Smith wrote several songs that were recorded by successful artists of the time including Glen Campbell, The Monkees, and Andy Williams.
[7] He graduated in June 1963, and turned down a number of offers from colleges in order to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.
[9] From December 1963 to January 1964 Smith and Storm also performed shows with Gordon and Sheila MacRae, supported by their daughters Heather and Meredith.
[14] As the Good Times Singers' was ending, Smith and fellow bandmember Lee Montgomery intended to form a new duo called Craig & Lee, but Smith had to pull out after successfully auditioning for a new ABC television show,[15] called The Happeners.
[18] The show was to be directed by David Greene,[20] and was a mix of acting and singing, set in New York and based on the fictional eponymous folk trio.
Originally an acoustic duo [24] utitilizing session musicians, during their later 1966 sessions they began experimenting with a full band,[26] and in November 1966 they played a show supporting the Mothers of Invention with such a full band, with Smith and Ducey playing electric guitars.
[30] Nesmith began producing Smith and Ducey, initially pairing them with John London (bass) and Johnny Raines (drums).
[31] They were eventually replaced by Donald F. Glut on bass (who had appeared in an earlier incarnation of the band) and Bobby Donaho on drums.
[32] While the band worked on their own material, Smith continued to write songs, including "Salesman" for the Monkees,[33] and "Hands of the Clock" and "Lazy Sunny Day" for Heather MacRae.
[37] One of the songs written at this time by Smith was "Country Girl", which was later recorded and released by Glen Campbell for his Try a Little Kindness album.
[42] In late 1968 Smith was associating with the Manson Family, and exploring an interest in Eastern philosophy, particularly Transcendental Meditation.
[36] During his travels Smith took LSD on a "regular" basis,[47] and he smoked "copious amounts of hashish" while in Afghanistan.
[50] Smith met fellow Western travellers (an Irishman and two American women) in Istanbul, and they set off together in a VW van, intending to drive to Delhi.
[51] After the van broke down, they hitched a ride in a lorry transporting olive oil,[52] before taking a bus to Iran.
[53] They passed through Afghanistan,[47] with Smith deciding to leave his companions for a few days in Kandahar while they travelled on to Kabul.
[48] Smith never joined them in Kabul; when his companions returned to Kandahar a few months later, they heard rumours that he had "gone crazy", running through the market with a knife threatening people, and then disappeared.
[54] It later became apparent that after threatening a market vendor, Smith had been beaten close to death and robbed, and possibly kidnapped and raped.
[55] Smith possibly spent some time in an Afghan insane asylum,[56] where he is thought to have developed acute schizophrenia.
[63] After his girlfriend left him, Smith decided to travel to South America, spending time in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and the Galapagos Islands of Chile.
[70] As his erratic and bizarre behavior became more pronounced, such as claiming voices were telling him to kill people, his friends started to ignore him.
[94] Suzannah Jordan, the third member of The Happeners trio, ran into Smith in LA in 1977; he was homeless but did not display any obvious mental health issues.