THE BYRDS' TURN TURN TURN @ 60

If you tell someone that a band made the same album a few times in a row you will risk turning them off before you get any further. Well, I'll risk it this way: The Byrds made the same album five times, they just it better each time. While sounding unmistakably like themselves, especially when trying to sound like others, the songcraft and musicianship were constantly enriched. They are one of the signatures of '60s rock to the extent that the insertion of anything from their first five albums into a movie soundtrack will do more for the setting than millions of dollars worth of art direction. They were also one of those bands that only seemed to be on compilation albums for a long stretch. They seemed to have survived entirely on Dylan covers before fading into hits 'n' memories radio. That's what I thought until I heard this, their second, album.

To be a recording artist up to the early '60s meant you got art directed, hair and clothes, and told to sing this musical gimmick that some old man had written. When the nova event happened with The Beatles hitting the U.S. (i.e. the galactic) market, everyone wanted their music made by the people who wrote it. Add the instant cool of a young Bob Dylan and you could throw out all that lovey dove malarky and get some real statements out in the open. That's all fine if you were Dylan or The Beatles but most aspiring chart toppers weren't. 

This meant that those charts were stuffed with cover versions. Even the Fabs put covers on  their first albums to fill them out. So, when young folkie session man Jim McGuinn and friends went and saw A Hard Day's Night, everything fell into place. Some of that art direction and rock instrumentation later and his band made of friends and people who looked good in a bouffant started churning out the kind of cover versions that no one else was doing. Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man went from his quietly stabbing acoustic number to The Byrds' glorious cathedral of chime and choir. In 1965 that was like doing a metal take on Elliot Smith now. Like seeing any trope's origins, it seemed cliched until you knew.

So when the band went front and centre with their take on Pete Seeger's setting of lines from Ecclesiastes it mattered. I welcome you to YouTube versions by Pete Seeger and Judy Collins where you'll hear beautiful and elegant renditions of this perfectly constructed song. When you then hear the first track on this album with its impossibly thick and clean electric 12 string fanfare and solemn but shining vocal harmonies you will know the transportation of it. This is not a crass rock 'n' roll joke on the oldies, it's a strident celebration in a rock setting. Turn Turn Turn opens the window with a deal more force than anything on their impressive first LP through both the band's pluck in trying it on and the sheer perfection they achieve. If Judy Collins' melting solo rendition sobered you up, this new take could be the mental metronome to Vietnam War protests. Along with moments like The Beatles doing Twist and Shout or The Stones' Little Red Rooster, The Byrds Turn Turn Turn improved on and consolidated what they'd proved was their eternal contribution from the previous outing. 

Two important techniques are at work, here.  The first is the upped ante of putting dual 12 string parts in the arrangement. If the instrument's qualities made a difference in the first album, two at once broadened and reinforced huge swell of it. During the solo where McGuinn is playing a rapid claw hammer arpeggio of the changes against the melody ringing out in front the music is elevating. The other is that they got better at their own harmony scheme. This is simpler than you'd think. Two vocalists sang in precise unision, taking the song's melody. David Crosby added a descant, often improvised which lent a kind of organ chord effect to the vocals. While this approach can stifle creativity on the fly by being too regular, here it sounds spontaneous and free. This is one of the great cover versions. A lot of people think it's an original from the confidence and execution. It almost is. 

After this a bright bluesy riff  propels the whole band into a brief open string drone before the vocals come in, urgent and cool. It Won't Be Wrong is a throwback to early McGuinn songwriting but it fits in this treatment that establishes the uniformity of the music overall as busy, bright and, whether fast or slow, solid and centred. This one is all early Beatles with harmonies clearly schooled in the John low and Paul high approach. The return to the base key after choruses and bridge is a precursor of the same technique they'd use later in Eight Miles High, a gripping establishment of mode.

Set You Free This Time surprises with its mature sounding vocal and country inflections. It's one of the moments like Here Without You on the debut, that shows how confident a songwriter Gene Clark was. He takes the vocal, introducing a clearly distinct voice after the opening two choral performances. It's a more grown up look at a relationship song, as well, with the narrator recalling the early signs of trouble in the solo sections and the other's regret and pleas in the harmony second part of the verses which end with the title. The sense of heartbreak is palable and feels as strange in this album as the lead-heavy I Come and Stand at Every Door does in the following set.Because of that, I used to skip this one (as a teen listener) until experiences like it happened to me. Now, I find it beautifully sober.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune opens with the band in full voice and instrumentation for the large scaled chorus. This is broken by McGuinn's solo vocals for the verses. Like Mr Tambourine Man, the band is expanding a Dylan original to cinematic breadth with the unvarying melody pressing on like a march across an epic landscape. I will never tire of hearing this song.

