But the weird part is that Tricky Dick didn’t need acid; he got himself out of office. You know they say he was so goofy he used to wander around the White House talking to the presidents’ pictures on the wall. So if he took acid, nobody would have noticed. He would have been talking about the walls melting, and they would have said, “Yeah, sure, there he goes again.”
But he got himself thrown out of office. That’s mainly what we wanted to do. Have him behave in such a manner that they’d have to take him away.
Avoid all needle days—the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.
—Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book
The Airplane became famous as the original psychedelic band, but personally, I was more a drinker. Anything that was around and easy I took—marijuana was very easy to score, but alcohol was my drug of choice. That’s the genetic deal going on, where I’m an addict in the sense that anything I like I’m all over. Like flies on shit! And sometimes that works out fine. Right now I’m a painter. That’s how I make my living and pay the mortgage.
Once I start a painting, I work on it until my nose runs. Then I guess I better blow my nose. Until gravity hits me, I don’t stop. In that sense, being an addict is okay, as long as you’re directing it at something productive. Unfortunately I do it in any area, good or bad. If I like something, there I am right in the middle of it. That operates with men, the job, cars.
Once in the sixties I went into a showroom to buy a car. I never paid any attention to the James Bond movies. I went in to get a Jaguar. I had all this money in cash. I went in dressed in jeans and sandals—your typical hippie. And I saw this English car and thought, “Damn, this is neat looking! I like this better than a Jaguar.” I said to the salesman, “What’s that called?” And he said, “That’s an Aston Martin.” I asked, “Is that an automatic?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Fine, I’ll take it.”
“Wouldn’t you like to drive it first?” “No, not really. I just like the way it looks.” So he said, “Well, how would you care to pay for that, ma’am?” And I said, “Cash!” I pulled out $17,000 in cash. The band thought it was great. They said, “Hey, that’s the James Bond car.” And I didn’t even realize that it was. I just was attracted to its look. Talk about impulsive! That’s what I mean. If I like something, it’s “That’s okay, I’m having that.” The problem was that the British cars at that time had a problem with the batteries, and the thing didn’t start all that reliably. It was like a fancy racehorse. You had to kind of coax it. We lived out in Bolinas, way outside of San Francisco, in the boonies. By then I had my daughter, China, and I decided, “Okay, I’m not going to have that type of car with a newborn baby.” So I took the Aston Martin engine out and dumped a Chevy engine in. I thought the guys in the band were going to pass out and die! But that’s neither here nor there. It’s not talking about addiction. Although maybe it is! I do what I want regardless …
The sixties idea of sexual freedom was something I could relate to. My upbringing may have been proper, but I switched to the new life-style without a hitch. Diversification in bed also made sense to me, at least at the time, like with drugs. Night after night we sang together, and it seemed natural that we slept together too. Sometimes it felt like being married to seven different men.
If you live with anybody, I don’t care what it is, it could be a turtle, eventually it’s going to get gnarly, because of differences of opinion. That’s why a lot of bands break up. That’s why Metallica all went and got therapists, ’cause they figured that if you’re in a band that is this successful, why would you want to mess it up? That would be crazy, we got to work this out. They had something they wanted to stay in, and that’s great.
People ask me what it was like being a woman in a rock band. It’s very different if you wanted to be a Supreme Court justice or head of a corporation, but there were always singers. My mother was a singer. I have a very loud voice, so rock is a perfect medium. My mom is a big-band singer—“I’ll be with you in apple blossom time”—and I can sing like her. One of my friends requested I sing at her wedding, and I thought, “Oh Christ!” She wanted me to sing this Carpenter song which gagged me: “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Me singing that! Holy shit! But I thought, “I can do it. I’ll just sing it like my mother.” Everybody in the audience who knew me were looking at me and laughing…. I didn’t exert any power in our bands. I liked having fun. Paul liked exerting power. I don’t care one way or the other.
