[4] Throughout most of 1969, the Byrds' leader and guitarist, Roger McGuinn, had been writing songs with psychologist and Broadway impresario Jacques Levy for a country rock stage production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt that the pair were developing.

[6] McGuinn and Levy's production was to loosely follow the storyline of Peer Gynt, albeit with some modifications to transpose the story from Norway to south-west America during the mid-19th century.

[2] Ultimately, the Gene Tryp stage production was abandoned and among the twenty-six songs that McGuinn and Levy had written for the project, six (including "Chestnut Mare") would end up being released on the Byrds' (Untitled) and Byrdmaniax albums.

[10][11] Lyrically, the song's spoken verses recount the story of one man's quest to tame a wild horse, and, as such, it echoes the familiar Byrds' themes of nature and freedom.

[9] The running time of the album version is 5:08, while the single edit is noticeably shorter at 2:58, due to the removal of the song's second verse and middle section.