FAITH NO MORE RARITIES #5 | Spanish Eyes

Spanish Eyes was recorded during a session at Bill Gould's studio and is one of only a few songs featuring Dean Menta on guitar.

It was first released as a B-side on the single release of Ricochet and was later available on the 7" collectors box set of King For Day.... More recently it was made available on the compilation CD Midlife Crisis and the deluxe reissue of KFAD. 

Bill Gould | 1995

"The b-sides that we did were three cover songs that were actually recorded at my house. There's "The Joke" by the Bee Gees, there's a song by a band called The Brothers Four called "Greenfields", and "Spanish Eyes" by Al Martino! They all sound really good, I'm really into it! We were in this bar in Gwaum, god, it was so twisted! You see, Gwaum is like a rock in the middle of the ocean; they have like two million snakes per mile -- they have so many snakes that they have killed all the birds, they have no more birds in all of Gwaum. So, we're sitting in this bar and they have posters of hard-core porn videos all over the wall. It was a regular bar, and they had animal porn on the wall! And we're like, 'What the hell is this?!', and in the corner of the room they had this karaoke machine and they were all singing the words "I started a joke ..." and there was this bouncing ball so they could follow the words. The lyrics were so pathetic and depressing that we just said 'We have to do this song!' It's the most miserable song I ever heard in my life!' "

The original song was a huge hit for Italian American crooner Al Martino in 1965, a tune by Bert Kaempfert originally titled Moon Over Naples with added vocals. Martino was also  a well known as an actor, particularly for his role as singer Johnny Fontane in The Godfather.