Eight Miles High

The song's lyrics are, for the most part, about the group's flight to London in August 1965 and their accompanying English 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."[1] Although commercial airliners fly at an altitude of six to seven miles, it was felt that "eight miles high" sounded more poetic than six and also alluded to the title of the Beatles' song "Eight Days a Week".[1]

According to Clark, the lyrics were primarily his creation, with a minor contribution being Crosby's line, "Rain grey town, known for its sound"—a reference to London as home to the British Invasion, which was then dominating the U.S. music charts.[1][2][3] 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 and to the English group the Birds serving the band with a writ of copyright infringement because of the similarities in their names.[3][4][5] 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.[3]

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 U.S.[2] 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.[6][7] The impact of these recordings on the band would manifest itself in the music of "Eight Miles High" and its B-side "Why"—both of which were influential in the development of the musical styles of psychedelic rock, raga rock, and psychedelic pop.[1][6][8][9][10]

Clark began writing the song's lyrics on November 24, 1965, when he scribbled down some rough ideas for later development, after a discussion with guitarist Brian Jones, before the Byrds made a concert appearance supporting the Rolling Stones.[2][11] Over the following days, Clark expanded this fragment into a full poem, eventually setting the words to music and giving them a melody.[2] Clark then showed the song to McGuinn and Crosby. McGuinn suggested that the song be arranged to incorporate Coltrane's influence.[2] 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.[2] In his book, Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of the Byrds' Gene Clark, author John Einarson disputes this claim and ponders whether McGuinn's story would be the same if Clark was still alive.[2]

The master recording of "Eight Miles High" was recorded on January 24 and 25, 1966, at Columbia Studios in Hollywood.[12] Record producer Allen Stanton guided the band through the recording process.[12] John Einarson has commented that the influence of Coltrane's saxophone playing and, in particular his song "India" from the Impressions album, can be heard clearly in "Eight Miles High"—most noticeably in McGuinn's recurring twelve-string guitar solo.[2] In addition to this striking guitar motif, the song is also highlighted by Chris Hillman's driving and hypnotic bass line, Crosby's chunky rhythm guitar playing and the band's ethereal harmonies.[2][9][13][14]

"Eight Miles High" 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.[15][16] 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.[9] 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."

An earlier version of "Eight Miles High" was recorded with Al Schmitt at RCA Studios in Los Angeles on December 22, 1965, but Columbia Records refused to release that recording because it had not been produced at a Columbia-owned studio.[9][12][17] McGuinn has since said he believes this original version of the song to be more spontaneous sounding than the better known Columbia release.[9] That opinion was echoed by Crosby, who commented, "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."[9] This original version of "Eight Miles High" was eventually released on the 1987 archival album Never Before and was also included as a bonus track on the 1996 Columbia/Legacy CD reissue of Fifth Dimension.[18][19]

"Eight Miles High" was released on March 14, 1966, in the U.S.[20] and May 29, 1966, in the UK, reaching number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 24 on the UK Singles Chart.[20][21][22][23] The song was also included on the band's third album, Fifth Dimension, which was released on July 18, 1966.[24]

Following its release, the band faced allegations of advocating the use of recreational drugs in Bill Gavin's Record Report, a weekly newsletter circulated to U.S. radio stations.[2][1] This resulted in "Eight Miles High" being banned in a number of states within a week of the report being published, a factor which contributed to the single's failure to break into the Billboard Top 10.[1] 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.[9] However, by the early 1980s, both Crosby and Clark were prepared to admit the song was not entirely as innocent as they had originally declared. Crosby said: "Of course it was a drug song! We were stoned when we wrote it."[9] Clark was less blunt, explaining in an interview 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."[2][9]