In a band, you are so close to each other. Usually a man and wife go off to work, so you get a break from each other. You get no break with a band. You’re with them 24/7. All the time. It’s pressure because you have to look good, sound good, and be on time. We were lucky. We didn’t have to change our outfits or have dancing girls and videos and all that. The sixties were real easy. You just had to show up. If you could play or sing, or whatever it is you do without falling down. Even that was okay. The audience was just as screwed up as we were.
Compared to now where they really have to work. But anyway, you’re going to get on somebody’s nerves. All six or seven of you. That’s what happened to our band, and a lot of other bands. Jack and Jorma were mainly blues. They didn’t like all that “let’s go to the moon” that Paul liked. They weren’t all that crazy about Marty’s love songs, although Marty wrote some good ones. I didn’t care. I thought it was great: four songwriters, so the pressure is off in the sense that we each wrote a couple. Two or three songs each per album, that’s fantastic. But I’m also a girl. It’s different. At that time, there was some sexual tension going, and it was a little easier for me. With the rest of them, it was all male-male ego stuff. It was more fun for me.
As far as my addiction went, the drugs at that point were all still working. That’s why you use them. You don’t find out you hate them from the beginning and keep using. That would be stupid. They do something for you. It’s fun. To me, drugs were like food. I wanted variety. I liked steak but didn’t want to eat it every night. You eat different kinds of food. Same thing with consciousness: I felt the same way about my mind as I did about food. I wanted to experience different kinds of consciousness. I liked being sober but didn’t want to be sober all the time. I wanted to be sober for a while, then I wanted to have a marijuana high, or a booze high, or an acid high. The same as with food. In the line “feed your head,” I was referring to partaking of this consciousness the same way you do food. In other words, “Feed your head some interesting stuff.” That includes books. That includes new experiences. Knowledge feeds your head too. That’s why I used the line at that time.
I didn’t drink for any other reason than just to get high. My parents loved each other and stayed together until they died. I’ve had a great job. I’ve been able to screw anybody I wanted to. I have no claim to a miserable life. There was nothing to drink “over.” The only time I drank over something was when my house burned down in northern California. My husband was in Hawaii, China was in L.A. I was sitting in a Howard Johnson lodge trying to forget what was happening, and all the local TV channels said, “Grace Slick’s house burned down.” Usually I drank “for”—“Now I’m going to get ripped.” I like the idea of feeding my head with different consciousnesses, but I don’t do that anymore because at some point the stuff stops working for you and starts working on you.
It wasn’t acid that made me enemies, it was alcohol. Without alcohol, I’d be richer by the two million dollars that I paid in legal fees over my squabble with Marty Balin. I wouldn’t have had an outburst that got him so mad. He wouldn’t have said publicly in an interview, “Grace? Did I sleep with her? I wouldn’t even let her give me head.” I don’t even know what offensive behavior of mine he was reacting to. Because of the alcohol, I can’t remember. Without alcohol, I’d be richer by two million dollars that went to pay lawyer’s fees.
So drugs were still working at that point. When they don’t work and you don’t realize it, or at least I didn’t, you’re in trouble. Marty did.
When Janis died, he stopped. He went off drugs completely, but I didn’t. I thought, “Well, that’s them … Jimi, Jim,—Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin. All these people close to me started dropping off and I thought, “Well, that’s heroin.” To an extent, it was the heroin that killed them. I believe the reason why is that heroin is so small.
Once we were on tour with The Doors. We played several cities in Europe and were performing in Amsterdam with The Doors. We used to alternate who went on first and who closed the show. This particular night they opened for us. They went onstage and we were backstage waiting to go, doing some amyl nitrate and whatever other drugs there were around. During that day, both bands, The Doors and The Jefferson Airplane, had gone into the shopping area of Amsterdam to hang out, buy stuff, and look around. The kids knew who we were so they were all giving us drugs as we walked along. Sometimes you’d say, “No thank you.” Other times you’d say, “Thanks” and put it in your pocket. Jim Morrison did up whatever they handed him, on the spot. And I remember thinking, “My God, how’s he going to play tonight?”
And so that night when Jim came on stage, he looked like some kind of windmill that was ready to fly apart. Arms, hands, and legs flying all over the place. It was just insane! They finally took him offstage, and someone had to take him to a hospital because he was full of so many drugs.
