Sky Pilot (song)
Encyclopedia
"Sky Pilot" is a 1968 song by Eric Burdon & The Animals, released on the album The Twain Shall Meet
. When released as a single the song was split across both sides, due to its length. As "Sky Pilot (Parts 1 & 2)" it reached number 14 on the U.S. pop charts
and number 15 on the Canadian RPM
chart.
of the title is a military chaplain
, as revealed by the opening verse:
The line-up includes Eric Burdon
on lead vocals, Vic Briggs
on guitar
, John Weider
on guitar
and electric violin
, Danny McCulloch
on bass guitar
, and Barry Jenkins
on drums
.
The song is a ballad
ic slice of life story about a chaplain who blesses a body of troops just before they set out on an overnight raid or patrol, and then retires to await their return.
"Sky Pilot" is organized into three movements: an introduction, a programmatic interlude, and a conclusion.
The introduction begins with the verse quoted above, sung a cappella
and solo by Eric Burdon
. Thereafter the band joins in with instruments for the chorus. Several verse-chorus iterations follow, leaving the story with the "boys" gone to battle and the Sky Pilot retired to his bed. The verses are musically lean, dominated by the vocal and a pulsing bass guitar
, with a strummed acoustic guitar and drum mixed in quietly.
The interlude starts as a guitar solo, but the guitar is quickly submerged under a montage of battle sounds. First come the sounds of an airstrike
; then the airstrike and Rock band fade into the sounds of shouting, gunfire, and bagpipes
. Near the end of the interlude the battle sounds fade, briefly leaving the bagpipes playing alone before the third movement begins. (The bagpipe music is a covert recording of the pipers of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
playing "All The Bluebonnets Are Over The Border", captured by Burdon while performing at a school. He received an angry letter from the UK government (or possibly the Crown) over his use of the recording in the song. )
The conclusion begins with the return of the bass and strummed acoustic guitar, accompanied by strings
. After a few measures the verses resume, but with a quieter, melancholy atmosphere: one verse is sung along with bass, guitar, and strings, and then without a choral break a final verse (quoted below) is sung to bass, guitar, and woodwinds
. Finally a strong bass line announces the return of the chorus, now accompanied with horns
and piccolo
s, repeated several times as it fades. The musical effect is very upbeat, in stark contrast with the "downer" content of the movement's lyrics.
The song is universally interpreted as an anti-war protest song
. There are no overt anti-war statements, but no glorification of war either. The (presumed) anti-war message is conveyed simply and obliquely, by lines such as:
and the final verse:
There is also a sense of futility, or perhaps moral judgement upon the chaplain, conveyed by the chorus:
The war in question is usually assumed to be the Vietnam War
, though the bagpipes and apparent sounds of a dive bomber
in the interlude, taken with the UK nationality of the artists, may suggest an earlier era; the A-1 Skyraider
, sometimes referred to by its radio call sign of Sandy, was a dive bomber, and was heavily used during the Vietnam War.
The UK mono single version is unique as it features several effects not included in the stereo version, including more echo in the a cappella introduction, heavy reverb effect at the end of the line "How high can you fly?" (Part 1 only), and an extra bagpipe passage at the end of the fadeout on Part 2. Also, the airstrike and battle sounds are both moved forward in the instrumental break. This version can be heard on the expanded CD edition of "The Twain Shall Meet".
, the swept "whooshing" sound effect laid over the entire track, most prominently during the chorus sections.
. It is also included on several live albums and is featured on his 1999 concert film "Live at the Coachhouse". Burdon performed a somewhat-Power Metal
version on his album "The Official Live Bootleg 2000".
The song was also covered by a Peruvian rock group called Traffic Sound in English in 1969. It was featured in full in their debut album, Vamos a Bailar Go Go, and then the opening hymn also appeared as the introduction to one of the songs in their album Virgin.
It was also sampled by Sebadoh
during a segue between the songs 'Sexual Confusion' and 'Three Times A Day' on their 1990 album, Weed Forestin'
.
The Twain Shall Meet
The Twain Shall Meet is an album released in 1968 by Eric Burdon & The Animals.It includes "Sky Pilot", an anti-war song of the Vietnam War era, including the sound of a plane crashing and a guitar riff by Vic Briggs, and "Monterey", the band's tribute to the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival...
