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Eight miles high roger mcguinn5/19/2023 ![]() ![]() I’m not in the habit of compensating sources, but I decided to make an exception and pay for a reservation. It turns out he has evolved into one of the nation’s leading conspiracy theorists, and his website () offers the opportunity to chat with him on the phone…for $2.99 a minute with a five-minute minimum. It consists of the sounds of engine startup in a Lear Jet 23 with the N-registration number 242F (“F” is “foxtrot” on the radio) and the voice of John Lear conducting the preflight checks over an intercom-with the overdubbed band playing and singing “Go ’n’ ride a Lear Jet, baby, go ’n’ ride a Lear Jet” continuously for two minutes, 12 seconds.Īfter hearing that record recently and recalling McGuinn’s comments about riding with John Lear, I thought I’d try reaching Lear himself. ![]() That track is not among their most imaginative work. In fact, they released a song titled “2-4-2 Foxtrot (The Lear Jet Song)” on their Fifth Dimension album. I foolishly didn’t save his email.) McGuinn added, however, that he and the band’s other members did have fun memories of flying with Bill Lear’s son John above Southern California in Lear Jets. ![]() But, McGuinn said, “The Beatles had a hit at the time named ‘Eight Days a Week,’ so we decided ‘eight miles’ sounded better.” (This is paraphrased, but pretty close. Yes, he told me, he and his cowriters knew they were actually closer to six miles high. He wrote me back, explaining that, no, the words were not about a business jet but were instead penned during one of the band’s airline flights to London. I didn’t really expect a response from McGuinn, but my note must have appealed to him, maybe because I was not one of the many people asking which drugs the song concerned. It wasn’t compressed to the current “Learjet” until after subsequent corporate buyouts.) (In the ’60s, the aircraft-named for company founder and colorful innovator Bill Lear-was still written as two words. I explained to Roger (or more likely some lackey hired to read all his emails) that I was writing about airspace for a magazine called Aviation International News and I thought “Eight Miles High” would make a fun reference if, indeed, the song was about flying in a business jet-most likely a Lear Jet, which by then dominated the market and had become to bizjets what Kleenex is to facial tissue. Then I saw a little section of the site titled “Send Roger a note.” Lo and behold, the Byrds had a website, but it contained no reference to the meaning behind the song title, other than disclaimers that it was absolutely not about drugs (wink, wink). I decided to investigate, using a then-fresh innovation called the Internet. Eight miles high is 42,240 feet-definitely above airliners of the time and up where the early Lear Jet 23s flew. But I did some arithmetic and wondered whether songwriters Gene Clark, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn were also subtly referring to a business jet ride. My point was that all that categorization had since become obsolete, as aircraft of all types had grown more versatile over time.īecause I’m a 1960s-music fan, this retro-vision on airspace also got me thinking about the Byrds’ 1966 hit “Eight Miles High.” Most listeners assumed they were winkingly referring to drugs, at least as a double meaning, and I’ve no doubt that’s at least partially correct. Small personal aircraft usually stayed below 12,000 feet larger turboprop commuter liners dominated the “teens” airliners tended to operate between 21,000 and 33,000 feet and hot-rod business jets worked the heady altitudes above that, as high as 51,000 feet. I recall musing about how altitude “layers” were assigned by aircraft types in the early days of flying. Quite a few years back, I was writing an article for a BJT sister publication on how airspace is organized. Turns out the group were just six miles up when three of their members wrote their 1966 hit “Eight Miles High.” Here’s why the song title lifted them higher. ![]()
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