And again a big sound is followed by an intimate one. He Was a Friend of Mine is led by McGuinn's acoustic arpeggios with the same clawhammer picking he used on the solo section of Turn Turn Turn. Like the title track, this is an adaptation of an existing tune, a folk song in mourning for a fallen comrade. McGuinn overlayed the sentiment with a statement of grief after the Kennedy Assassination. The shiummering harmonies' solemnity are timeless.

Side two begins with The World Turns All Around Her and it springs up with the trademark 12 string riff (the intro adds a little grinning swagger) and bright harmonies. It moves at a clip but the Clark original is about a boy pondering his mistakes in his broken relationship and pleas the new boyfriend be more devoted than he was. The middle eight which tells of his understanding of what he effectively threw away is a mster stroke of songwriting, allowing a pause and shift in feel and key before the final verse springs back into the compromised elation of the music. I will choose this as a single selection quite habitually.

Anyone who made anything of the shift to country rock years after this couldn't have heard this record with side one's country ballad and the hymn-like homily of Satisfied Mind. The solemn unision singing breaks out for the chorus when Crosby's descant soars high overhead. A joy.

If You're Gone is another Clark original and the lead is taken by him. The lyric is a series of propositions beginning with the word 'if". After a series of these conditional statements about the effect of the other he is singing to, the final two lines spook me out:  'If I love you I might never know your name. If you're gone then there is nothing that remains." Instrumentation is sparse but that is to aid the placing of the extraordinary backing vocals which are wordless hums forming organ-like chords. It's as strange as hearing a Yardbirds compilation album where Hang On Sloopy gives way to the Gregorian Still I'm Sad. It's quiet but heartfelt and unforgettable.

The second Dylan cover is The Times They are a Changin' and it gets the by now standard Burds treatment, making Dylan's voice in the darkness version danceable and radio friendly. McGuinn again lends his Dylan party impression to the solo lines before the other two vocalists chime in with harmonies. Not remarkable but not a skip either.

Wait and See is a McGuinn/Crosby collaboration and is superior filler with a lyric about seeing a hot girl. It's couched in brilliant harmonies and rich Rickebacker chimes and is over before it's begun.

So far, this sophomore effort comprises a consolidation of the great start of Mr Tambourine Man, expanding the band's musicianship (particularly the vocal arrangements) and songwriting powers in a carefully helmed quality management by the producer Terry Melcher. This sounds even more like the product of a tightly co-ordinated band that sound distinctive and pleasurable whether expressing sadness or sprightly energy. Then theres the last track.

Ending the last album with a kind of tongue in cheek version of a wartime oldie verged on embarrassing but was saved by an earnest approach that made it work. They try to do that again with Oh Susannah. The Stephen Foster classic from the previous century was known to anyone who'd had to sing it in music class in the American education system. It was a pretty good fit for the band that was clearly happy to embrace genuine folk tunes and filter them through harmony-laden rock. So, why oh why did they decide to do this one as a joke? We get the whole verse and chorus melody played out on the 12 string with cute little tinkles and bumps from Mike Clarke on the drums and then gthe band comes in for a romping vocal version. Repeat twice, including the excruciating 12 string melody. It's the sound of a band at rehearsal thinking they're being funny by doing an inappropriate version of an oldie or a softy (like a black metal cover of a Carpenters song). This kind of shit is only ever funny at the time and should never be recorded and heard again. If We'll Meet Again worked despite the humour and kept short of cringe, Oh Susannah on Turn Turn Turn bolts right into the centre of a grimacing faux pas. It means that the celebrations end with the plastered uncle who thinks his strangled rendition of My Way is a scream while the catering staff quietly clean up the tables with their eyes lowered.

The refreshed CD release of this from the mid-'90s features a number of extra tracks, including a decent cover of It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and a banging original The Day Walk (Never Before), both of which would closed the record in strength. Even the unfinished instrumental Stranger in a Strange Land would have done that. But no, this self-concious joke that is longer than everything else on the album apart from the title track, destroys this otherwise strong offering's chances of being thought of as a perfect advance from the debut.

