"The Business Enterprise (My Friend John)" is a single released by Irish rock group Those Nervous Animals in 1985. It later appeared on their "mini-album" Hyperspace! (1986), and eventual debut studio album The Mission Sessions in 2021. The song was the second single released by the band, after "Just What the Sucker Wanted" in 1983, and was described by The Galway Tribune as a "catchy, pop-orientated tune with excellent vocals". According to the band, the song is "often referred to" simply as 'My Friend John', but the title is actually 'The Business Enterprise', with '(My Friend John)' in parentheses.
History
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. Band member Pádraig Meehan mused that, at the time, lead vocalist Barry Brennan was "in his pomp", and "could do anything (..) He loved leaving the stage and walking down through the audience...". Behan recalled that even the band members themselves never knew how Brennan would appear: "Would he have pipe cleaners in his beard or something?... He was a character, like, and a great frontman". In a 2020 YouTube interview, guitarist Pádraig Meehan reminded band member Susan Rowland, a backing singer on the track, that the female "John" 'answer' (or response) on the song had been delivered by herself (in "a Susan moment"), an addition which he felt elevated the song. Rowland replied that she didn't know anyone else who had "carved out a career from one word... it opened so many doors." To celebrate the release of the band's debut album The Mission Sessions in March 2021, the band held an online album launch over Zoom (owing to COVID-19 restrictions), during which they reminisced about the writing and recording process of songs on the album. 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. Rowland recalled herself and Lee having to position themselves "in a hot little booth (at Lombard) trying to sing all the backing vocals together and keeping them really tight", despite the height difference between the two and the single microphone. Lee confirmed that it was not just Rowland, but the two of them that had actually sung the "John" 'answer' heard in the chorus. Rowland admitted that the song was "the one song everybody associates us with... sometimes when we'd been talking to people recently I think they just never, they don't remember anything else... it's the one big song". Lead vocalist Barry Brennan agreed, mentioning that a typical question a fan would ask would be "Who is John?". Brennan recalled that it was just an "arbitrary name", akin to "Tom, Dick and Harry", however songwriter Pádraig Meehan elaborated further upon the inspiration behind the John character:
I think... that song got written... we had hooked up with Bill Whelan and we were rehearsing in The Blue Lagoon and then out in The Venue, they were very kindly giving us the room, and I met this guy whom we all know, he used to drink in Hennigan's (bar in Sligo) and he was a writer and a poet, and unfortunately, sadly he's since passed away, and he had just set up a business and he was all dressed up in a pinstripe suit, and that really was the very start of it. I wrote a set of lines when I went home, that was the first thing, and I think I told Barry (Brennan) and Eddie (Lee), like, that I had something but they didn't... y'know at that stage I had just the verse chords on the thing. And, em, there's other Johns... There's about four people; y'know, Willie Conlon was possibly an inspiration, Johnster Barry, eh, John Rooney and this other guy... they'd be the main people that (it) would be about... a kinda composite.
Speaking to the Canadian online radio station Ceol agus Craic a year previously in March 2020, Meehan gave further information regarding the inspiration for John:
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)
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