FEATURE:
Groovelines
The Byrds – Eight Miles High
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WRITTEN by…
Gene Clark, Jim (Roger) McGuinn and David Crosby, I often think The Byrds’ Eight Miles High was inspired by The Beatles. Listen back to The Beatles’ work on Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966), and Eight Miles High sort of fits into that mould. One of the best and defining songs of the 1960s, Eight Miles High was released on 14th March, 1966. One of the first psychedelic Rock tracks, it definitely opened doors and minds for other artists. Eight Miles High did get banned by some radio stations because of the possible drug references in the song. The Byrds denied rumours at the time. Listening to Eight Miles High, and it is impossible to not hear the drug mentions! The title alone makes me think of the band feeling high after smoking weed. It does have this mix of the laidback and the psychedelic that one can easily link to drugs. Because of a ban, the song did struggle to make a big chart impact. It did get to fourteen on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number twenty-four in the U.K. Appearing on The Byrds’ third studio album, Fifth Dimension, Eight Miles High became their third and final U.S. top twenty hit. It is a classic that still gets played a lot to this day. Although it does evoke the sounds and sights of the 1960s, it has not dated at all. Anyone can put the song on today and connect with it.
There are a couple of features about Eight Miles High that I want to bring together. The first, from Ultimate Classic Rock discusses the story and history of the song. Learning how it came together and was received is really interesting. Its origins are insightful:
“When the Byrds kicked off the second phase of their multistage career in March 1966 with the release of "Eight Miles High," they also happened to launch a new chapter in rock history.
The quintet pretty much spent the previous year mining the Bob Dylan songbook, fine-tuning its own collective songwriting talents and perfecting the folk-rock genre with chart-topping singles like "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" But as their busy 1965 - which included two albums and many live appearances - started to wind down, the Byrds were getting restless.
That fall, the band participated in a tour spearheaded by American Bandstand host Dick Clark. They traveled city to city by bus and kept themselves occupied by listening to music. One day, a friend of David Crosby's played jazz great John Coltrane's 1961 album Africa/Brass, which incorporated Afro-Indian improvisations into a more traditional big-band setting.
The music "seared through the center of my chest like a white-hot poker," noted Roger McGuinn - who, like Crosby, was one of the Byrds' three singers, songwriters and guitarists - in 2006's There Is a Season box set. He recorded the album with a portable cassette deck he recently picked up, filling the other side of the tape with Indian ragas by Ravi Shankar. The band listened to the tape nonstop for the rest of the tour.
When they entered RCA Studios in Los Angeles for a session in late December, they had an idea for a new song inspired by their recent obsession. A first take of "Eight Miles High" - preferred by the group's members - was rejected by the Byrds' record company because it wasn't recorded in one of its studios. So, the band returned to an approved studio a few weeks later on Jan. 25, 1966, and completed the version that was released as a single on March 14.
From the start, the Byrds knew they were getting into something new and significant with "Eight Miles High." In early 1966, there still wasn't much that sounded like it. Even the Beatles, the most forward-thinking band of the era, had just unveiled their first real exploration of Indian music with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" from Rubber Soul, which came out in December. That classic song's key sitar line was inspired by Shankar, whose music the Byrds were immersed in during their recent tour.
But they took it even further in "Eight Miles High," capping it with a head-spinning guitar solo based on a jazz progression inspired by Coltrane. McGuinn explained in There Is a Season that his solo "wasn't mapped out"; instead, he had a "basic skeleton" borrowed from a four-note Africa/Brass riff he then improvised on”.
One of the greatest songs ever released, I can only imagine how The Byrds felt when they completed the song. It is one of these tracks that, once heard for the first time, will stay in the head. It has that hypnotic quality that you cannot escape from! In a feature for The Guardian, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn talked about writing the majestic Eight Miles High:
“Roger McGuinn, singer-songwriter/lead guitar
Eight Miles High has been called the first psychedelic record. It’s true we’d been experimenting with LSD, and the title does contain the word “high”, so if people want to say that, that’s great. But Eight Miles High actually came about as a tribute to John Coltrane. It was our attempt to play jazz.
We were on a tour of America, and someone played us the Coltrane albums Africa/Brass and Impressions. I had just picked up a cassette recorder – it was such a new thing, you couldn’t buy any tapes to play in it. But I had some blank tapes so recorded the Coltrane albums, along with some Ravi Shankar, and took them on tour. It was the only music we had, for the whole time on the bus. By the end of the tour, Coltrane and Shankar were ingrained.
There was one Coltrane track called India, where he was trying to emulate sitar music with his saxophone. It had a recurring phrase, dee da da da, which I picked up on my Rickenbacker guitar and played some jazzy stuff around it. I was in love with his saxophone playing: all those funny little notes and fast stuff at the bottom of the range.
At the same time, Gene Clark [rhythm guitar] had some chords and a vague melody, which went into the more regular structure of Eight Miles High. In later years, Gene started to fantasise that he wrote the whole song. That wasn’t the case: it was a collaborative effort between myself, Gene and David Crosby [vocals, rhythm guitar]. The previous year, 1965, we’d been on a trip to England. It was our first time on a plane, and I had the idea of writing a song about it. Gene asked: “How high do you think that plane was flying?” I thought about seven miles, but the Beatles had a song called Eight Days a Week, so we changed it to Eight Miles High because we thought that would be cooler.
When the song came out, some DJs did the sums and realised that, since commercial airliners only flew at six miles, we must have been talking about a different kind of high. And all the stations stopped playing it. We put out a statement refuting those claims, but it was the end of our commercial success. The Byrds were damaged goods.
Gene left the band the month Eight Miles High was released. He was afraid of flying. We’d get on a plane, and he’d be in a cold sweat, standing up in the aisle, saying: “I can’t stay on this plane, man. I gotta get off.” I remember saying: “You can’t be a Byrd if you can’t fly”.
For this Groovelines, I wanted to look inside a song that remains celebrated and much-played, over fifty-five years since it came out. A timeless slice of Psychedelia from The Byrds, the song was responsible for the naming of the musical subgenre, Raga Rock. Covered by numerous artists; inspirational to many others, it is one of the most important songs released. Its classic status is something that will…
NEVER change.