Traffic’s month in the country paid off, and they were soon signed to Island. Their debut single, Paper Sun, written by Winwood and Capaldi and featuring an earwormy sitar riff by Mason, went to No 5 and helped kick off the Summer of Love.
The follow-up, Hole in My Shoe, was full-on psychedelia and was only kept off the top spot by the Bee Gees’ ballad Massachusetts. Written by Mason, it was replete with sitars, flutes and mellotrons, and featured a spoken interlude about a giant albatross, delivered by the young stepdaughter of the Island boss Chris Blackwell. Along with The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love, it was the defining song of the summer.
Mason’s bandmates, though, were less enamoured, insisting that it did not represent their work, and after recording their debut album, Mr Fantasy, he quit – “I realised I needed more life experiences in order to write stuff that would become timeless,” he recalled – and went off to produce the debut album by Family, Music in a Doll’s House.