"Eight Miles High" is a song by the American rock band The Byrds, written by Gene Clark, Jim McGuinn, and David Crosby and first released as a single on March 14, 1966 (see 1966 in music). The single managed to reach the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 and the Top 30 of the UK Singles Chart. The song was also included on the band's third album, Fifth Dimension, released on July 18, 1966. "Eight Miles High" became The Byrds' third and final U.S. Top 20 hit, and also their last release before the departure of Gene Clark, who was the band's principal songwriter at the time.
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 band strenuously denied these allegations at the time, but in later years both Clark and Crosby admitted that the song was at least partly inspired by their own drug use. 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.
Musically influenced by Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane, "Eight Miles High", along with its McGuinn and Crosby penned B-side "Why", was influential in developing the musical styles of psychedelic rock, raga rock and psychedelic pop. As such, the song is often cited by critics as being the first psychedelic rock song.
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Famous quotes containing the words miles and/or high:
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How tall the buildings were as I began
To live, and how high the rain that battered them!”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)