Post by erik on Jun 5, 2021 12:22:30 GMT -5
The premiere folk-rock band of the 1960's enter the world of psychedelia with a song whose title became a catchphrase for the whole hippie movement, and which is in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight.
EIGHT MILES HIGH (The Byrds; CBS; 1966)—Initially seen as the first legitimate American band to respond to the British Invasion of 1964, the Byrds (who were named that way to duplicate the misspelling of the Beatles) actually consisted of musicians involved, both directly and indirectly, in the folk music movement that had given the world Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Judy Collins. The unofficial bandleader Jim (later Roger) McGuinn had worked with, among others, Bob Dylan and the Chad Mitchell Trio, while bass player Chris Hillman had extensive experience as a mandolin player in various bluegrass outfits in Southern California, including the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers (which, for a brief time in 1963, included future Eagle Bernie Leadon). The group’s trademark sound came courtesy of McGuinn’s jangling Rickehnbacker 12-string electric guitar and evidenced itself on their cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, which hit #1 in June 1965. They were able to secure a second #1 hit by the end of the year with their jangly version of Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!”. But McGuinn and Hillman were not guys who wanted to rest on their laurels; they liked experimenting outside the group’s definitive electric folk-rock sound. Indeed, one of the group’s defining hits, outside of their two #1 smashes, came in early 1966 courtesy of a collaboration between McGuinn and fellow Byrds Gene Clark and David Crosby called “Eight Miles High”. Written by the three man as a result of their late 1965 tour of England, where they were basically roasted by the British press for somehow “daring” to be called America’s answer to the Beatles, plus the supposed “thrill” of touring by air (given Clark’s increasing fear of flying), when “Eight Miles High” was released in March 1966 off of the group’s album Fifth Dimension, a number of radio stations in the United States absolutely refused to play it, thinking it to be a “drug song”. This, according to all members of the band, was parenthetically false, although McGuinn’s guitar breaks owed a lot to the work of master Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar and legendary jazz sax player John Coltrane. Despite the radio ban, “Eight Miles High” became a substantial hit, reaching #14 on the Hot 100 in April 1966, and even #24 in England. Clark’s departure not long after, however, sent the Byrds through one turbulent line-up change after another; and by the time Gram Parsons made his brief entry into the group in 1968, their folk-rock sound had also engendered much more in the way of the emerging country-and-western influence that was taking hold in urban areas of Southern California.
EIGHT MILES HIGH (The Byrds; CBS; 1966)—Initially seen as the first legitimate American band to respond to the British Invasion of 1964, the Byrds (who were named that way to duplicate the misspelling of the Beatles) actually consisted of musicians involved, both directly and indirectly, in the folk music movement that had given the world Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Judy Collins. The unofficial bandleader Jim (later Roger) McGuinn had worked with, among others, Bob Dylan and the Chad Mitchell Trio, while bass player Chris Hillman had extensive experience as a mandolin player in various bluegrass outfits in Southern California, including the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers (which, for a brief time in 1963, included future Eagle Bernie Leadon). The group’s trademark sound came courtesy of McGuinn’s jangling Rickehnbacker 12-string electric guitar and evidenced itself on their cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, which hit #1 in June 1965. They were able to secure a second #1 hit by the end of the year with their jangly version of Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!”. But McGuinn and Hillman were not guys who wanted to rest on their laurels; they liked experimenting outside the group’s definitive electric folk-rock sound. Indeed, one of the group’s defining hits, outside of their two #1 smashes, came in early 1966 courtesy of a collaboration between McGuinn and fellow Byrds Gene Clark and David Crosby called “Eight Miles High”. Written by the three man as a result of their late 1965 tour of England, where they were basically roasted by the British press for somehow “daring” to be called America’s answer to the Beatles, plus the supposed “thrill” of touring by air (given Clark’s increasing fear of flying), when “Eight Miles High” was released in March 1966 off of the group’s album Fifth Dimension, a number of radio stations in the United States absolutely refused to play it, thinking it to be a “drug song”. This, according to all members of the band, was parenthetically false, although McGuinn’s guitar breaks owed a lot to the work of master Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar and legendary jazz sax player John Coltrane. Despite the radio ban, “Eight Miles High” became a substantial hit, reaching #14 on the Hot 100 in April 1966, and even #24 in England. Clark’s departure not long after, however, sent the Byrds through one turbulent line-up change after another; and by the time Gram Parsons made his brief entry into the group in 1968, their folk-rock sound had also engendered much more in the way of the emerging country-and-western influence that was taking hold in urban areas of Southern California.