Eight Miles High is one of the defining songs of the psychedelic rock movement of the 1960s. The song was influential in introducing the concept of psychedelia and raga into the pop and rock music of its day.
Critics and music historians often site the song as being the first bona fide psychedelic rock song. The crux will be what makes something “bona fide” or not, but no matter your view, it was certainly one of the first singles to bring that style and influence to the mainstream.
The song is credited to Gene Clark, Jim (Roger) McGuinn, and David Crosby – and as we’ll see, some uncredited input from The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones.
During the first few years of the band, Gene Clark had been its key songwriter. They still did more than a few covers, chiefly by Bob Dylan who was covered extensively – four songs on their first album Mr. Tambourine Man (June 1965) and a further two on their follow-up Turn! Turn! Turn! (December 1965), alongside other cover material and some originals.
On their third album Fifth Dimension, McGuinn and Crosby stepped up as songwriters in an attempt to increase the band’s reliance on their own material. Unfortunately this seemed to happen at the expense of Clark, who found himself marginalized in the band on other fronts as well. A lot could be said about the background to this, but suffice to say that by the time Fifth Dimension was released in July 1966, he was no longer in the group.
Gene Clark would still have a major contribution on the album, as Eight Miles High was originally his song. The basic melody and most of the lyrics are his, but input from the others enhanced its final expression. One example is McGuinn’s John Coltrane-influenced guitar work, which gave it a stronger edge.
In an interview with Mike Griffiths on 3 November 1983, Gene Clark stated that Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones had a hand in writing this song. He said, “I wrote the song and presented it to McGuinn and Crosby on tour,” Clark later said. “We were on a bus tour at the time, and we were listening to a lot of John Coltrane, a lot of Ravi Shankar, and they helped me finish the song. The melody and lyrics I wrote myself in a hotel room with Brian Jones in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”
Apparently Jones was not keen to get a songwriting credit. When Griffiths asked if Jones should’ve gotten a credit for his contributions, Clark said, “I thought he should have been credited at the time, but of course he didn’t care. It just came out of a conversation.”
The song’s lyrics are, for the most part, about the group’s flight to London in August 1965 for their first British tour, as hinted at by the opening couplet: “Eight miles high and when you touch down, you’ll find that it’s stranger than known.”
Nothing’s ever that simple, though. Any mention of “high” was almost automatically assumed to be a drug reference in those days. McGuinn was asked by Songfacts in 2016 if the song was really about drugs, and replied: “Well, it was done on an airplane ride to England and back. I’m not denying that the Byrds did drugs at that point – we smoked marijuana – but it wasn’t really about that.”
At the time of release, the band definitely played down the drug references, instead claiming that the song was inspired by their flight to England. Part of the story is that Gene Clark asked McGuinn how high they were in the sky. McGuinn told him six miles, which was a leap-off point. It was changed to eight for the song. Although commercial airliners fly at an altitude of six to seven miles, it was felt that “eight miles high” sounded more poetic than six. It was also claimed to be a nod to The Beatles, who had a hit with the song Eight Days a Week at the time. Any reason they could come up with to rebuff the drug theme allegations would do.
Other lyrics in the song that explicitly refer to the Byrds’ stay in England include the couplet: “Nowhere is there warmth to be found / Among those afraid of losing their ground”, which is a reference to the hostile reaction of the UK music press, as well as the English group the Birds (which featured Ron Wood) serving the band with a writ of copyright infringement because of the similarities in their names. This attempt at legal action failed, amid a flurry of national press and television coverage.
In addition, “Round the squares, huddled in storms / Some laughing, some just shapeless forms” describes fans waiting for the band outside hotels, while the line “Sidewalk scenes and black limousines” refers to the excited crowds that jostled the band as they exited their chauffeur-driven cars.
Eight miles high, and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street, that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town, known for its sound
In places, small faces unbound
Round the squares, huddled in storms
Some laughing, some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes, and black limousines
Some living, some standing alone
Although the basic idea for the song had been discussed during the band’s flight to England, it did not begin to take shape until The Byrds’ November 1965 tour of the US. To alleviate the boredom of traveling from show to show during the tour, Crosby had brought along cassette recordings of Ravi Shankar’s music and the John Coltrane albums Impressions and Africa/Brass, which were on constant rotation on the tour bus.
The impact of these recordings on the band would manifest itself in the music of Eight Miles High as well as its b-side Why – both of which were influential in the development of the musical styles of psychedelic rock, raga rock, and psychedelic pop.
According to Byrds bass player Chris Hillman, especially Coltrane was a big influence on this song. “Roger [McGuinn] rigged up a turntable and the speaker and we were listening to John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar, and a lot of jazz,” Hillman told Songfacts. “Miles Davis, and just stuff like that along with everything else we could listen to at the time. But Coltrane, he was a huge influence on the song Eight Miles High. A very, very big influence.”
“We were playing 12-string Rickenbacker to sound like a saxophone,” McGuinn explained. “We were translating jazz into a rock form.”
