SONGFACTS
Randy Bachman started writing this song when he was waiting in the living room at the house of his date, Lorayne Stevenson. She was taking a long time getting ready so Bachman sat at the piano and wrote the beginning of this song. Lorayne - the girl he was waiting for - he later married (they were married for about 10 years and had six children together). Bachman claims the song took him just 15 minutes to write once he sat down with his bandmate Burton Cummings to put it together.

While doodling on the piano in the living room of Lorayne's parents' home, Randy - a guitarist and definitely not a pianist - innocently constructed unconventional piano fingerings for the opening Dm7 and Cmaj7 chords. His Guess Who collaborator Burton Cummings, a trained Royal Conservatory Of Music pianist, later complimented Randy for devising riffs that were technically wrong but sonically right for the emerging song.

The Guess Who had some big hits under their belt in their native Canada, but this song earned them international acclaim and a US record deal with RCA. They wrote the song at a time when they were gigging constantly, and also serving as the house band on a Canadian TV show called Let's Go, where they would play covers of hit songs. "These Eyes" was the culmination of their efforts, and it became their first Top 10 hit in the US. The next year, they had two US chart-toppers: "American Woman" and "No Sugar Tonight."

When they weren't touring, Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings would meet for songwriting sessions on Saturday mornings, and it was at one of these sessions that they completed the song. The band was still struggling at the time, and Cummings was still living with his mother, where these songwriting sessions took place. It turned out to be an enlivening songwriting environment, as the pair composed many of their early songs at Cummings' mother's piano.