Writing and recording At the time of the songs release, Those Nervous Animals were in the habit of rehearsing in The Venue pub in
Strandhill, as well as The Blue Lagoon pub on the banks of the
Garavogue River in
Sligo (courtesy of owner Peter Henry).
The Business Enterprise (My Friend John) was debuted live in The Venue, as recalled by former drummer Christy Behan in 2021. Rowland replied that she didn't know anyone else who had "carved out a career from one word... it opened so many doors." Rowland recalled being "brought up to Dublin (from
Sligo)" in the back of bassist Eddie Lee's van, to record
My Friend John in
Lombard Sound Studios. Well, that song was written
after Those Nervous Animals were formed, it wasn't one of the songs that was already in existence... It, em, we had met Bill Whelan and we had done
"Just What the Sucker Wanted", was already a single on our own Dead Fly label and, em, I was walkin' down the street in Sligo, down O'Connell Street, and I met a man who was a kind of, he was a writer, he was em, sort of, y'know, a guy who drank a little bit too much - a
lovely man, but
awful in drink, absolutely horrible. And, em... he was wearing this amazing
suit, with the pinstripe, the whole lot - with a beautiful little
waistcoat, and everything perfect, and
cuff links and things, and his beard was trimmed and his hair looked good. And he says "Right, are you ok? I'm starting a
computer business. Everything is changed in my life, y'know it's time you got yourself organised - computers are the 'in' thing, come up here and you'll see this, and buy one of these off me", y'know? I couldn't believe it, I says "This is the guy I know, I can't believe it!" and he was this sort of romantic, y'know,
cursed poet, and, em, he was really the basic inspiration for writing a song about somebody who transforms. His name wasn't John. He was a poet and he was from
Ballymote. He's no longer with us sadly. I mean there were other figures you could, y'know, once we got started writing it and I had written the first verse and the chorus and we rehearsed it in The Blue Lagoon, and I was in
Kilkenny at the time, and, eh I phoned back the other two verses, once I wrote them, back to Barry and Eddie, so we had the last two verses (..) Lots of people were kind of, you probably remember lads, how that atmosphere, of people suddenly were becoming business heads... (during the mass-adoption of
home computers) Cathal Hayden provided percussion, who was affectionately known by the band as "Mr. Friction".) for the
A-side (
"My Friend John") at
Windmill Lane and
Lombard studios, and by engineer Paul Waldron at Trend Studios for the B-side (
"Rebecca"). The same recording session at Lombard produced the track
"Clubs", and featured Bill Whelan on piano. Meehan, Brennan and Lee first organised a series of meetings with Murray, during which she "listened to the music and came back with roughs". It became their highest-charting single, reaching number 21 in the Irish charts on 17 February 1985. Record label scouts from England were journeying to Ireland every day in order to hear bands in the hope of capitalising on this newfound interest, and, according to Whelan, "you could virtually touch the
avarice that was appearing. Now was a chance to find the next U2 and come to Ireland, and they were all coming in (..) you kind of had to fight them off...". whilst also frequently playing shows at the popular Baggot Inn music venue in
Dublin, where they performed a residency in the mid-80s. Whelan remembers one particular evening in 1985 when six separate
A&R people had travelled from England to see the band, and the "excitement was enormous." Speaking to
The Irish Times in March 2021, Meehan revealed his appreciation for the song, despite having grown to dislike it for a period at the band's peak: "We made a little promo video for it, and I got back into what I was talking about when I wrote the song – about transformation and things like that (..) Whereas I went through a phase of hating the bloody song. You'd be touring it and the audience would insist you play it; you'd hear people shouting for it all night; I can understand how people get sick of something. But that's all gone away now. I love it now, and I think it's a nice little piece of pop music."
Remastering for The Mission Sessions For the 2021 release of
The Mission Sessions, the band enlisted mastering engineer David Glasser in
Boulder, Colorado to remaster the tracks. Bassist Eddie Lee noted his appreciation for Glasser's work during the Zoom launch, opining: "For me, the difference in the remastering came out with the bass sound on
My Friend John, it's just ridiculous - it just
hops out of, no matter what kind of speaker you're listening to it on, it just hops out, it's really, really good". ==Appraisal and legacy==