Clark began writing the song’s lyrics on 24 November 1965, when he scribbled down some rough ideas for later development after a discussion with guitarist Brian Jones. This happened shortly before The Byrds made a concert appearance supporting The Rolling Stones. Over the following days, Clark expanded this fragment into a full poem, eventually setting the words to music and giving them a melody. Clark then showed the song to McGuinn and Crosby. McGuinn suggested that the song be arranged to incorporate Coltrane’s influence.
Unfortunately, a dispute has developed about who came up with the whole concept about flying and the song’s title, as well as other lyrical ideas. In his book Echoes, Clark said that he wrote the song on his own with Crosby coming up with one key line (“Rain gray town, known for its sound”) – a reference to London as home to the British Invasion, which was then dominating the U.S. music charts – and that McGuinn arranged the song with help from Crosby.
Since Clark’s death, however, McGuinn has contended it was he who conceived the initial idea of writing a song about an airplane ride and that he and Crosby both contributed lyrics to Clark’s unfinished draft.
In the Forgotten Hits newsletter, McGuinn responded to Clark’s claims: “Not true! The whole theme was my idea… Gene would never have written a song about flying. I came up with the line, ‘Six miles high and when you touch down.’ We later changed that to eight because of the Beatles song Eight Days a Week. I came up with several other lines as well. And what would the song be without the Rickenbacker 12-string breaks?”
In his book Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of the Byrds’ Gene Clark, author John Einarson disputes McGuinn’s claim of contributing lyrics and ponders whether his story would be the same if Clark was still alive.
Be that as it may, what’s certain is that the song was written and recorded at the turn of 1965/66, during Clark’s last months with the band. But the band had to record it twice.
The first version of Eight Miles High was recorded with Al Schmitt at RCA Studios in Los Angeles on 22 December 1965. Columbia Records refused to release that recording because it had not been produced at a Columbia-owned studio. This was largely because they had contracts with unions and did not want any undue trouble.
There was no way around it, and the band went into Columbia Studios in Hollywood on 24 and 25 January 1966 to create a new master recording of the song, with record producer Allen Stanton guiding the band through the recording process. This is the version we primarily know.
The band generally liked their first version better. McGuinn has said he believes the first version of the song is more spontaneous than the better known Columbia release. Crosby agreed, commenting “It was a stunner, it was better, it was stronger. It had more flow to it. It was the way we wanted it to be.”
People can fortunately now make up their own minds. The first version of the song is included as a bonus track on the 1996 Columbia/Legacy CD reissue of Fifth Dimension, which is the version of the album that has been in print since.
The influence of Coltrane’s saxophone playing can clearly be heard in McGuinn’s striking twelve-string guitar solos. The song is also highlighted by Chris Hillman’s driving and hypnotic bass line, Crosby’s chunky rhythm guitar playing, Michael Clarke’s light yet insistent touch on the drums, and especially the band’s ethereal harmonies.
The song also exhibits the influence of sitarist Ravi Shankar, particularly in the droning quality of the song’s vocal melody and in McGuinn’s guitar playing. However, the song does not actually feature the sound of the sitar, despite the Byrds having appeared brandishing the instrument at a contemporary press conference held to promote the single. In a 1966 promotional interview, which was added to the expanded CD reissue of the Fifth Dimension album, Crosby said that the song’s ending made him “feel like a plane landing.”
Eight Miles High was released as a single on 14 March 1966 in the US, and two months later on 29 May in the UK. It reached #14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #24 on the UK Singles Chart. The song was also included on the band’s third album, Fifth Dimension, released four months after the single on 18 July 1966.
The song was subject to a U.S. radio ban shortly after its release, following allegations published in the broadcasting trade journal The Gavin Report regarding perceived drug connotations in its lyrics. The journal cautioned radio stations to be careful about playing the track. As soon as one station dropped it, others followed. The single quickly sank off the charts.
The Byrds and their publicist, Derek Taylor, countered by strenuously denying that the song was drug-related. Taylor issued an indignant press release stating unequivocally that the song was about the band’s trip to England and not drug use.
However, years down the road, both Crosby and Clark were prepared to admit the song was not entirely as innocent as they had originally declared. In the 1998 book The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited, Crosby said: “Of course it was a drug song! We were stoned when we wrote it.”
Clark was a bit more nuanced, explaining in the same book that “it was about a lot of things. It was about the airplane trip to England, it was about drugs, it was about all that. A piece of poetry of that nature is not limited to having it have to be just about airplanes or having it have to be just about drugs. It was inclusive because during those days the new experimenting with all the drugs was a very vogue thing to do.”
The failure of Eight Miles High to reach the Billboard Top 10 is usually attributed to the broadcasting ban, but some commentators have suggested that the song’s complexity and uncommercial nature were greater factors. The song, for all its qualities and innovation, was undoubtedly more challenging and unusual than your average Top 20 fare at the time.
In any case, nobody can call the song a chart failure. In fact, the song was The Byrds’ third and final US Top 20 hit. After the departure of their chief songwriter Gene Clark, the band never had that level of single success again. They did get one more Top 20 album though – the reunion album in 1973, where all five original members were present yet again.
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