. When released as a single the song was split across both sides, due to its length. As "Sky Pilot (Parts 1 & 2)" it reached number 14 on the U.S. pop charts
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
and number 15 on the Canadian RPM
RPM (magazine)
RPM was a Canadian music industry publication that featured song and album charts for Canada. The publication was founded by Walt Grealis in February 1964, supported through its existence by record label owner Stan Klees. RPM ceased publication in November 2000.RPM stood for "Records, Promotion,...
chart.
Themes
The Sky PilotSky Pilot
Sky Pilot can refer to:*A British and American slang term for a military chaplain*A common name for the wildflowers Polemonium viscosum and Polemonium eximium*Sky Pilot, a 1968 song by Eric Burdon & The Animals...
of the title is a military chaplain
Chaplain
Traditionally, a chaplain is a minister in a specialized setting such as a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam or lay representative of a religion attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, police department, university, or private chapel...
, as revealed by the opening verse:
- He blesses the boys
- As they stand in line
- The smell of gun grease
- And the bayonets they shine
- He's there to help them
- All that he can
- To make them feel wanted
- He's a good holy man
The line-up includes Eric Burdon
Eric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...
on lead vocals, Vic Briggs
Vic Briggs
Victor Harvey Briggs III is a former blues and rock musician, best known as the lead guitarist with Eric Burdon and The Animals during the 1966-1968 period...
on guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, John Weider
John Weider
John Weider is a rock musician who plays guitar, bass, and violin. He is best known as the bass player for the British band, Family from 1969 to 1971.-Biography:...
on guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
and electric violin
Electric violin
An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument purposely made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body...
, Danny McCulloch
Danny McCulloch
Daniel Joseph 'Danny' McCulloch is an English musician, best known for having been the bassist of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Eric Burdon & The Animals....
on bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, and Barry Jenkins
Barry Jenkins
Colin Ernest "Barry" Jenkins is an English musician, who is best known for being a drummer for The Animals during both of that 1960s group's incarnations....
on drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
.
The song is a ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
ic slice of life story about a chaplain who blesses a body of troops just before they set out on an overnight raid or patrol, and then retires to await their return.
"Sky Pilot" is organized into three movements: an introduction, a programmatic interlude, and a conclusion.
The introduction begins with the verse quoted above, sung a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
and solo by Eric Burdon
Eric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...
. Thereafter the band joins in with instruments for the chorus. Several verse-chorus iterations follow, leaving the story with the "boys" gone to battle and the Sky Pilot retired to his bed. The verses are musically lean, dominated by the vocal and a pulsing bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, with a strummed acoustic guitar and drum mixed in quietly.
The interlude starts as a guitar solo, but the guitar is quickly submerged under a montage of battle sounds. First come the sounds of an airstrike
Airstrike
An air strike is an attack on a specific objective by military aircraft during an offensive mission. Air strikes are commonly delivered from aircraft such as fighters, bombers, ground attack aircraft, attack helicopters, and others...
; then the airstrike and Rock band fade into the sounds of shouting, gunfire, and bagpipes
Bagpipes
Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...
. Near the end of the interlude the battle sounds fade, briefly leaving the bagpipes playing alone before the third movement begins. (The bagpipe music is a covert recording of the pipers of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards is a cavalry regiment of the British Army, and the senior Scottish regiment. It was formed on 2 July 1971 at Holyrood, Edinburgh, by the amalgamation of the 3rd Carabiniers The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers and Greys) (SCOTS DG) is a cavalry regiment of...
playing "All The Bluebonnets Are Over The Border", captured by Burdon while performing at a school. He received an angry letter from the UK government (or possibly the Crown) over his use of the recording in the song. )
The conclusion begins with the return of the bass and strummed acoustic guitar, accompanied by strings
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
. After a few measures the verses resume, but with a quieter, melancholy atmosphere: one verse is sung along with bass, guitar, and strings, and then without a choral break a final verse (quoted below) is sung to bass, guitar, and woodwinds
Woodwind instrument
A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...
. Finally a strong bass line announces the return of the chorus, now accompanied with horns
Horn section
In music, a horn section can refer to several groups of musicians. It can refer to the musicians in a symphony orchestra who play the horn . In a British-style brass band it refers to the tenor horn players. In popular music, it can also refer to a small group of wind instrumentalists who augment a...
and piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
s, repeated several times as it fades. The musical effect is very upbeat, in stark contrast with the "downer" content of the movement's lyrics.