Even our band—and we were known as the acid freaks—went, “Wow! How can he do so many drugs and even move?” Jim used himself as a guinea pig. Lots of kids we knew would sign up in college for drug-testing programs. Clinical trials. Jim used himself to find out what can you do to the human brain, how far can you go? Jim wasn’t a nihilist, although he was close. He had the point of view that you come on the planet, you see there is stuff to do, and let’s take it as far as it will go. We were all about that … to a point. But the reason I’m alive is that I’m somewhat chicken, and conservative as far as my body goes. If my body hurts, I pull back for a while. Being a periodic alcoholic, I’d get real sick and then decide, “I can’t stand that for another month or year.” I’d go all the way out though. I’d drink everything there was to drink to see how far I could go with it. I took a lot of acid and got real strange. I never flipped out, or wanted to kill myself, or saw anything that wasn’t there. We were all looking for different realities, and Jim had either more stupidity or balls, because he would take it as far as you possibly could. It’s amazing he lived as long as he did. It was only when lots of friends died we realized we were mortal.
With alcohol, though, it’s a long slow process, unless you have a car accident or something. With heroin, it’s so small that if you take just a little bit more, then you die. You have to have a microscope to measure out a little more and not die. That’s the reason I disliked it. Heroin was too tricky. You have to tie off. It takes going to a dealer and getting the paraphernalia, and then you get sick and go into a coma. Why would a person want to repeat an experience like that? Heroin can’t be a social drug, and it was too spooky for me. Also, there’s a slightly different psychology between heroin users and alcoholics. Alcoholics are generally a little more outgoing. Even though they turn into shits. Like me, obnoxious, yelling at cops, pulling shotguns, and stabbing each other, because it is a very abrasive drug. What eventually got me was in the mid-seventies. I was stopped three different times—never in a car—for drunk driving.
It’s really ironic that I’ve been arrested for three DWIs and always was outside the car. When you start doing shit like driving drunk, it’s an indication it’s no longer party time. A DWI is not like getting arrested at a protest march or with the rest of the band. This was all by myself being an asshole. They weren’t as harsh then. Now is better, I’m glad they’re harsh. When the police first said I had to go to these meetings, I said, “No, you don’t understand, I can afford my dinner.” And they said, “No, you don’t understand!”
Let me give you one example. I had this black Chevy pickup truck, and I was way the hell out in the middle of nowhere in Marin County with a book and some wine. I was just going to sit out there and read. So I got out of the truck and sat down on the ground with my back leaned up against a tree, reading. I had some wine. I ate some food. Then a cop came by, stopped, and said, “You’re not supposed to be here.” So I said, “What does it look like I’m doing?” And he said, “You shouldn’t be here.” And I said, “Well, why not?” “Because I’m going to arrest you for being drunk in public.” “Public!” I yelled. “You got fucking squirrels and deer and trees. You call this public? The only public is you, you fucking asshole.” So I go directly to jail. You see?
So I was arrested repeatedly for drunk driving, when I was not driving a car. It was drunk mouth! But there is no number for that. It’s not a 502, and it’s not assault. So it’s just plain drunk mouth.
I can’t claim I was, like, being in a peace march or anything. I got arrested for being an asshole all by myself. It didn’t dawn on me that it was related to my drinking. I thought it was my usual mouth—that blunt, jerk, sarcasm thing. I thought, “Hey, that’s just me. That’s how I am and it’s amplified by alcohol.” Eventually the highway patrol and their ilk told me, “Here, you got to go to these meetings.” And I said, “You don’t understand. I can afford my own dinner.” I thought recovery meetings were something where you got a free meal and a lecture from a priest. I didn’t know what they were. So, around 1976, I started going to meetings. I thought they were fabulous, because all the religions I’d been aware of had guys with funny outfits on and you had to pay them a lot of money. And one person was holier than everybody else. He was up in front. But in these recovery meetings, everybody was equal. Nobody owned anything either. I thought, “Okay, this is spiritual. The rest of that stuff was phony. This reminds me of early Christianity.” So I liked the context, but that didn’t mean I wanted to stop drinking. I was even a coffee maker, and I’d put a little rum into my coffee, and you got yours regular. Or I’d stay sober ’cause it was easy for me to do for a long period of time, being a periodic. I didn’t realize that anybody can stop. The problem for me was definitely staying sober, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. Also, I didn’t realize they were talking about all mind-altering chemicals. I would not drink alcohol but would use lots of cocaine or whatever. I’d jump around from drug to drug. So I’d stay sober for a while, then I’d go out and get drunk again. Then I’d come back to the program and start over again. People would tell me, “You’re gonna die,” and I’d say, “No, I’m not.” Oddly enough, I didn’t, but that isn’t because I’m so smart.