I first heard this album when I was fifteen. A school friend had it at home as part of his elder siblings' collection and he taped it for me. It played me through that middle year period very easily, the heights of its invention, ringing electric guitar (which I didn't know was a 12 string, and angelic voices merged perfectly with the chirps of the cicadas out in the yard under the sun. The Byrds were one of the select bands I pursued when the great reissue revival of the early '80s brought us rereleases of The Kinks, The Who, The Doors and so on on new vinyl so we didn't have to rely on finding good copies at op shops. The 1996 CD was pure pleasure (apart from that one dud) and I fell into the joys of the album all over again with stunning presence and detail. 

Turn Turn Turn was a band tightening up everything that had worked for them on their debut release and presenting the thing they didn't have for that, experience. The sound is decisive and the songs, old or new, are strong. They might have kept that up for the rest of the decade without adverse criticism. What would happen, though, was further exploration. Call it acid, if you like, but add a lesson-learning disastrous tour of the UK and the restlessness of any young group of artists who need to find new paths. Not everyone did that as fast as The Beatles but this transitional effort opened the door on to years' more progression done with style and, curiously enough, honour.

Listening notes: I chose the1996 rerelease for this blog as its clarity, depth and presence exceed the vinyl rerelease of the '80s which I also had. As far as I know, this is still available. Before I forget, I should mention that this will be my final Byrds anniversary article as I've already done the remaining titles to the end of the '60s by them, having started in 2016 with the one on Fifth Dimension.

1969@50: DR BYRDS AND MR HYDE - THE BYRDS

And then there were two. Sorta. After the debacle of Sweetheart of the Rodeo and corporate cattywumpus, Gram Parsons fled, never to return. So it was Roger and Chris. The "sorta" is for Clarence White who'd sessioned with the band since Younger than Yesterday. So then Chris fled and got a ride with Gram in the Burritomobile. And then there was one. So, what is a Byrds album without Mike Clarke, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Dave Crosby? Roger McGuinn's backing band? Kind of.

McGuinn ruled that he would handle all the lead vocals for the sake of continuity which was smart: if your slowly deflating fan base is seeking anything it's at least a little of why they were there in the first place and the voice is the centre of all rock records (well, most (at that time, anyway (you know what I mean)). It really is no accident that this is the most coherent Byrds album since Fifth Dimension. Mcguinn is curating covers and taking care with his songwriting and the arrangements are like a grown up version of that one without going out on a limb even to the extent that Sweetheart did. It's not noiserock but nor is is a retread. It's the Byrds as imagined by Roger McGuinn. Even the lineup is like that, if you think of the recording of the Mr Tambourine Man single; Roger plus others rather than the people who became The Byrds but this time it's more like Roger and friends.

Anyone at the time who dreaded another country rock outing is reassured from the get go with the rock guitars of This Wheel's on Fire. Fuzzed in the left channel and skeletal and tremolo-ed in the right. Mcguinn's half-snarl evokes Dylan's original but keeps enough of himself there so you know. The chorus is drawn out a little too long but it's a cleanly defined take. Dylan's own wouldn't appear officially until the mid-70s  and there had been an earnest go by his co-horts The Band but the one to beat was Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger's soaring treatment. There's a point to opening like this (and to choosing it over the more straightforward one released as an extra on the '90s remaster). It's a Dylan song like the one that started their success but it's gnarly and mean, unlike that one, and deliberately doesn't come with a big chiming riff on the 12 string. That stuff was then. It's astute, not just good.

Old Blue sounds like old Byrds but also the band that had just released a country-flavoured album. It's easy on the ear with translucent harmonies and plenty of gleaming Rickenbacker. The band is new but can still sound like the old one. This track also has the honour of being the first by the band to use the Parsons/White B-Bender on White's Telecaster which lends a clean steel-like bend to the sound. There's a lot on this album.

Your Gentle Way of Loving Me begins with McGuinn's vocal over 12 string. The band comes in soon with a 2/4 country roll. When the chorus comes up the familiar two part harmony with a descant reappears. But that still doesn't drag the song back to sounding like an out take from Turn Turn Turn. The playing by this fresh lineup feels more confident than on any of the bands records up to the session-player heavy Sweetheart album.

