Nancy Sinatra didn’t know the hidden meaning behind Sugar Town, the seemingly sweet song she was first given to sing by Lee Hazlewood back in 1966.

“It was basically about LSD, but was not publicised as that,” she said later. “It was Lee’s Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds. It went against my image…”

Hazlewood knew that “the kids” would recognise the allusion to sugar cubes spiked with LSD, and the lyrical clues – “Now I just lay back and laugh at the sun” – but he also knew it sounded innocent and cute enough to get on the radio. And he was right.

“Sugar Town was an LSD song if there ever was one,” he said, long after it reached No.5 in the US singles chart to become Nancy’s second-biggest hit after These Boots Were Made For Walkin’, released earlier that year.

“ I was in a folk club in LA which had two levels. I could see these kids lining up sugar cubes and they had an eye-dropper and were putting something on them. I wasn’t a doper so I didn’t know what it was but I asked them. 

“It was LSD and one of the kids said: ‘You know, it’s kinda Sugar Town.’ Nancy knew what the song was about because I told her, but luckily (her record label) Reprise didn’t.”

That happy-go-lucky guitar riff may well be played by Glen Campbell, playing with other members of LA’s legendary Wrecking Crew of session musicians, also including bass guitarist Carol Kaye, who played on an estimated 10,000 recordings in a 65-year career, and drummer Hal Blaine (35,000 recordings, including 40 No.1 hit singles).

Hazlewood, who joined Nancy to duet on another self-penned song, Summer Wine, on the B-side, always denied that he had ever taken acid, or any other drug.