Surrealistic Pillow

Jefferson Airplane was an american rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco, California. They were considered a pioneer of psychedelic rock. The band consisted of Marty Balin (vocals), Paul Kantner (guitar, vocals), Grace Slick (vocals, keyboard), Jorma Kaukonen (lead guitar, vocals), Jack Casady (bass), and Spencer Dryden (drums). Balin left the band in 1971. After 1972, Jefferson Airplane split into two bands, with Kaukonen and Casady moving on to Hot Tuna, while Slick, Kantner and the remaining members recruited new musicians to form Jefferson Starship. In 1974 Balin rejoined them.

Surrealistic Pillow was the 2nd studio album by Jefferson Airplane, released in 1967. It was the first album with Grace Slick as vocalist. It is considered to be one of the most influential and quintessential works of the early psychedelic rock era and the 1960’s counterculture. Just two weeks after Slick joined the band, they went into the studio to record this album. On November 1, 1967 they recorded Balin’s “Plastic Fantastic Lover”, his ode to a television set penned after a visit to a plastics factory in Chicago while the band was on tour. This was followed the next day by his love ballad “Today”, which purportedly featured Jerry Garcia on lead guitar, laid down in a single take and wildly popular. On November 3 a Grace Slick composition she brought from her time in The Great Society, “White Rabbit”, was recorded with its original instrumental introduction drastically shortened for commercial purposes; it was among the first explicitly pro-drug rock songs and would go on to become her signature piece, used in countless movies and TV shows since.

The song “White Rabbit” borrows much of its imagery from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the 1871 sequel Through the Looking Glass. References to these books include Alice, the White Rabbit, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, the Red Queen and the Door Mouse. The song also deals with the theme in the books of becoming small and tall after eating or drinking a certain item, a clear reference to taking drugs and how you feel when you are high. Grace Slick reportedly said she wrote the song after she went on an acid trip. The drug culture in the 1960’s was very much about rebellion, mind expansion, social experimentation and following your curiosity. While this album was created when I was in elementary school and therefore this type of thinking was beyond my understanding at time, I came to appreciate what young people were trying to do back then. They wanted more of life, to understand spiritual things, and connect with others in a deep way. Whatever you may think about psychedelics have been researched and are being researched now. John Hopkins has a Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, as does Duke, NYU and Massachusetts General. Researchers believe that psychedelics can help with PTSD, mental illness, anxiety, help to stop smoking, and alcohol abuse and more.

I’m sure you have heard of micro-dosing of psilocybin mushrooms. Many people are using CBD and low doses of THC in drinks in order to forgo alcohol. I personally am not comfortable using drugs in any form, but I have to wonder, what if all the world leaders got together in a big house, and took psychedelics together for a couple of days? I wonder if they would emerge with a vision for a world that is kind, caring, sharing, and peaceful. Anyway, enough of this very, very controversial topic.

Here is the incomparable Gracie Slick and Jefferson Airplane performing “White Rabbit” at Woodstock!

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
He called Alice
When she was just small

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

Songwriters: Grace Wing Slick

Sophomoric