THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,648) The Smoke — “My Friend Jack”
My friends, here is all-time classic UK pop psych, with “almost facetiously excessive reverb and shameless lyrical celebration of the underground community’s predilection for using sugar cubes to ingest [LSD]” (David Wells, Record Collector 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era), “[s]uperbly produced with instantly memorable, skittish guitar and an ‘addictive’ chorus” (liner notes to the CD comp Mojo Presents: Acid Drops, Spacedust & Flying Saucers: Psychedelic Confectionery from the UK Underground 1965-1969), “a catchy, striking, aggressively trippy work . . . that now seems like the most delightfully subversive piece of freakbeat”. (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-smoke-mn0000751371#discography) “Massively contagious, toweringly confident, the song screams hit record!” (Mike Stax, liner notes to the CD comp Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969) Well, it might have been a huge hit had it not been banned by the BBC. Except that it was a huge hit . . . in Germany. Anyway, eat a few sugar lumps and let the Smoke (see #1,499) envelop you.
Mike Stax rhapsodizes:
[This] should have been huge. Blasting-out-of-open-car-windows-worldwide huge. The protracted knife-edge-on-string intro immediately seizes the attention, and from there they have you. . . . The bass and drums provide a solid bounce beneath Mal Luker’s string-scrapin’, tremolo-shakin’ guitar and Mick Rowley’s winking, knowing delivery. But when the powers that be figured out the illicit implications of the song’s “sugar lumps,” the record was quietly pulled off the market, through not before poking its head into the lower reaches of the U.K. Top 50 [#45]. . . . [T]he song was released as a single in February 1967. . . . [I]t held the #1 spot in Germany for seven weeks.
liner notes to Nuggets II
David Wells adds that “arguably the first great UK exploito-psych record, [it] captur[ed] the zeitgeist to such an extent that Charles Shaar Murray later pithily described it as ‘an instant cultural reference point.’ (Record Collector 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records) Wells explains that:
After a furious row [with the record company], Mick Rowley backed down, replacing some of the more overt drug references with a toned-down, travelogue-style lyric. Even in its slightly watered-down format, “My Friend Jack” was still probably the most blatant espousal of the burgeoning drug culture so far. Seizing the opportunity to bait the authorities, the pirate stations played the track incessantly, though its progress in the British singles chart ground to a halt after it was banned by the BBC, who were presumably spurred into action after a News of the World expose had shrieked in banner headlines “THIS DISGRACEFUL DISC”.
Record Collector 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records
And so, “Oh what beautiful things he sees” became “sugarman hasn’t got a care” and “lost in a wonderland of colour and of sound” became “he’s seen the hawk fly high to hail the setting sun”.
Richie Unterberger smokes out the Smoke:
The band hailed from York, where bassist Zeke Lund and lead guitarist Mal Luke began playing together in a band called Tony Adams & the Viceroys, whose lineup eventually came to include drummer Geoff Gill. Though the band was successful locally, enjoying a decent fan base with a solid, basic rock & roll sound . . . [they] could hear the changes going on around them in music, with the rise of Merseybeat and the blues, R&B, and soul-based music coming out of London. They eventually decided to strike out on their own, playing a more ambitious repertory. They linked up late in 1964 with singer Mick Rowley and rhythm guitarist Phil Peacock, refugees from a band called the Moonshots. The resulting band, the Shots, played a hard brand of R&B . . . . [The band] signed up with independent producer and music publisher Monty Babson, who cut four sides with the group, two of which were issued as a single under license to EMI-Columbia. It was at just about that time that events began breaking against the band — they lost Phil Peacock, who wasn’t comfortable with the more complex sounds the rest of the band were interested in generating, and they lost their financing. They gamely decided to carry on as a quartet, the single-guitar configuration lending itself to an edgier sound, and sought new backing. That was how they ended up in a bizarre management situation, when they were offered a seeming rescue by a pair of twin London-based entrepreneurs, Ron and Reg Kray . . . . among the top crime kingpins in London at the time[. A]mong their other enterprises, they had an interest in a few clubs, and thought at one point that a more direct participation in the entertainment business might prove lucrative. . . . Thus, they signed the group and became the Shots’ managers, but were never able to do anything with them in terms of bookings . . . . The band decided to abandon the contract, and when they were served with an injunction, they were left unable to perform. . . . [T]hey still had a publishing and recording contract with Babson and access to his studio, and so they took advantage of their ban on performing by writing and making records. . . . [They] change[d] their name . . . [to] the Smoke. . . . [After “My Friend Jack”, suddenly there was demand for a Smoke LP in Germany. . . . It’s Smoke Time[ was] comprised of the best of the year-old tracks recorded for Babson . . . . The band actually relocated to Germany, while continuing to release records in England — their recording contract was sold to Chris Blackwell in late 1967, and he soon took over their management as well . . . . They cut some fine psychedelia . . . . The end came out of a degree of weariness . . . . [T]hey declined to obey a Blackwell summons to return to England for a recording session, and that marked the effective end of their history . . . . Luker, Gill, and Lund did finally return home and went to work for Babson’s Morgan Studios, working in various bands within Babson’s orbit, including Blue Mink, Orange Bicycle [see #1,647], and Fickle Pickle [see #568].
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-smoke-mn0000751371#discography
Here with the original lyrics:
On Germany’s Beat Club:
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