Recording "Woman"

Paul McCartney had already given three songs to Peter and Gordon — “A World Without Love”, “Nobody I Know”, and “I Don’t Want to See You Again”. The duo consisted of Peter Asher (the brother of Paul’s girlfriend at the time, Jane Asher) and Gordon Waller.

For their next single, Paul wrote them another song, “Woman“, which they recorded in December 1965. However, the song was published under the pseudonym “Bernard Webb” rather than the usual Lennon–McCartney credit. Paul wanted to see whether the song would succeed in the charts on its own merits, without the weight of his name attached.

You wrote ‘Woman’ for Peter and Gordon as BERNARD WEBB.

Paul McCartney: Well that was the first pseudonym I used for secrecy reasons. I was a bit annoyed that anything by Lennon-McCartney was being a hit, particularly by Peter and Gordon, and…I don’t know, I just got an attack of morals or something, but I felt it was a bit much that automatically having our name on something made it do well, and I wanted to see if I could get around it. So I asked our music publisher, Dick James, if I could use a pseudonym. He was a bit jittery – “It sells better if your name’s on it!” – so I said “Yes but Dick, look, you’ve got all that money, you’ve got ‘Yesterday’, we’re doing great, I really am keen on seeing this happen”, so he gave in. Bernard Webb was the name I chose, and the nice thing was that shortly after that we went on tour to America and someone was holding up a big sign saying “Long live Bernard Webb”! I didn’t really mind when people found out. The release suggested to me that my name didn’t need to be on things – but then, it wasn’t as big a hit as some of their other singles so it sort of proved a point. I quite like the song, actually. People say to me now, “Is that song really yours?” because it doesn’t sound like one of mine.

In America, the credit was B Webb-A Smith.

I don’t know why that is – it may have been a contractual thing, or John might have caught onto the joke and taken a pseudonym too.

Paul McCartney – Interview with Club Sandwich N°62, Spring 1992

Paul had asked that “Woman” be released under a pseudonym, with the songwriting credit given to the imaginary “Bernard Webb.” The reason for doing this was that some of the press were suggesting that the Beatles’ stature had reached a point where anything with their name on it, or anything with a Beatle’s name on it, would inevitably be successful, regardless of its intrinsic merit and quality. And I think this pissed Paul off a bit, because nobody likes to be thought of as resting on his laurels or relying on his name for success. The “Bernard Webb” deception worked for about three or four weeks before somebody found out that it was really Paul, and the cat was out of the bag, but in truth, “Woman” became a big hit very quickly, so even those few weeks were enough to prove that the success of the song did not depend upon the record having Paul’s name on it.

Peter Asher – From “The Beatles from A to Zed“, 2019

Session activities

1. Woman

   Written by Paul McCartney

   Recording

Staff

Musicians on "Woman"