The Beauty of Song, Part Five: Grace Slick

Grace Slick was the high priestess of San Francisco psychedelic rock back in the 1960s.

Originally from suburban Chicago, Grace Slick ventured west to make a name for herself in music and was first part of of a Frisco band that was somewhat cynically named the Great Society, after President Lyndon Johnson's domestic program.  But when Signe Anderson, the female vocalist in another group that had secured a record deal, suddenly gave up her musical career to pursue motherhood, Ms. Slick replaced her in this other group, an outfit you may have heard of . . . the Jefferson Airplane. :-)

Grace Slick brought to the Jefferson Airplane a voice the complemented the second half of the group's name - it soared - and a couple of tunes from the Great Society, such as "Somebody To Love," written by her brother-in-law, and her own "White Rabbit," which made it clear that "Alice In Wonderland" was about drugs.  Her contributions to the Airplane made their second album, 1967's Surrealistic Pillow, a classic.

The Jefferson Airplane would go on to have other hit albums, including the highly political Volunteers, which featured a recording of "Wooden Ships," a song about escaping America that Ms. Slick's bandmate (and also her lover) Paul Kantner wrote with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Though Crosby, Stills and Nash also recorded "Wooden Ships," the Airplane's version is considered the definitive one - largely because of Ms. Slick's powerful vocals.

In the seventies, the counterculture that gave the Airplane its tailwind waned, and the group found new life as a pop-rock band with a new sound and a new name, the Jefferson Starship.  It was at this time - 1974, to be exact - that Grace Slick recorded her first solo LP, Manhole.  Ms. Slick stepped back a bit and let fellow vocalist Marty Balin take center stage, and she even quit the band for awhile (and released Dreams, a solo album that reached number 32 on the Billboard Top Two Hundred, the highest-charting of her four solo efforts), but returned in the early 1980s.  By 1985, all of the original Airplane members, including  Kantner and Balin, were gone, and Ms. Slick and the other replacement members continued as yet another band, Starship.  Despite a few hits - including 1985's "We Built This City" and the cheesy 1987 single "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" - she eventually left, reuniting with the old Jefferson Airplane for a self-titled album in 1989.     

Grace Slick retired from music to concentrate on painting, but she remains as feisty as ever.  In 2017, she let the conservative, homophobic restaurant chain Chick-Fil-A use "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" in their commercials . . . and then gave her licensing royalties from the deal to gay-rights activists.

Got a revolution, indeed. :-D

Now that's how to play corporation games. ;-)