vocal group that Crosby had admired as a youngster. Another song on the album that uses a 5/4 time signature, albeit with occasional shifts into 3/4 time, is "Get to You". The song recounts a plane trip to London, England, just prior to the advent of autumn, but the identity of the enigmatic "you" mentioned in the song's title is not specified in the lyrics and thus, can be interpreted as either a waiting lover or as the city of London itself. Although it has been claimed by McGuinn that Clark co-wrote the song, he had left the Byrds again by the time it was recorded and therefore does not appear on the track. "Old John Robertson", which had already been issued some six months earlier as the B-side of the "Lady Friend" single, was another country-tinged song that looked forward to the band's future country rock experimentation. The song was inspired by a retired film director who lived in the small town near San Diego where Hillman grew up. According to Hillman, John S. Robertson was something of an eccentric figure around the town, regularly wearing a Stetson hat and sporting a white handlebar moustache, which gave him the appearance of a character out of the old American West. In the song, Hillman recalls the children of the town and their cruel laughter at this colorful figure, as well as the combination of awe and fear that he elicited in the townsfolk. During the recording of the song, Crosby switched instruments with Hillman to play bass instead of his usual rhythm guitar. The track also makes liberal use of the studio effects known as phasing and flanging, particularly during the song's orchestral middle section and subsequent verse. The version of "Old John Robertson" found on the B-side of the "Lady Friend" single is a substantially different mix from the version that appears on The Notorious Byrd Brothers album. The final track on the album, "Space Odyssey", is a musical retelling of Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Sentinel", which was also the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The song makes extensive use of the Moog modular synthesizer and features a droning, dirge-like melody reminiscent of a sea shanty. Since "Space Odyssey" predates the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, McGuinn and his co-writer, Robert J. Hippard, composed lyrics that referred to a pyramid being