Eight Miles High / Feel a Whole Lot Better (1966 / 1965)
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Eight Miles High / Feel A Whole Lot Better (1966 / 1965) Gene Clark / The Byrds (Yes, a double-header – two songs, two artists - though one guy featured in both. So, a couple of cracking tunes by Gene Clark. As Gene had left The Byrds by the time Eight Miles High came out, there are no videos of him with the Byrds playing this song. Therefore I’ve also added I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better, as there’s a great YouTube video of the original five Byrds storming through this folk-rock classic. Enjoy!) “Eight miles high And when you touch down You'll find that it's Stranger than known” Since Elvis changed the world in 1956 with Heartbreak Hotel, which artists do I put in my top five? Who do I keep returning to in order to make sense of a complicated life, to lift my spirits when down and convince myself that there is beauty, poetry and rhythm a mere button press away? It is, he dryly observes, a rather obvious list. I don’t apologise for that. Elvis, le roi du rock ‘n’ roll. The Beatles, naturally. The Stones, yeah, of course the Stones. But The Byrds too. They had a much shorter duration than the others, but they are up there for me. Right at the top. And if you know your Byrds, you know the late, great, Gene Clark - songwriter and focal point of the original Byrds. Since his early – but perhaps not unexpected – death in 1991, Gene Clark has enjoyed somewhat of a posthumous revival. He’s never going to be bigger than a cult within a cult, but, for those who have been inducted, his music assumes an almost quasi-religious quality. His role as The Tambourine Man, and chief songwriter, in legendary 60’s group The Byrds, followed by twenty-five years of ethereal and beautiful, but unsuccessful, music, make him a lost messiah of rock, a prophet without honour; he died so that we might know him better. Gene was the farm boy who left Kansas and moved to LA in the mid 60’s, hooked up with Roger McGuinn and David Crosby, formed a Beatles-meets-Dylan group that became The Byrds and, along with Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, produced some of the best music ever. Doubt me? Dust off the Mr. Tambourine Man single and play it. What else epitomises that brief moment of mid 60’s optimism better than this joyous two and a half minute track, before the bombs and deaths of Vietnam and the fallibilities of the Johnson (and Wilson) governments screwed everything up? Cruelly, but typically, whilst McGuinn’s Rickenbacker is the song’s defining hook, Gene’s vocals were mixed out of the track and so the only voices you hear are Crosby and McGuinn. On the Byrds most famous track, Gene was literally faded out. It was to be start of a lifetime of slights, near misses and failures that predestined him to obscurity. But that was all in the future in those heady days of 1965. Gene was the front man of a hit group, the tall, beefy guy with the Prince Regent haircut; the one who made the girls scream. On that first Byrds album (also called Mr. Tambourine Man) Gene effortlessly asserted his song writing dominance over the others in the group. Whilst the Dylan covers got the Byrds noticed, repeated plays of the album revealed three standout homegrown tracks. Penned by a certain G.Clark. One of them is I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better. In many ways, I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better is the quintessential Gene Clark song. Strong, ambivalent lyrics, Gene’s manly lead vocal, interesting chord changes, a trademark McGuinn jingle-jangle guitar solo; flawless Byrds backing harmonies. It flies into your ears unbidden, at once familiar but unknown - a fully-fledged rock classic, majestic but welcoming, proudly awaiting your salute. In reality, it was, of course, relegated to the B-side of All I Really Want to Do, an historic piss-take by a management keen to ride the wave of the Byrds doing Dylan. Twenty-five years later, in an almost heart breaking speech to a tiny audience in California, Gene shyly introduces his most famous song. Tom Petty had recently plucked it out of obscurity and recorded a cover on his Full Moon Fever solo album, an album that, as Gene explained, had been in the US Top Ten for the last forty weeks. “Do you know, it’s when things like that happen, I think, well maybe I am a real song writer.” You should never have doubted that Gene, old boy. But back to 1965. In between the first and second Byrds albums (gosh musicians worked hard in those days – two albums a year!), the Byrds toured around the States. Their