100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #28 The Byrds – Eight Miles High

Released: 1966

Let he who is without sin, or words to that effect. Speaking at a $100 a plate dinner in 1970, American Vice President Spiro Agnew asked musicians not to write songs about taking drugs. A man who it later emerged had been illicitly taking kickbacks from contractors while in public office in Baltimore, Agnew cited The Byrds’ Eight Miles High as an example of one of these would-be dopefiend tracts. The band responded in a public statement that it was about an airplane flight to London.

Writing in Mojo at the peak of Britpop in 1996, Barney Hoskyns described the band as having “one of the great stylistic lineages” going on to say “Rock history is striated by the influence of The Byrds”. Even from a greater distance now their influence is undeniable, but peculiarly more on British music (The Stone Roses, Teenage Fanclub vs. R.E.M), a proof point to the claim that talented as they were, they still swam in the wake of The Beatles and the Stones.

Eight Miles High was singer Gene Clark’s swansong for the band. Written about their experiences in a sometimes hostile and forever dark and rainy Britain, it was directly influenced by the work of sage musicians like John Coltrane and Ravi Shankhar and presented fans with a sharp left turn from previous material like Mr. Tambourine Man. Now widely considered to be one of the first psychedelic pop singles, Spiro Agnew didn’t like it, but then again, he’d probably never tried it.