Songfacts®:

• "Spanish Moon" was written and sung by guitarist Lowell George, who was a creative powerhouse in the early years of Little Feat. The song is about a fictional place called the Spanish Moon - a seedy club with whiskey and bad cocaine, but a girl singer that made it worth it. There are many dangers at the Spanish Moon, but the ones likely to do you in are the women.
• Lowell George was an excellent storyteller and created the Spanish Moon from his imagination, but he lived through the vices he describes in the song, especially cocaine. Around this time, his addictions were starting to overpower him, his health started failing, and he developed hepatitis. Feats Don't Fail Me Now, which includes this song, was the last Little Feat album where he was clearly the leader; his contributions to the band slowly tailed off, and in 1979 he released a solo album. While on tour supporting it, he died of a heart attack at 34.
• "Spanish Moon" is the only Little Feat song produced by Van Dyke Parks, famous for his work with The Beach Boys. Parks was friends with Lowell George, who wanted him to produce the Feats Don't Fail Me Now album. The band, though, was struggling financially and held on a tight leash by their record company, Warner Bros., which wasn't thrilled with Parks, known for blowing budgets quickly with his elaborate productions. They recorded "Spanish Moon" with Parks in the Sound Factory studios in Los Angeles, but after that recording, the band members dispersed to work as sidemen so they could earn a living: George went to New Orleans to work on Robert Palmer's album; keyboard player Bill Payne hooked on with The Doobie Brothers; and other members recorded for the reggae star Johnny Nash.
  
  The band pulled back together when one of their managers got them cheap studio time at a studio in Maryland that had just opened up. They completed the album there and got some money in their pockets when it did well. "Spanish Moon" was released as a single and became one of their most popular songs.
• Like John Fogerty, Lowell George was from Southern California but could make music that would make you think he was from Louisiana. "Spanish Moon" is a great example of his talent for swampy funk; Van Dyke Parks called it "vanilla grits."
• The Tower of Power horn section played on this track. "They were on the same label as us and I'd heard of them but had no idea what they sounded like," their sax player Emilio Castillo told Songfacts. "We walked into the session and met the producer, Van Dyke Parks, who was an extremely esoteric cat. One of the first things he said to us was: 'I want the horns on this track to sound the way it does when the cow pie hits the side of the barn.' We just looked at him in amazement and said, 'No problem.'
  
  He played us the track and I heard Lowell George singing for the first time along with that slow funk groove and it was mesmerizing. We were all immediately captivated by The Feats.
  
  In my opinion, the horn arrangement really took the track to another level. The introductory riff is priceless in that it sets the vibe for the whole song before you even hear the first verse and from there it just gets better and better with all these sneaky-sounding horn riffs appearing throughout the track. We wound up sitting in at live gigs with them later on and 'Spanish Moon' always brought the house down. ToP Horns played on several Little Feat albums but 'Spanish Moon' was always my favorite track.
• A live version appears on Little Feat's 1978 album Waiting for Columbus, recorded at four shows in London in 1977. It's one of the Little Feat songs Lowell George played on his ill-fated solo tour in 1979.
• Little Feat short-timer Fred White, half brother of Maurice White from Earth, Wind & Fire, played drums on this track. The band had parted ways with drummer Richie Hayward and brought White in to replace him. After a few months, they had second thoughts and brought Hayward back.