‘Woman Don’t You Cry For Me’ is the opening song on George Harrison’s seventh solo album Thirty Three & ⅓.
Although Harrison recalled starting writing it in Sweden in 1968, it was likely to have been composed in Denmark the following year. Harrison performed with Delaney for three consecutive nights on 10, 11, and 12 December 1969, after which he left the tour.
‘Woman Don’t You Cry For Me’ is in Open E and basically written for bottle-neck guitar. It was started around 1968 in Gothenburg, Sweden, when I was on the road with Delaney and Bonnie and Eric Clapton. We were on a tour of Europe and they had released their second record Coming Home. Delaney handed me a bottle-neck slide and asked me to play a line which Dave Mason had played on the record. I had not tried slide before so I started at that time to play with the bottle-neck and that was how ‘Woman Don’t You Cry For Me’ came about and I somehow think Delaney might have suggested the title.It almost went on All Things Must Pass but didn’t actually happen until the 33⅓ album.
I Me Mine
‘Woman Don’t You Cry for Me’ was the b-side of the UK single ‘It’s What You Value’. The third single issued from Thirty Three & ⅓, it was released on 31 May 1977 but failed to chart.
In October 2011 an early take of ‘Woman Don’t You Cry for Me’ was included on the bonus CD with the UK edition of the Martin Scorsese documentary George Harrison: Living In The Material World. It was also included on the 2012 album Early Takes Volume 1.
