Peter and Gordon: "Woman"

April 4, 1966 (1 week)

With two number one hits along with a cover of one of their album cuts doing similar business, 1966 was already yet another one of the good years for The Beatles. Just about everything they touched topped the charts while the critical acclaim only seemed to grow. While artistic growth and commercial success arcast e often in conflict for many musicians, no one has ever managed to combine the two as well as the Fab Four — and they even managed to do so for an extended period of time.

While John Lennon and Paul McCartney were their era's dominant songwriting team, they weren't quite as deft when it came to supplying hits for others. Yes, they did provide large smashes for the likes of Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and Peter and Gordon but these were clearly cast offs that they had no interest in themselves. Plus, tracks like "Bad to Me" and, in particular, "World Without Love" weren't even suited to them. The group's punishing schedule of recording deadlines, concert dates, movie work and promotional commitments left little time for them to be considering how to properly tailor Lennon-McCartney originals to the people who relied on their songwriting prowess.

Meanwhile, Peter Asher and Gordon Waller were beginning to feel the pinch due to their connection to The Beatles. "World Without Love" had given them a global smash but their modest talents didn't allow for much beyond more of the same. Paul McCartney kept them in adequate material but the law of diminishing returns had already begun to set in. Even with that invaluable Lennon-McCartney stamp, their chart positions had begun to slip somewhat.

Perhaps with all this in mind, McCartney had the idea to have their names removed from the credits for Peter and Gordon's next single "Woman". Instead, it was credited to one 'Bernard Webb'. The song's composer wanted to see how it would perform free of The Beatles. Yeah, handing it over to an already established act, albeit one whose prominence was beginning to fade, might not have been the most accurate way of assessing it (he should've sought out a relatively obscure Canadian, Australian or Kiwi act or perhaps a hopeless Eurovision Song Contest entry from Austria or Denmark) but at least he was able to compare how P&G did with and without that formidable talisman.

So, about that. Everyone quickly found out the truth. This Bernard Webb fellow had been McCartney all along and no one was denying it. Needing another hit, I don't suppose Asher and Waller appreciated playing along with Macca's ruse and even if they did, the pair's management and record label weren't about to be so understanding in accommodating a songwriter's desire to test out a sociological experiment — and who can blame them?

The backstory of "Woman" is of some interest which is more than can be said for the record itself. The most generous account would be to say that it may have set McCartney on the path towards the baroque pop of his Revolver and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band contributions but even that's pushing it. (He almost certainly would have gone that way regardless of this) Speaking of precedents, it also displays worrying signs of its composer's eventual creative slump in the early seventies. (But, again, he would have experienced this phase either way) So, let's just conclude by saying it's a trite time-waster of a single that proves once and for all that Lennon and McCartney never mastered the art of composing for anyone other than themselves.

Score: 3