10 Jul Grace Slick Speaks to Voice of America
Read the whole article at Voice of America.
Singer Grace Slick shot to fame with her band Jefferson Airplane and spoke with VOA about life there during the summer of 1967.
Now 77, and a painter, Slick says she and others did not call it the “Summer of Love.” They were just doing “stuff,” Slick said — creating art and music and making jewelry and other things.
“It was actually just a whole bunch of people playing music and hanging out and having fun,” she said. “It was pretty much that simple.”
Jefferson Airplane, along with the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and others, started what is known as psychedelic rock music. One of that summer’s best-known songs was Slick’s “White Rabbit.”
“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small and the ones that mother gives you…”
Grace Slick says her idea for “White Rabbit” came from the book “Alice in Wonderland,” by Lewis Carroll. The story is about a girl who finds herself in a strange place. Slick says living in San Francisco in the 1960s was, for her, similar to Alice’s Wonderland.
“She went from very proper Victorian England down the ‘rabbit hole’ into this nut, you know, wonderland, which is just crazy. I went from very proper 50s, United States, into the 60s, which is very similar to her experience.”