Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand - Lyrics and Music

Lyrics and Music

Unlike many Who songs from the 1960s, "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand" recalls the typical pop song convention of praising a pretty girl but does not provide any description of her appearance, focusing instead on Mary Anne's hand tremor. The reason for the shaking is not clear: Mary Anne may have some affliction or else the song may be, as Chris Charlesworth describes it, The Who's "second great song about masturbation" (after the band's 1967 single "Pictures of Lily"): Steve Grantley and Alan Parker suggest that the reason can be inferred from the line "What they've done to a man, those shaky hands". Rolling Stone praised the "barely-beneath-the-surface humor of the lyric".

The song has a melody described by Allmusic's Mark Deming as "charming" and "a tune you couldn't forget even if you tried". Author John Atkins describes the song as a "delightful pop song in the Everly Brothers mold", while Charlesworth suggests that, regardless of the lyrics, the song "would have been a winner on melody alone". Instrumentation on the version of the song on The Who Sell Out includes Latin-style acoustic guitar from Townshend and drum breaks by Keith Moon. Grantley and Parker describe the vocals as a cross between The Mamas and the Papas and Simon and Garfunkel.

The version of the song on The Who Sell Out was recorded at De Lane Lea Studios on 24 October 1967. Another version was recorded at Mirasound Studios in New York using electric guitar rather than acoustic guitar and featuring an organ solo from Al Kooper. This version is incorrectly stated as being the B-side of "I Can See For Miles" in the liner notes of the remastered The Who Sell Out, when in fact the mono version without organ solo was on the B-side. Grantley and Parker describe this version as having a "gentle atmosphere". On this version Roger Daltrey employs a "shaky" tremolo on the word "shaky". A mono mix of the electric version of the song was used as the B-side of the "I Can See for Miles" single in the US and Australia. A stereo mix of this version was also included on the 1998 remastered version of the Odds and Sods album.