Research analyst Mark Teehan, writing for Popular Musicology Online, has challenged the widely held view among critics, music historians and the Byrds themselves that the U.S. radio ban hurt sales of "Eight Miles High".[25][26] He points out that although the Gavin Report recommended that radio stations withdraw the single from airplay, many stations did not comply with this suggestion.[26] In addition, he notes that the radio ban was not suggested by the Gavin Report until April 29, 1966, almost seven weeks after the single had been released—ample time for it to have made its mark on the charts.[26] Teehan has uncovered evidence showing "Eight Miles High" was already decelerating on the national charts before the end of April 1966.[26] Having examined the local music surveys and the Billboard regional retail sales charts as they relate to the national charting of "Eight Miles High", Teehan found that the progressive, complex and uncommercial nature of the song was a much bigger factor in its failure to reach the Billboard Top 10.[2][26] Commercial radio stations were reluctant to play songs that were over two-and-a-half minutes long during the mid-1960s, and the song suffered from uncoordinated and inefficient promotion by Columbia Records.[26] Teehan's research revealed that "Eight Miles High" failed to reach the Top Five in any of his 23 sample regional markets, and most telling, among the thirty radio stations included within this sample, it reached the Top 10 on only seven of them (23%).[26]

The Byrds at the "Eight Miles High" press conference in March 1966, posing with a sitar in order to illustrate the Indian influences present in the song.

The song's use of Indian and free-form jazz influences, along with its impressionistic lyrics, were immediately influential on the emerging genre of psychedelic rock.[23][27] Accordingly, some authors and music historians, including Eric V. D. Luft, Domenic Priore, and Dwight Rounds, have described "Eight Miles High" as being the first bona fide psychedelic rock song.[28][29][30] In his book Riot On Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood, Priore cites the song as the one that kicked off the psychedelic craze, explaining "prior to 'Eight Miles High,' there were no pop records with incessant, hypnotic basslines juxtaposed by droning, trance-induced improvisational guitar."[13]

The song was responsible for the naming of the musical subgenre raga rock, when journalist Sally Kempton, in her review of the single for The Village Voice, used the term to describe the record's experimental fusion of eastern and western music.[31] However, although Kempton was the first person to use the term raga rock in print, she actually borrowed the phrase from the promotional material the Byrds' press office had supplied to accompany the "Eight Miles High" single release.[10] In a 1968 interview for the Pop Chronicles radio documentary, McGuinn denied that the song was an example of raga rock,[8] while Crosby, speaking in 1998, dismissed the term entirely, saying "they kept trying to label us; every time we turned around, they came up with a new one ... it's a bunch of bullshit."[32] Nonetheless, the experimental nature of the song placed the Byrds firmly at the forefront of the burgeoning psychedelic movement, along with the Yardbirds, the Beatles, Donovan and the Rolling Stones, who were all exploring similar musical territory concurrently.[27]

Contemporary reviews for the single were mostly positive, with Billboard magazine describing the song as a "Big beat rhythm rocker with soft lyric ballad vocal and off-beat instrumental backing."[23][33] Cash Box described the single as a "rhythmic, shufflin’ blues-soaked affair with some real inventive riffs."[34] Record World magazine also praised the song, commenting "It's an eerie tune with lyrics bound to hypnotize. Will climb heights."[23] In the UK, Music Echo described the song as "wild and oriental but still beaty". The publication also suggested that with the release of "Eight Miles High" the Byrds had jumped ahead of the Beatles in terms of creativity, saying "[By] getting their single out now they've beaten the Beatles to the punch, for Paul [McCartney] admitted recently that the Liverpool foursome are working on a similar sound for their new album and single."[25] In recent years, Richie Unterberger, writing for the Allmusic website, has described "Eight Miles High" as "one of the greatest singles of the '60s."[24] Critics often cite "Eight Miles High" as being the first bona fide psychedelic rock song, as well as a classic of the counterculture era.[35]

In 1999, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an honor reserved for "recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance that are at least 25 years old."[36] In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Eight Miles High" at number 151 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time[37] and in March 2005, Q magazine placed the song at number 50 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks.[38]