Child of the Universe bashes into a 3/4 12 string and timpani introduction and the modal harmonies begin before the B-section changes into 4/4 and a more laid back verse. Cosmic lyrics celebrate a goddess who might be a woman or the universe itself. This song written for the film Candy has one foot in Fifth Dimension and the other in its present. Jangle and bright vocal harmonies. Perfect Byrds.

Nashville West is an instrumental brought to the band by the new players and romps through a chord progression without a central melody with a spring in its step. It's a little ruined by the self-conscious attempt at parodying a square dance caller that comes in after an overdone "yeehaw". It's meant to sound like "swing your partner and do si do" but just sounds more like "rant rant roart roart".

Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man sounds like something from Sweetheart but, freed of that difficult context, its contemptuous parody of a Nashville industry type spits through its clean harmonies and steel bends. The character is morbidly obese, a Klan Grand Wizard and a country DJ. McGuinn fires a parting shot in the fade. "This is for you, Ralph," he says over the playout. Ralph was Ralph Emery, Nashville DJ who happily drove the band into awkwardness on air following their disastrous attempt to play the Grand Ole Opry the previous year. With no change in the lyric McGuinn yet persisted with the track on the album. Even John Lennon saw reason enough to replace Maharishi with Sexy Sadie. The song retains its bitterness and feels personal.

King Apathy III plays like a red-pilled hippy trying to play a cover of Renaissance Fair. A strident modal rock arrangement chops under dark mooded harmonies about superficial spirituality. The veil has lifted and the summer of love has become a winter of tokenism and sanitised mysticism. The chorus is all major key and country with either a steel or a Tele with the Parsons White B-bender and it's all about getting out to the country for real before the mountain of fairy floss smothers him. The switch from 3/4 to 2/4 feels smooth but not fake. In fact, this feels a lot less contrived and self-conscious than anything on Sweetheart (certainly earlier jokes like Mr. Spaceman or O Susanna).

Candy was submitted for but not included in the film of the same name. It's a laid back paen to a girl and her adventures in love with a pun in the chorus. The country of the verses gives way to a spacey rock guitar workout which moves back after another verse before the final invocation of the name. It takes a lot of work to sound that relaxed and while everyone's on form I'll single out John York's solid but melodic bass runs that provide such an easy foundation. It does sound like a late '60s movie theme.

Bad Night at the Whiskey begins with a full rock attitude with crunchy chords as a spooky distant lead soars above. The groove is very Woodstock/Grateful Dead. McGuinn's vocal is earnest as he recriminates a personal foe who by that stage in his career might have been one of many or maybe all at once. He's really just saying he made it through and is doing just fine, thanks. It's a potent statement after the disintegration of the original band, a nasty tour of South Africa which had dire consequences for the band worldwide and the difficult times surrounding the Sweetheart album. McGuinn had made it through and gets a song out of it. The minor mode and his worn but defiant vocal let us know his triumph.

That should have been the last track with the lovely ghostly mood lingering. But someone thought otherwise and what we get instead of meditative silence is a goofy retread of My Back Pages a forgettable 12 bar and then another one after some studio patter and then it's over. The Byrds had a weird tradition of ending their albums with naff, grooved up cover versions or novelty songs. The worst was O Susanna at the end of Turn Turn Turn which just sounds embarrassingly self-conscious. This is better than that but not much. When McGuinn sings instead of "I'm older than that now" "I'm older than that cow" I cringe. It's puerile, like a schoolkid drawing a moustache on a text book illustration. And it's odd, My Back Pages was given a serious if, by then, backward-looking take on Younger Than Yesterday (which took its title from the spirit of the song) and here it's like drawing a moustache on both Bob Dylan and The Byrds' own legacy. Interesting as an outtake but as they began with a Dylan song it comes across as contemptuous.

I think that's a bad end to a decent Byrds album. While many might object to the backward reaching of some of the arrangements that remind them of the glistening days of 1965 there really is a lot of the new apparent here in harder guitar sounds, broader subject matter in the lyrics. The idea of the band with two sides is there from the title and the cover art where the cowboy version seems to hatch from the heads of the rock version. The back cover looks like a series of stills from a sci-fi movie mixing astronauts with cowpokes and the IBM style font puts another look in there. But while there are county-flavoured songs that end in electronic drones and spacey sounds here and there this one is less forward looking than Notorious Byrd Brothers from the previous year. Then again, the country side of things sounds truer than anything on Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Personally, I don't find the juxtaposition of Nashville and Cape Canaveral jarring as the transitions are so smooth and there is a palpable enjoyment of their interlocking in the overall scheme.

