The Byrds – Eight Miles High

why is an absolute tune , love that one !

"Eight Miles High" is the hit A-side, NOT "Why?". The matrix numbers never determine the plug sides.

"Eight Miles High" is the A-side, NOT 'Why". Don't go by the matrix numbers to indicate the plug side.

Note that the B-side is the version of "Why" from the "Younger than Yesterday" LP.

Without a doubt, the jangling single “Eight Miles High” was as influential to the counterculture movement of the 60’s as was “White Rabbit” by The Jefferson Airplane, both amazing anthems that rose out of rather softer folk-rock albums.  

The song seemed to come out of nowhere, as equally magical as “Mr. Tambourine Man”. Musically it’s been contended that “Eight Miles High” was influenced by both John Coltrane (Impressions and Africa/Brass) along with Ravi Shankar, where according to most critics, the number was the first bona fide psychedelic song ever, though the Beatles’ Revolver was released in August of that year. The cluttered, borderline dissonant instrumental sections were unprecedented in rock n’ roll at the time, but not in jazz, where artists such as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman shunned traditional harmonic structure in favor of free-form heroics, which the Byrds totally embraced, creating a shadow play of harmonic unresolved melodic drama. The Byrds found themselves standing at a crossroads here, as their glorious single was stopped dead in its track, banned from radio airplay due to the suggested drug references, which simply couldn’t have been further from the truth. History has it that the song was primarily composed on a flight home from the UK, with the lines “Rain grey town, know for its sound …” referencing London. Other lines “Round the squares, huddled in storms - Some laughing, some just shapeless forms …” goes on to 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.

So no, the song was not about drugs, with Gene Clark saying, “We flew over to England, it was our first time there, our first concert tour, where a promoter had called us ‘America's answer to the Beatles.’ On a whole, the song was just about our trip to the UK and the flight and jet lag and so forth.”

In short, it’s one thing to hear this song today as part of some greatest hits package, though allow me to assure you, that in 1966 the song shook the walls of the music and cultural underground. When all is said and done, “Eight Miles High” is laced with the aspirations of a half remembered dream, one filled with optimism and entirely forward looking.

*** The Fun Facts: There was indeed an earlier version of “Eight Miles High” recorded at RCA Studios in Los Angeles in December of 1965, though Columbia Records flatly refused to release the track as it had not been produced or recorded at a Columbia owned studio. Roger McGuinn would latter suggest that the original version was far more spontaneous and much stronger.

Review by Jenell Kesler

Exist with soft and hard sleeve, same number and pic

This original version of Why, which differs from the later-recorded album release for Younger Than Yesterday