There are a great deal more classic rock songs about witches than there are about wizards. And most of these are written and performed by men. Make of this what you will. There are probably several academic papers on the subject. We’re more concerned with the quality of the songs here.
1. Black Sabbath 'The Wizard' (1970)
The second track on Black Sabbath’s marvellous debut album, 'The Wizard' was released as the B-side of 'Paranoid' in 1970. Lyricist/bassist Geezer Butler has said that it was influenced by Gandalf from Lord of the Rings (so it made it into our list of greatest Tolkien-inspired songs), but it’s also been claimed that the song was written about the band’s drug dealer. It’s a rare example of Ozzy Osbourne playing harmonica, which is perhaps why the song was performed so rarely live despite its popularity.
2. Uriah Heep: 'The Wizard' (1972)
Another early ‘70s song about a wizard, this one was the semi-acoustic first single from Heep’s great 1972 album Demons and Wizards. It’s about a benign, hippyish 'wizard of a thousand kings' who’s met by a wanderer in the mountains and tells him: 'Everybody’s got to be happy/Everyone should sing/For we know the joy of life/Peace and love can bring'. It’s sung by original Heep vocalist David Byron, who shows off his impressive falsetto.
3. Fleetwood Mac: 'Rhiannon' (1975)
A song about a Welsh witch written with all the authenticity that a performer from Phoenix, Arizona can muster, Stevie Nicks’s 'Rhiannon' was included on Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album and became one of the band’s most popular compositions. Nicks apparently wrote the song after reading Triad: A Novel of the Supernatural by American author Mary Bartlet Leader. Unlike the other songs on the album, it reportedly tool several takes to get right, but was obviously worth it.
4. Iron Maiden: 'The Alchemist' (2010)
Like many of Steve Harris’s Maiden songs, this track from 2010’s The Final Frontier concerns a real historical figure: in this case English occultist and alchemist John Dee, who was an advisor to Elizabeth I and also served as her court astronomer. Of course, the boundaries between science and magic were less clearly defined back then, but it’s probably fair to say that Dee didn’t see himself as a wizard - although contemporary account seem to suggest he certainly looked like one.
The shortest song on an album of Maiden epics, 'The Alchemist' might be a fairly minor track which doesn’t appear to have been played live, but it’s suitably old-school with trademark twin harmony guitars and remains a hidden gem.
5. Eagles: 'Witchy Woman' (1972)
The Eagles' first top ten single (number 9 on the US Billboard chart in 1972), and follow-up to their debut 'Take It Easy', is a song about an enchantress written by Don Henley and Bernie Leadon. It’s based in part upon the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, whose biography (by Nancy Mitford) Henley was reading while writing the song.
Fitzgerald wasn’t the only inspiration, though. Henley has also spoken about the occultist roommate of a girl he was going out with at the time. What’s more, he was delirious with fever, which fed into the lyrics. This heady mix produced a suitably spellbinding song that grips the listener from its opening lines: 'Raven hair and ruby lips/Sparks fly from her fingertips'.
6. Donovan: 'Season of the Witch' (1967)
The Zelig of sixties pop, Donovan Leitch’s 1967 hit is a fabulous slice of dark psychedelia that captured perfectly the paranoid side of the spirit of the times: 'Beatniks are out to make it rich/Oh no, must be the season of the witch'. It’s been claimed that Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and (fabled occultist) Jimmy Page both play on the track, but no evidence of this has ever been produced.
The song itself doesn’t seem to be about a witch, but it’s since become a Halloween staple and its place in popular culture was renewed when it was used as the theme tune to series two of the TV historical fantasy drama Britannia.
7. AC/DC: 'Witch’s Spell' (2020)
AC/DC have never been afraid of a good old-fashioned rock cliché. The only surprise about 'Witch’s Spell' is that it tool them until 2020’s Power Up album to write a song about a witch. It apparently concerns an unfortunate chap who becomes addicted to having his fortune told and is eager to warn others about becoming 'caught in a witch’s spell' – not least because the pointy-hatted one is 'like a card playin' shark who takes the whole lot'. 'Crystal balls and an almanac/She gonna take you to hell and back,' listeners are warned.
8. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: 'I Put a Spell on You' (1956)
Jalacy Hawkins was the original shock rocker, whose distinctive booming operatic vocals and extensive use of spooky stage props was truly revolutionary back in the late Fifties and early Sixties. His biggest hit, the oft-covered (notably by Nina Simone and Creedence Clearwater Revival) 'I Put a Spell On You', was performed live with full OTT comic horror.
It went like this. The curtain would open, to reveal a coffin onstage. As the music started up, the lid slowly opens to reveal Screamin’ Jay singing – what else? – 'I Put a Spell on You'.
9. Redbone: 'The Witch Queen of New Orleans' (1971)
A song about voodoo which reached number two in the UK singles chart back in 1971 and was included on the band’s third album, Message from a Drum. Redbone were a Native American rock band formed in the late 1960s and named after the Louisiana term for a mixed-race person.
They often addressed their heritage in song, and the evocative 'Witch Queen of New Orleans' is a splendid slice of swamp rock about a real-life practitioner named Marie Laveau. It was only kept off the top of the UK chart by Rod Stewart’s all-conquering 'Maggie May'.
10. Cream: 'Strange Brew' (1967)
This suitably mesmerising 1967 single from Cream's seminal Disraeli Gears album is, unusually, sung by Eric Clapton rather than Jack Bruce. The somewhat opaque lyrics are open to interpretation, with some claiming they’re a metaphor for drug addiction, others that it is simply a song about a ‘dangerous woman’. But the use of the words ‘witch’ and ‘demon’ allow us to claim the song for our purposes here.
11. Santana: 'Black Magic Woman' (1970)
It was written by the late, great Peter Green for the British blues incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, but it's best known for the interpretation by keyboard player Greg Rolie on Santana's 1970 album Abraxas. 'Black Magic Woman' spins a tale of the temptation and enchantment of an unfortunate chap who is apparently powerless to resist. The eponymous enchantress intoxicates the singer with her allure, though it may also be simply a metaphor – which, as we have seen, was extremely popular at the time.
12. Marianne Faithfull: 'Witches’ Song' (1979)
'Shall we meet on the hilltop where the two roads meet/We will form the circle, hold our hands and chant.' The second song on Marianne Faithfull’s darkly brilliant 1979 comeback album Broken English centres on a coven of witches meeting to conduct a ceremony. Faithfull’s chanting of the lyrics gives the song a suitably spooky feel.
13. Jethro Tull: 'The Witch’s Promise' (1970)
The early seventies sure were peak witch when it came to songwriting. Released as a single in 1970, reaching number four in the UK chart, 'The Witch’s Promise' marked future prog rockers Tull’s shift from blues-rock to a more folky sound. It’s another tale of love and betrayal that benefits here from Ian Anderson’s rich and hunting lyrics concerning a somewhat selfish chap who’s enchanted by a witch.
14. Kate Bush: 'Waking the Witch' (1985)
One of Kate Bush’s weirdest songs (and that’s saying something) which appeared on the Hounds of Love album as part of the The Ninth Wave concept piece about a woman drowning after a shipwreck, 'Waking the Witch' seems to be an hallucinatory song in which the protagonist finds herself transported back to the Salem witch trials before eventually being plucked from both the past and the water.
15. Emperor: 'I Am the Black Wizards' (1994)
You’ve got to have at least one black metal song in a list like this. It’s the law. The members of Norwegians black metallers Emperor were still teenagers when they recorded 'I Am the Black Wizards', which appeared on their debut album In the Nightside Eclipse back in 1994, which perhaps explains why the lyrics don’t appear to make any sense. But it is, nonetheless, a suitably infernal racket that’s regarded as a genre classic.
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