The strange thing for me is that this album sounds as much like a band effort as the early ones up to Fifth Dimension. The two in between sound like an augmented studio lineup because they were. I think it's remarkable that the near complete replacement of all players resulted in such cohesion. And the playing is good. McGuinn is on fine form here with such support from the others (Clarence White would improve any outfit he sat in on) and, to be frank, the absence of Chris Hillman's lesser songcraft prevents the blandness that overtook Younger Than Yesterday and added lard to the rest of the albums he was part of. An unpopular opinion among Byrdmaniax, I know, but it's mine. Dr Byrd and Mr Hyde is undeservedly neglected. Neither as unevenly brilliant as Notorious nor as forced as Sweetheart, it feels more like the progression that should have come from Fifth Dimension but then that might have meant reducing the original lineup to one plus hirelings earlier and that definitely would have been bad. It's still around and you can hear it and if you find yourself travelling around their back pages and come across the odd cover art, give it a click and leave it on.

1966 at 50: The Byrds' 5d Fifth Dimension

It was so hard to get to hear the Byrds in the mid-70s that it was through luck and nothing else that the only way I got to hear the Turn Turn Turn album was a cassette dubbed by a school friend from his sister's copy. The copy was an original mono LP from 1965. Even the compilations were hard to come by. At a time when even The Beatles were only available in their late period. If you wanted Rubber Soul you had to know someone who had it.

I read about Eight Miles High before I heard a bar of it. It was shrouded in contraversy because of the word high in the title. Even back in the 70s that seemed weird to me. I had to imagine what it sounded like. I did finally hear it once on the radio during a special called Twang about the role that electric guitars played in rock music. For three or so minutes my world stopped. I didn't think to set it up to tape it. When it was over it was gone forever. I tried reconstructing it from that memory but knew I only had the first few chords and opening line.

The 80s were much kinder to the legacy of 60s bands and after a few reissued compilations the original albums began appearing in record shops. Apart from anything else, a great many post punk musicians were turning to the best of the 60s rather than the immediate past for a kindred style. Among the reissues was the Byrds back catalogue but such was the record-buying decision tree of the cashless uni student, I figured I already had the singles compilation and there seemed so many covers on the original albums that I couldn't justify anything instead of a new Teardrop Explodes or Siouxsie spinner.

Then, later, after a year working at a local theatre I left to pursue writing a novel (nyerk nyerk) and received a kind of thank you payment which allowed a few records and more. I got the first three Byrds albums. So I finally heard this one. I'd heard already heard six of the tracks on compilations. Nevertheless, context is everything and this was their entry into the all important 1966 albums ranks. So, what's it like and does it still work?

The cover art is all 60s zeitgeist. The band variously kneel, sit or stand on a Persian rug against a background so black that it looks like the outer reaches of the Zorgon Galaxy. Each band member is holding a white disposable plastic cup with red liquid that could be cherry cordial or something more suitable for creating the impression that they are flying on a rug in the outer reaches of the Zorgon Galaxy. Above them the CBS logo, stereo logo and set list form a kind of arch around the album title in a blocky white font which floats above Byrds in huge paisley pattern letters. If you'd been in any danger of mistaking this for one of the series of Sing Along With Mitch Miller and the Gang from the 50s that danger was erased. So how does it sound?

5D starts without a riff or a snare hit, just a sudden fall into the big floating jangle and warm vocal singing of the expanse of the universe. Falling through the quantum dark somewhere between a folk rock workout and a country waltz, this hymn to the wonders of science catches us from the start as Roger McGuinn's folk club vocal is soon joined by the cut glass harmony of David Crosby's tenor. At one point McGuinn sings a vowel as high as he can go and as the chord changes Crosby comes in even higher with a a falsetto note as the highly compressed Rickenbacker 12 string snakes around with tentacles of pure chiming light. If anything was going to gently but firmly tell Byrds fans that they had moved on from Dylan covers this is it.

Wild Mountain Thyme hearkens back to the folk of the first two albums with a mix of chiming guitar and solemn choir from the valley earth. This time there's a string section that blows in like a cool breeze. It's a beautiful piece and you'll never skip it and, while it reminds us of the joys of the peaks of the previous albums, we've already heard the future and want more of that.

