Grace Slick photo from one of her fan club sites
Segue back in time. Last year of graduate school. Sprawled on the apartment sofa of the man who is to become my first husband 14 months later, after his time in Viet Nam. He plays his latest LP. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds fills the room.
Not since Bill Halley came out with Rock Around the Clock in my childhood, causing instant sermons on the sins of Rock & Roll all over the country, had I heard a piece of music that I knew would change the face of music in a major way once again.
We all thought Lucy was about the Beatles tripping (and yes, as we found out later, they did do that, too), but they claimed that the song came from a drawing by one of their six year olds. I'm not sure I believe them, but we'd have to play Revolver backwards to find out the truth on that one, I suppose. If you were born after the sixties, ask your mom or dad to explain that last reference.
Enter Grace Slick. Wilder than the Beatles could ever be. A sensual Janis Joplin in white boots, springing up on radios all over the country. Jefferson Airplane, her group. What could be more glamorous than the combination of San Francisco, the Filmore West, Haight Ashbury, and Ken Kesey blowing the scene , all at the same time. Grace was every wild woman's alter ego. She was music. She was sex. She was drugs. She knew no boundaries. I heard White Rabbit...here comes Alice..and she's ten feet tall...and no-one could say GRACE was singing about her six year old's drawing. Grace Slick and the Airplane became the music of the times. She made your heart thump, your feet long for adventure.
I finally saw her perform in the mid seventies. The band had changed names. Grace was older, tired-looking on a platform stage in a gymnasium somewhere in Massachusetts. The fire wasn't there like before, but the man in my life at that time and I sat on the gym floor in the dark, listening to that famous voice and were swept back to times when our generation believed flowers, protest marches, bell bottoms and free love would still save the world.
9/18/2003
3 comments:
my friends a rock group/ The Natty Bumpo used to be the opening act here in D.C. at The Ambassador Theater
whenever the newer group, Jefferson Airplane were here...
I used to go and "hang" with them AND had a crush on Gracie I think she married the "leader" of the group later This was in the mid to late 60's when ....
Hi Ed,
I can see why you had a crush on Gracie. She was magic!
We can reference those times as with a bookmark on a favorite passage but it can never be the same as waking up, not as a piece of a story, but as the author of another day of sunshine magic. With a wonderful world of choices, airy San Francisco, the deep, dark drug scene of L.A., peaceful Pacific Grove, salty Monterey, the quiet communes of Carmel Valley, the pines of Big Sur, making love in the park at the Haight, where should that story take place today? Follow the white rabbit!
Thanks Pris for a real good trip!
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