Fifth dimension the byrds cracked#

The Byrds made much of “Eight Miles High’s” primary inspiration, the song “India” from Coltrane’s “Impressions” album. The cluttered, borderline dissonant instrumental sections were unprecedented in rock & roll, but not in jazz, where artists such as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman shunned traditional harmonic structure in favor of free-form heroics. “Eight Miles High” seemed to come out of nowhere - as did so much great 1960s music - but in retrospect there’s a clear lineage: As startling as the music was - the critic David Fricke finds in it a “cliffhanging quality of unresolved medlodic drama” - some of the song’s elements were familiar to the vast AM audience: the throbbing garage-band bass line the Byrds’ folk-rock harmonies David Crosby’s driving rhythm guitar.īut the careful listener probably had a few questions:ĭid they forget the chorus? Why are the instrumental passages so chaotic? Is that a sitar or a guitar? Where is this “rain-gray town, known for its sound” with “small faces unbound”? Why is the ending such a meltdown?

Fifth dimension the byrds cracked#

“Eight Miles High” cracked the Top 20 despite the limited airplay.

Few fans or critics bought the explanation. Band members protested when some radio stations banned it, saying the title reference was to their jet ride across the Atlantic. The rumblings began three months earlier, with release of “Eight Miles High.” That irresistibly kinetic single, about the Byrds’ 1965 trip to London, quickly was labeled a drug song. Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and Country Joe and the Fish had yet to record their first albums. The Beatles had not yet released “Revolver.” The Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow” was seven months off. Yet in July 1966, “Fifth Dimension” stood alone. Consequently, a good bit of “Fifth Dimension” was surrendered to filler.

The Byrds also were weaning themselves from the Bob Dylan covers that brought them fame and a pair of No. When they recorded their third album, the “American Beatles” had just lost their main songwriter, Gene Clark. On what is considered a seminal psychedelic album, there are three, maybe four psychedelic songs. A first-time listener to the Byrds’ “Fifth Dimension” probably won’t be all that impressed.