An eye for an eye: what the story behind this song?

[Shadow]

Hi all! Maurizio Graf made the song occhio per occhio (or an eye for an eye) for FAFDM. Does anybody have more info on this? Was it created for the movie or just afterwards using the music for the movie? If it was created for the movie, why was it decided not to use it, etc??

Cheers,

Shadow

[dave jenkins]

This is what the SL Encyclopedia sez:

“Eye For An Eye”/ “Occhio per occhio” (Gaspari-Nohra-Morricone) Tie-in single (7” vinyl ARC AN 4083) released in Italy in 1967 to take advantage of the popularity of For a Few Dollars More, it used Morricone’s main theme as the setting for some impassioned crooning by Maurizio Graf . The A-side English version was in stereo, the B-side was in Italian mono. Currently available on the expanded edition of the Italian soundtrack CD (GDM 2038). The English lyrics are by M.G. Gaspari and Audrey Stainton Nohra.

Sounds to me like the song was manufactured after the fact. Single and album tie-ins were popular with entertainment companies at the time: it was a way to get punters to put up money twice, once for the film, and once for the record. Often a production would squeeze in a number in the middle of the action to spotlight the song (a character would sing it in a club or whatever), but sometimes a film's title music would do, especially if it had lyrics. The movie would promote the single and vice versa. Of course, in some films it was impractical to get a song with lyrics into the production. I think in the case of FAFDM the film was so popular in Italy that the media people couldn't resist trying to milk it for extra scratch. FAFDM came out in 1965, but the single didn't appear until two years later: I'm guessing the producers didn't expect the film to be so popular, and when it was, they had to scramble to put something together so they could continue to bilk the public.

[Shadow]

Hello DJ,

Thank you for the informative reply. It sure sounds like they just took an instrumental form the movie and hastily put some words to it.
It's now clear to me that there never was an intention (by Leone) to actually use a song in the movie.

Shadow

[Groggy]

Surely that isn't the Main Theme but Sixty Seconds for What?

[dave jenkins]

I guess it depends how you define "main" theme. It's not the title theme, obviously, but it is one of the two themes that recurs throughout the film and it ends up as part of the music of the climax. We could count the cues and decide which is the main one based on frequency, I suppose. But maybe it's better, and less confusing, to just refer to the music behind "Eye For an Eye" as one of Morricone's themes from the film.