"My Friend Jack" was the only international hit by The Smoke. The song seems to suggest the use of psychedelic drugs (specifically LSD) in lines such as “My Friend Jack eats sugar lumps” and suggests traversing the world inside his mind (such as “Been on a voyage, across an ocean”).
The song was pulled off the U.K. market due to the drug connotations and it therefore never succeeded in their own country. The original content of the song was so unacceptable that "My Friend Jack" had to be rewritten before EMI would touch it; finally, it was released in February 1967. The single only made it to number 45 before being banned by the BBC, limiting it to three weeks on the U.K. charts.
The first version (somewhat slower and almost entirely modified except for the chorus) featured more obvious content related with the hallucinogenic effect and incomprehension. Lines such as "Oh, what beautiful things he sees" had to be re-recorded as "Sugarman hasn't got a care". The demo is available on some CD compilations, such as Real Life Permanent Dreams. A Cornucopia Of British Psychedelia (1965-1970) (Castle Select, 2007).
"My Friend Jack" ended up reaching the No. 2 spot in the German pop charts, and earned the Smoke a place on a tour with the Small Faces and the Beach Boys in 1967. The single charted high in Switzerland, France, and Austria as well, and suddenly there was demand for a Smoke LP in Germany, entitled later It's Smoke Time.
Musical style
The song is characterized by a march beat and mix of shimmering and crunchy reverb-laden guitar (its most notable sound). It presents an aggressive riff, heavily influenced by The Who's power-chord and a trippy cheerfulness, like other songs with drug references from that era.[citation needed]
According to Matthew Greenwald in AllMusic: "The song opens with a tremolo-laden slide guitar riff from Mal Luker, which creates a trippy, unsettling but wholly interesting hook. The main melody is a bouncy, mid-tempo slice of pop-psychedelia, filled with a buoyancy that equates this to an English version of the Turtles on psychedelic drugs. The effervescent chorus is a fabulous singalong affair, making it instantly accessible."[1]
In 1976, The Smoke re-recorded the song with other arrangements and a glam rock style, along with the other songs from It's Smoke Time . The album was released under the British label Gull.[4] The single (released only in France), featured a new song, "Lady".
Original Smoke member Zeke Lund was by now working as a sound engineer for their album's record producer, Frank Farian. The initial single pressings featured a 4:56 single mix, differing with the omission of a guitar solo which was included in the subsequent 4:40 mix which was faded 10 seconds earlier on the LP version. This cover peaked at No. 6 in Norway and No. 57 in the U.K.
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