The Byrds’ masterpiece
Producing a list of top 10 favorite albums is much easier than making a list of favorite songs. Every attempt I have made has failed. There are just too many to narrow it down to ten or even twenty. One that always makes the list is the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.” I’m endlessly fascinated by this song. I was five when the single came out and I first heard it a good fifteen years after that. Listening to it now, conjures up images in my mind of a time I only saw on TV news programs or read about. The Vietnam War, protests, hippies, free love, Woodstock. Even though the lyrics have little to do with any of these, television had merged the two in my mind. “Eight Miles High” has become a soundtrack for that period.
What intrigues me most is how the song came together. From the bouncy opening bass line, followed by a chiming 12-string guitar, to the astonishing harmony vocals, it’s a stunning achievement. It was Gene Clark’s last writing contribution to the original Byrds before he left to go solo. Clark often performed the early version of “Eight Miles High” in his solo shows and it’s completely different from the finished Byrds cut. Comparing the acoustic treatment he demoed for the band with the single they released in March 1966 made me wonder, “How did they come up with that!?” The evolution of the completed track is a masterclass in song creation.
Gene Clark had always said that “Eight Miles High” was a collaborative effort between himself and band members Roger McGuinn and David Crosby. How much each contributed is up for debate. Clark began writing the song, with some input from Brian Jones, during a 1965 Rolling Stones/Byrds U.S. tour. More writing occurred on a plane ride back from England, with additional contribution from McGuinn and Crosby. The lyrics are about the plane trip and the chaos and confusion of being a visiting American rock band in London. And, as expected for the times, drug references were also mixed in with the lyrics. “It was about lots of things,” Gene told writer Domenic Priore in 1985. “It was about the airplane trip to England, it was about drugs, it was about all of that.” However, in Richie Unterberger’s book Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock’s Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock, McGuinn is quoted, giving a more candid explanation. “Well, I think the word ‘high’ was a double meaning, and we all knew it. Everyone at that time had experimented with drugs, and there was a tongue-in-cheek thought about the word ‘high.’ But it wasn’t the main thrust of the song.”
The group next worked on the song on another U.S. tour in their Winnebago. As they traveled, they listened to tapes of music by Ravi Shanker and John Coltrane. “This was the time when I was trying to program my partners,” wrote David Crosby in his autobiography Long Time Gone. “I had a tape of John Coltrane’s piece “Africa Brass” and I was trying to program it into McGuinn, along with Ravi Shanker. Those were the two main things I was trying to pour into McGuinn’s head. I don’t know why I should be so presumptuous as to think I knew how to influence McGuinn, but I was and I did.” McGuinn suggested a jazz arrangement for “Eight Miles High” and he created a guitar sound that mimicked Coltrane’s saxophone solos from the tracks “Africa” from Africa/Brass and “India” from Coltrane’s Impressions album. “He blew the minds of everyone in the musical world at the time,” wrote Crosby. “Nobody had ever heard anything like that in their lives because they had only listened to guitar players. They hadn’t listened to a horn player. They couldn’t translate a horn player’s feel onto a twelve-string guitar. Who’s kidding? Nobody could do that, except that Roger McGuinn did it.”
“Eight Miles High’s” other exceptional quality is the harmony vocals. As noted in John Einarson’s book, Mr Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of the Byrds’ Gene Clark, “It was David’s unique gift for harmonies that was the icing on the cake.” The haunting vocals and the Coltrane and Shanker influence moved the band further away from folk and led them into psychedelic music with an Afro-Indian influence. “Nothing in their previous body of work even hinted at the aural assault of ‘Eight Miles High.’ Byrds fans were hardly prepared for the extraordinarily innovative sounds the group was about to bestow upon them,” wrote Einarson. “What follows is an account of the group’s experiences landing in London and the cold reception they encountered, sung over an urgent, jazz-infused instrumental passage reminiscent of an airplane soaring to heights. Gene takes the lead vocal in unison with Roger while David’s ethereal harmony weaves around their almost otherworldly melody.”
The group recorded an early version in December 1965 at RCA studios, later available as a bonus track on the Byrds’ Fifth Dimension reissue. It has a slower pace, and it sounds unfinished, but you can hear the development of what it would become. Their label, Columbia Records, insisted they cut the final track in a Columbia studio. Gene Clark left the band before the single’s March release because of his fear of flying. In January, the band was flying to New York for a show and Clark had a panic attack on board and got off just before takeoff. His fear of flying had started back when he was a member of The New Christy Minstrels a few years earlier. McGuinn told him if he left the plane, he could no longer be in the band but it didn’t deter him. Clark’s fear of flying had been a factor in his decision to leave, but at the same time, his importance in the band had diminished. The group was recording fewer of his songs. Early on, he had been the Byrds’ primary songwriter, but by the third album, “Eight Miles High” was his only contribution. The Byrds announced his departure in March 1966. They lost a songwriter and one-third of their three-part harmony. McGuinn and Crosby would up their songwriting game on future recordings and bassist Chris Hillman filled the vocal spot.
“Eight Miles High” did not become the smash hit the group expected. Both “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” had reached #1 and “Eight Miles High” stalled at #14 on the Billboard chart. The Gavin Report, a trade guide that helped radio stations with their programing, labeled it a drug song and some stations refused to play it. Did the Gavin Report cause the song to slide down the pop chart? This theory was debunked on a 2010 report by Mark Teehan for Popular Musicology Online, but both McGuinn and the Byrds’ Press Agent Derek Taylor have both pointed to the Gavin Report as the cause for its poor showing. The resulting album, Fifth Dimension, suffered as well, selling the least of the band’s three releases. Their logo on the cover was decorated in a psychedelic font, and band members were pictured on a flying magic carpet. It may have all been too much for 1966.
Gene Clark considered “Eight Miles High” his favorite Byrds song. It’s now seen as one of the band’s greatest. Most of the focus has been on McGuinn’s unique guitar playing and how it influenced everyone from The Beatles to The Velvet Underground. But the gorgeous harmony in the song must be credited to David Crosby. Think of him what you will, but he had a beautiful voice, and he understood vocal harmony. “Eight Miles High” is a tour de force, and all the Byrds, including Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke, were crucial to its creation. The song introduced psychedelic music and raga-rock, but the Byrds were too far ahead of their time for it to earn mass acceptance. “This was a completely new concept for pop music, where the end was like a raga metaphor for a plane coming in to land. Once it landed, those on board realized they’d been where they’d never been before.” wrote Andy McArthur in his book, The Byrds: Every Album, Every Song. “The Byrds were playing a kind of music that didn’t even have a name yet!”