The song is universally interpreted as an anti-war protest song
Protest song
A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for social change and hence part of the broader category of topical songs . It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre...
. There are no overt anti-war statements, but no glorification of war either. The (presumed) anti-war message is conveyed simply and obliquely, by lines such as:
- But he'll stay behind
- And he'll meditate
- But it won't stop the bleeding
- Or ease the hate
and the final verse:
- In the morning they return
- With tears in their eyes
- The stench of death
- Drifts up to the skies
- A young soldier so ill
- Looks at the Sky Pilot
- Remembers the words
- 'Thou Shall Not Kill'
There is also a sense of futility, or perhaps moral judgement upon the chaplain, conveyed by the chorus:
- Sky Pilot
- How High Can You Fly
- You'll never reach the sky
The war in question is usually assumed to be the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, though the bagpipes and apparent sounds of a dive bomber
Dive bomber
A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target reduces the distance the bomb has to fall, which is the primary factor in determining the accuracy of the drop...
in the interlude, taken with the UK nationality of the artists, may suggest an earlier era; the A-1 Skyraider
A-1 Skyraider
The Douglas A-1 Skyraider was an American single-seat attack aircraft that saw service between the late 1940s and early 1980s. It became a piston-powered, propeller-driven anachronism in the jet age, and was nicknamed "Spad", after a French World War I fighter...
, sometimes referred to by its radio call sign of Sandy, was a dive bomber, and was heavily used during the Vietnam War.
Differences between the mono and stereo mixes
The US single, released in 1968, was the first to be pressed in stereo on MGM Records. By 1969, many other record labels soon followed this format.The UK mono single version is unique as it features several effects not included in the stereo version, including more echo in the a cappella introduction, heavy reverb effect at the end of the line "How high can you fly?" (Part 1 only), and an extra bagpipe passage at the end of the fadeout on Part 2. Also, the airstrike and battle sounds are both moved forward in the instrumental break. This version can be heard on the expanded CD edition of "The Twain Shall Meet".
Special effects
Besides the use of "found sound" in the interlude section, and heavy use of reverb and echos, the song is notable for its use of flangingFlanging
Flanging is an audio effect produced by mixing two identical signals together, with one signal delayed by a small and gradually changing period, usually smaller than 20 milliseconds. This produces a swept comb filter effect: peaks and notches are produced in the resultant frequency spectrum,...
, the swept "whooshing" sound effect laid over the entire track, most prominently during the chorus sections.
Use in popular culture
Sky Pilot is played in the HBO series "Eastbound and Down" when Kenny asks Stevie to do one last job for him. It is also featured in the popular motion picture Zodiac as well as on its soundtrack CD.Covers
The song was covered by some artists and gets played on live shows by Eric BurdonEric Burdon
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...
. It is also included on several live albums and is featured on his 1999 concert film "Live at the Coachhouse". Burdon performed a somewhat-Power Metal
Power metal
Power metal is a style of heavy metal combining characteristics of traditional metal with speed metal, often within symphonic context. The term refers to two different but related styles: the first pioneered and largely practiced in North America with a harder sound similar to speed metal, and a...
version on his album "The Official Live Bootleg 2000".
The song was also covered by a Peruvian rock group called Traffic Sound in English in 1969. It was featured in full in their debut album, Vamos a Bailar Go Go, and then the opening hymn also appeared as the introduction to one of the songs in their album Virgin.
It was also sampled by Sebadoh
Sebadoh
Sebadoh is an American indie rock band, formed in 1986 in Westfield, Massachusetts by Eric Gaffney and Dinosaur Jr bass player Lou Barlow. Along with such bands as Pavement and Guided by Voices, Sebadoh helped pioneer lo-fi music, a style of indie rock characterized by low-fidelity recording...
during a segue between the songs 'Sexual Confusion' and 'Three Times A Day' on their 1990 album, Weed Forestin'
Weed Forestin'
Weed Forestin is an album by the American indie rock band, Sebadoh. It was self-released by Lou Barlow on cassette in 1987, under the guise Sentridoh, and sold at record stores in his native Massachusetts...
.