Released November 1980 Label Arista | Length 3:12 | |
Recorded Late 1979 - Mid 1980
Acousti Studio, Paris Genre Rock , Progressive Rock Writer(s) Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson | ||
"Snake Eyes" is a song by British progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project off their 1980 album The Turn of a Friendly Card, where it appears as the second part of the title suite. The song was written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson, and features Chris Rainbow on lead vocals. The lyrics are from the perspective of a compulsive gambler playing craps, who doesn't intend to stop until he wins.
In an interview, Eric Woolfson said of the song, "I've often, in common with many other writers, been inspired at the oddest moments. And, one of the things that did start the creative juices flowing was actually sitting in casinos in Monte Carlo, with the din going on of people with machines, people talking, people moving about, and all the hustle and bustle that goes on there[...] The joke about the lyric of "Snake Eyes" is that he's betting on something that you can't possibly win, because snake eyes is a bet which loses if seven or eleven comes up, and seven or eleven is a bet which loses if snake eyes comes up. So he's yelling `Snake Eyes! Seven, eleven!', he wants any one of the three, and any of the three is gonna wipe him out."