tour bus throbbed to the sounds of Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane. It’s interesting to note that whilst their public persona was as the folk-rock, all American answer to the Beatles, The Byrds were already moving on through the exotic sounds of sitars and jazz riffs. The times were a’ changing, and how! The Byrds undertook a short UK tour in the summer of ’65. Screaming fans, a hostile press, crap sound systems, summit meetings with the Beatles and the Stones; drugs. Gene, working at the top of his game, began writing a new song about his experiences in the UK, incorporating the flight over the Atlantic and the strangeness of England compared to the US. He conveyed this in half-formed allusions, obscure references, and incomplete sentences. The lyrics are deliberately ambiguous, channelling impressionism and fleeting, drive by, observations. Set across a fluid set of chords, Eight Miles High (originally Six Miles High but changed at McGuinn’s suggestion) was a new type of song. No verse, chorus, middle eight populated this ditty. It was strange, dark, and slightly subversive. When the combined voices of Clark, McGuinn and Crosby got hold of it, music moved into a whole new dimension. The first psychedelic rock record. Now, if you read the record label you will notice that McGuinn and Crosby also snagged a writer’s credit for Eight Miles High along with Gene. Crosby has said in interviews that he added some lyrics – ‘Rain grey towns’ - but essentially the composition was Clark’s. Now ordinarily, arrangers don’t merit a songwriting credit, but in this instance, it’s hard to ignore that without McGuinn and Crosby, Eight Miles High would be nowhere near as good as it became. In fact, all five Byrds reach out and touch the face of God on this record. From the booming bass of Hillman, which starts the track, to Crosby’s chugging but atmospheric rhythm guitar, to Mike Clarke’s aggressive stop-start drumming, to McGuinn’s legendary Ravi Shankar/John Coltrane inspired lead guitar; this was a team effort. And then there’s the three voices coming at you like a darkened chamber of medieval monks, a chant, an invocation; a rare portal to a new dimension. From Mr. Tambourine Man to Eight Miles High in nine months, within one calendar year. How the hell had the Byrds gone from one to another so damn quickly? This was a rate of progress that exceeded even The Beatles. If they had stayed together how far could they have pushed this creativity? Of course, we all know what happened next. Gene left the group and became known as the ‘none flying Byrd’ due to his phobia of planes. The Eight Miles High single, complex and innovative, tanked - not helped by bans from radio stations that suspected Gene’s lyrics about flying might have a more ‘recreational’ meaning. The Byrds staggered on for a few more years, and produced many other great, but not so seminal, tracks. One by one the original members left, leaving McGuinn alone with sidemen by the early 70’s. A 1973 reunion didn’t work out and the Byrds were no more. Gene Clark, in between periods of drunkenness and drug taking, went on to produce some of the finest work of the singer songwriter movement. Achingly beautiful melodies, clever lyrics, warm vocals. And all to no avail. His records never sold, and he faded away from public view, an unreliable has-been on the nascent 80’s nostalgia circuit. Which brings us back to I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better. When Tom Petty recorded a version and put it on his 1989 best selling album, Gene, obscure and broke, got an unexpected influx of funds. Suddenly, with the money to fuel his habits, never far below the surface, he lapsed into rock star cliché land. He died in early 1991, at the age of forty-six. Such a shame. Such a goddamn shame. He never lived to see the revival in his fortunes, in his legacy, in his back catalogue. In truth, it appears he was a genius with feet of clay, a tortured soul, gifted but wayward. It is often the way – genius can be amoral. But, his songs live on. I’d urge you to seek them out; starting with the obvious Byrds ones - then delve into the richness of his solo career. And wonder to yourself; ‘Gene Clark, why the hell wasn’t this man more famous?’ Notes Many artists, other than Tom Petty, have covered Gene Clark’s songs. These range from The Eagles (Train Leaves Here This Morning), Robert Plant (Polly, Through The Morning, Through The Night), Roxy Music (Eight Miles High), Husker Du (Eight Miles High), The Turtles (You Showed Me – co-written with McGuinn), through to Teenage Fanclub’s epic tribute song (called unambiguously, Gene Clark).