(listen)
Wikipedia can just be priceless, as in this wonderful sentence: "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 recalled the title of the Beatles' song 'Eight Days a Week.'" Because right, the song, credited jointly to Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Roger McGuinn, is about airplane rides. But that's not fair—already the article had talked about the strong and obvious drug connotations that the song bears. Me, I find the Byrds something of a blind spot in my own canon, part of a discernible pattern when you note the Everly Brothers and R.E.M. are two more. I have always respected the Byrds, had many friends gaga about them in various ways, and I understand the excitement on some levels. Yet for the most part I remain unmoved by the reality of hearing the music, except for random exceptions such as Sweetheart of the Rodeo and this strange plant that somehow took root in the top 40. I remember it freaked me out a little to hear it on the radio, that's part of its enduring appeal, especially late at night on scratchy AM radio stations. It comes sounding a little scratchy itself—prickly and rumbling, thudding, physical and awkward yet somehow insubstantial too, like cotton candy. Nothing else I'd heard felt remotely like it. Not so different from being high on hallucinogens in a way—and not so different from airplane rides either, for that matter. Wikipedia also identifies a source for this song that had never occurred to me before: John Coltrane. Oh yeah, that works—and the Byrds (which Elvis Presley would sardonically pronounce as "beards" two years later) had a hit with it. God bless them.