwee  Tribe on F-Troop (sample dialogue:"Where the Heckahwee?"),

 and the next minute, an actor has to submit to DNA profiling to play "Cowboys and Indians" in moving pictures.

I haven't seen The Eagles live, but I'll bet you five bucks that  we'll see Henley in a Billy Preston afro again before you'd hear "Witchy Woman".  I bet he still cashes those royalty checks, though.