Several verse-chorus iterations follow, leaving the story with the "boys" gone to battle and the Sky Pilot retired to his bed.

The bagpipe music is a performance by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards playing "All The Blue Bonnets Are Over the Border".

According to an unverified story, the pipers were recorded covertly by Burdon, resulting in the government of the United Kingdom sending the band a letter of complaint.

One of the returning soldiers feels more disturbed, with the smells of death, when he looks upon the Sky Pilot, remembering the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill".

Billboard described the single as an "unusual piece of lyric material set to a pulsating rock beat" that "has all the earmarks of another out and out smash.

"[5] Cash Box called the song a "a building, bluesy effort" that was the group's "strongest outing in quite some time.

It was sampled by Sebadoh during a segue between the songs "Sexual Confusion" and "Three Times A Day" on their 1990 album, Weed Forestin'.