ON SONGWRITING
But those couple of hits contained exquisite
Beatlesesque harmonies on “It Won’t Be Wrong,”
“Here Without You,” “You Won’t Have to Cry,”
and “Set You Free This Time,” and monsters like
“Turn! Turn! Turn!,” “So You Want to Be a Rock
and Roll Star,” and the majestic “Eight Miles
High,” which McGuinn was especially proud of.
“We were on the Dick Clark caravan of stars,”
he recalled. “Cassette players had just come out
and I had bought one in Europe. On tour we ran
into a guy who had John Coltrane’s India and we
taped it and had it with us, and played it over
and over again to the point of saturation. We
wrote ‘Eight Miles High’ during that period and
when we got into the studio, lines from it were
just like in India. It’s the same theme you hear
only I sped it up a little bit and played it on the
12-string. It was definitely a tribute to Coltrane,
if you will. I wanted to go in that direction but I
met with some resistance from the other guys in
the band, who wanted to go into country music.”
“Eight Miles High,” however, represented for
The Byrds the beginning of the end. “It was
climbing up the charts and then the Gavin Report
came out and panned it,” McGuinn said. “They
said it was a drug song, and all these stations
stopped playing it, and I don’t think they wanted
to touch us after that.”
David Crosby didn’t help matters when he
ranted during the band’s performance at the
Monterey Pop Festival: “He said stuff like, ‘The
Warren Report is a lie,’ and ‘Paul McCartney said
everybody should take acid.’ The crowd loved
him. But that’s the reason we didn’t get in the
movie.”
A few weeks later The Byrds were auditioning
new members for Crosby’s vacated slot. While
the Monterey incident was only partially the
reason for Crosby’s dismissal, his departure
foreshadowed other problems that would plague
The Byrds once they reached their destined
treetop. Battles over power and control invade
the most idealistic group and The Byrds didn’t
escape this: “I was the leader in name, at least.
I did the lead vocals and lead guitar, plus got a
lot of recognition. Crosby wanted to be the top
man and kept pushing for that, and there was
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just this ego battle going on all the time. I mean
there were fist fights. So Chris Hillman and I got
rid of Crosby because he was so outrageous.
And then Hillman started wanting to be the top
guy. You can’t win. The only way to do it is not to
have a group, I guess.”
Before the breakup in 1970, Terry Melcher
produced The Byrds’ last two chart singles,
“Jesus Is Just Alright” and “Ballad of Easy Rider.”
The “Easy Rider” theme came to them courtesy
of Peter Fonda and, little known fact, Bob Dylan:
“Back when I was working with Bobby Darin,
Peter Fonda was working with Sandra Dee and
he came to see us in Vegas. Then David Crosby
got to be friends with Peter and he came to
the sessions when we were playing. He had
a lot of our records, and when he went to do
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