Mr Spaceman like the previous two tracks opens without a 12 string riff which makes a hat trick of departures from the first two LPs. Bam and you're into it. McGuinn sings a country-flavoured jig about a close encounter of the third kind. The bouncy 2/4 time and bright stacked harmonies suggest a jokey throwaway but the song's science fiction elements would return repeatedly in the band's output.

I See You jumps up in 5/4 with the 12 string centre stage like bebop in a Beatle wig. The harmonies come straight in without a solo introduction and they, too, are jazz rather than folk or rock. The melody and vocals are sombre bringing light to lines of word association like notes from a therapy session: "I know you, met before, seventh floor, first world war..." A couple of time stopping droning middle eights in 3/4 pile on the abstraction and a frenetic 12 string solo that prefigures Eight Miles High. It might well be a kind of chocolate box of stream of consciousness but there's always been an eerie undercurrent in this song for me, as though it's a list of the last psychotic thoughts of a killer before his breakthrough action. There's something obsessive about all that detail that's being noted. Maybe it's the razor-crisp harmonies, their impersonal sound and the odd time signature but this one can still give me the creeps.

If that weren't strange enough What's Happening launches into a series of strange statements by the narrator (a solo vocal from writer David Crosby) who is bewildered by the person he is talking to and their surrounds. Could be a straight recollection of a trip. There is hesitation in the voice and a stammered laugh begins another line. Between each couplet McGuinn's 12 string takes a bending walk in a minor key, getting ever higher until it is soaring by the end. We end as we begin on a ground of pedestrian rock to the fade, walking inside a mind as its unschooled occupant. Crosby would take this mood to a far more focused and tingling extent in the big spooky Everybody's Been Burned on the following album and it points to his later work with Stills and Nash but here in the context of a rock group it feels more like a word to the knowing.

If the cute 12 string riffs of Turn Turn Turn or the Bells of Rhymney have been absent from this far more serious platter and the lyrics are getting stranger and darker they still form slight preparation for the Side 1 closer I Come and Stand at Every Door. This is the one I had to replay when I got that copy back in the 80s. I heard it through three times straight and it sent a shiver each time. It still does. A modal wash of jangling guitar and crashing cymbals waltzes slowly beneath Gene Clark's unsmiling account by the ghost of a child incinerated in Hiroshima, condemned for eternity to knock on doors and plea for peace. "My hair was scorched by swirling flame, my eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind. Death came and turned by bones to dust and that was scattered by the wind" I'm welling up a little just typing those words. This is a cover of a song that emerged in the US folk scene in the late 50s. The lyrics are an adaptation of Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet piece The Girl Child and the song under the new title can be found covered by many including a nerve draining version in the 80s by This Mortal Coil. The Byrds version keeps its rock basis in the background, washing back and forth like the tide as Clarke's funereal drone persists against the force. The full band harmonies at the end offer some relief with the words about peace but it's too little too late as the wash falls quickly into its fade. End of side one.

The CD version observes a second or two of silence before resuming. Side 2 begins with one of the most sublime songs of its decade. A thick electric bass arpeggio thuds around the tonic and fifth of E over swishing ride cymbals. A stuttering six string electric clangs on a low E and then the huge golden notes of the introductory riff of Eight Miles High sing loud as a fanfare. Lift off. The figure playing G major against the relative minor that the rest of the band are grinding through tells us we're in for a strange ride. Immediately we are in for some turbulence as the 12 string lunges into a strange modal scale as influence by John Coltrane's sax as the then fashionable Indian classical music. This is not the sweet and cute jangling riff of Mr Tambourine Man but an engine turbining up and taking off. It scraggles around the scale, moving upward until it hits the ceiling with a rapid alternation of a high E and F. Before you can take any of that in the vocals enter, leaving us somewhere between Ravi Shankar and Cologne Cathedral's greatest hits.