The band cleaned up individually at various times and for their own reasons. Three members of Airplane are in recovery. All during the eighties, I was sober. During the time of Starship. Then I got bored and went back out again. Then stayed sober for another couple of years, then went out again. Now, my daughter and I got sober in 1996. I have eight years sober again. I’m certainly not the image or the beacon to follow. My pattern or path has been to do what I want to do for my own reasons. I do hope I stay sober though. As I grow older, it’s harder and harder to handle alcohol. It’s particularly rough on your body, because if you don’t die, everything rots.
My mind is still functioning, but I’m lugging around this rotting body, this rotting meat. That’s not too pleasant, but apart from that, it’s all good.
The friends I have today are all alcoholics who are sober. Alcoholics, I’ve found, have very interesting lives. That’s a bizarre thing to say, and it sounds like I’m saying it to the exclusion of other people, but it’s probably true. I don’t want to be around people who have held back. I like being around alcoholics, thank you very much. Also, the deal that you’re as good as your spiritual program is a strong one.
In 1970, when I became pregnant with China, I wasn’t conscious of addiction. My life was all just sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But I’m not a moron, so I knew that what you put into your face goes into your body, and part of your body is what’s living i
n there—the child. So I didn’t do drugs when I was pregnant. And most of the time, I didn’t use when she was around. The times it happened, I’m sure it made her nuts, but I wasn’t self-aware about it until much later. You do a lot of stupid shit on drugs, but life goes on, you make amends, you don’t live in that. When China started getting goofy, she knew what addiction was, what to look for, since she’d been going to recovery meetings with me from the age of five.
Life now is fine. My daughter is sober. China came in a couple of weeks after me. Into the same rehab. My sponsor was amused. She had never seen a mother-daughter combination in the same rehab. Because I had rehabbed before, there was none of this mother-daughter filial nonsense. I just let China do whatever she needed to do and didn’t get into that.
China called me once when she was fifteen and said, “Mom, I think I’m an alcoholic ’cause tonight I was making out with my best friend’s boyfriend, and I’ve been drinking cooking sherry.” And I thought, “Wow, that would have been nothing to me.” But she knew early on that things were not working right. So she’s ahead of me. China’s thirty-three and has seven years of sobriety.
So what stops me from drinking now is that the drugs and alcohol don’t work anymore. Alcohol makes me a jerk, pot makes me paranoid, and I’m already wired to the tits, so I can’t use cocaine. The idea of starting that process of being interested in drugs is a big waste of time, too boring. What I’m doing now is more interesting than sitting around thinking where a dealer might be.
I can paint or write songs drunk or sober. Some of what I create is good, some isn’t. Alcohol doesn’t make any difference with my art, unlike for some people. It makes a big difference, though, with relationships, because I’m a real asshole. When you’re drawing, who are you going to be an asshole to? There’s none of that contention going on. I’m a jerk as far as relationships go. I think that’s true for a lot of alcoholics who are artists, writers, and musicians. For others, it will hammer what they’re doing, but many of us seem to plow right through. Ernest Hemingway is one example of thousands. Alexander the Great conquered the known world before the age of thirty-three, and he was a practicing alcoholic. It doesn’t get in the way of what you’re doing, but your relationships are crazy.
The Harder They Fall Page 30