“Eight Miles High” — The Byrds

Nowadays when The Byrds are mentioned, it’s usually in terms of their contribution to popularising 1960s folk songs with a pop audience.

The Byrds took Bob Dylan’s “Mr Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn” to the upper reaches of the UK and US pop charts and Roger McGuinn’s jangly Rickenbacker guitar quickly became one of the signature sounds of 1960s pop music.

Impressive though those successes were, just before Christmas 1965 The Byrds recorded “Eight Miles High”, a song written by the band members themselves, which would go beyond…