The unworldly harmonies through the minor third slow and strong as a take off, lingering on the tension of ascent until the release with the ringing open D on the 12 string which feels like you're in the open air. Eight miles high and when you touch down you'll find that it's stranger than known ... Signs in the street that say where you're going are somewhere just being their own. What does that mean? To me it means perfectly chosen vowels and consonants sung like a monastic choir rising to the clouds. I don't care what it means because I'm up there with them, suspended. The second verse is the same steady controlled climb and cruise. Then the next instrumental break begins with the gleaming fanfare on the 12 string, courses through some turbulence in the stratosphere and darkly builds until again the choir emerges again for the last verse: Round the squares, huddled in storms.
Some laughing some just shapeless forms. Sidewalk scenes and black limousines. Some living, some standing alone. A brief moment of indecision in the playing, not stumbling or stuttering, more like hanging in the air wondering whether to land or keep coursing through the light. It's a landing, turbulent, jangling and assured rolling to a massive four engine stop that ends in the sigh of a ride cymbal.

I remember the phrase "huddled in storms" and thought, whether or not this was correct, that they had borrowed the word storms as a kind of collective noun, a group of huddles. It gave me pictures of vague fogbound shapes, flashes of  light sparkling around them. I will never get sick of this song.

Almost as a sublime to ridiculous transition next up is David Crosby's take on the year's go to cover, Hey Joe. The Leaves made it a garage epic and Hendrix just made it epic. The Byrds give it a speedy panic with a scraggly lead guitar (6 string) skittling in the background and Crosby's nervous high voice on full psycho setting. I like this version and I think I'm the only one who does. Maybe it's because the others stand by themselves and this needs an album to make it work. It sounds like something Crosby insisted on for coolness' sake.This was the Byrds' first album to contain no Dylan covers. The covers they chose (not counting to two trad numbers), this and Every Door, were decidedly un-Dylan and more a grab at the wider zeitgeist, anti-war and outlaw. Things were on the change.

Captain Soul sound like filler and is but it's filler composed of a kind of taunt. Having built a brief but fast career on folk modernisation and rocking up Dylan. A soul based groove would have seemed a freshener as much as Hey Joe was. The trouble is that, while it's endurable, it goes nowhere and has as much soulfulness as any of the white boy garage acts that Lenny Kaye stuffed the Nuggets album with: intention doesn't equal effectiveness.

John Riley is one for the old fans, a solemn choral jangle reading of an old folk tune about a returning lover. The same paint by numbers string section that appeared in Wild Mountain Thyme turns up again, and again as needlessly. It's pleasant and easily lived through but sounds like yesteryear.

Finally we hear the rising scream of a jet engine which gives way to a far more convincing groove than Captain Soul as between grabs of control tower radio talk we get a fun closer telling us to ride the Lear jet, baby. Before you think of this being an innovative anti-consumption broadside, taking aim at the really big wheels, be informed that the Byrds were young cool Californians with a lot of money who knew the people who designed the aircraft and probably a few people who owned one. This is a celebration of one of the ultimate consumables of the era. They might have turned into hippies but for now they wanted in.

As closers go, this was a step up from the first album's goofy We'll Meet Again or the previous one's embarrassingly self-consciously cute Oh Susanna. It rounds off the album without a cringe. Things were looking up.

Fifth Dimension is how it sounds, a band that had lost their chief original songwriter (Gene Clarke, who is on the album as a writer and singer) but who knew they needed to keep moving. Like so much of the rock LPs released in 1966 this was in response to Rubber Soul, the Beatles game changing set that, from cover art to the run out groove declared that real albums now had to have some cohesion and weren't allowed to be just lists of songs. While this is less a cohesive whole than a group of songs with filler dressed up as primary material it kind of gets away with it. It's not a bad parlour trick but the quality gap between Eight Miles High and Captain Soul cannot fully convince. The best they've done is to make the contemporary formula of covers supporting hit singles digestible across time. It's not the Byrds LP to begin with (I'd go with either Notorious Byrd Brothers or Mr Tambourine Man) but it feels like its time without sounding dated


Listening Notes:
Version used for this article was the 1996 remastered CD with bonus tracks. If you wanted to hear it on vinyl you'd need to try and find an original pressing from the 60s as the reissues from the 80s are from horribly worn masters. But even if you did access a copy from 1966 it still wouldn't have the bass response that the mid-90s CDs have so, really, listen to the CDs for best results until someone budgets enough time and money to have them remastered in hi resolution digital when they will finally sound like they did at the mixing board. The original mono mix of Mr Tambourine Man appeared on SACD and it is stellar. There's one of Notorious Byrd Brothers but I can never find a copy. Other Byrds albums remain at CD level resolution but, happily, this round of remasters was a fine one.

PS - I know he still called himself Jim McGuinn on this album and Roger came later but that's how he's been known ever since so ....