Somebody to Love?

by Grace Slick

  Was there passion? Nope. Just cultural imposition.

  “Will you marry me?” Nobody ever said that lovely, naive line. We just moved into the married state as if it was expected and irrevocable.

  Jerry Slick and I slice through six tiers of tradition on our wedding day. (Ivan Wing)

  Even though Cece and Jill St. John didn't know Jerry, my getting married was a good enough reason to get together and knock back a few cocktails. The night before the wedding, the three of us had a low-key, three-woman bachelorette party in one of the bars at the Fairmont. No drunken debauchery, just a mild high to fuel the girl talk. The next day, I had the kind of wedding that women love and men hate—big, dressy, and full of relatives and friends acting out lots of rituals. The reception was held in the Gold Room at the Fairmont Hotel with cake and champagne, and, to me, it all felt natural, no second thoughts, no regrets. Just another workout on the treadmill of tradition coming to a satisfying end at sunset.

  Throw the bouquet and say “Good night, Gracie.”

  After the standard honeymoon in Hawaii, we went back to the Bay Area. Then, at some point, Jerry decided, for reasons I can't remember, to go to San Diego State University. A beautiful area, San Diego was nevertheless populated by large groups of military-minded right-wing organizations. Jerry studied while I worked at a department store running a comptometer, a monstrous machine that calculates billing statements. For relaxation (?) we visited Jerry's cousin and her husband who weren't much older than we but were members of the John Birch Society. They were so right-wing, they made Charlton Heston look like a draft dodger. Although I wasn't particularly political at the time, it was hard to keep from laughing or just nodding off when they started with the here's-how-the-country-should-defend-itself harangue.

  Our stay in San Diego was brief, thank God, because Jerry switched to San Francisco State at the end of the first semester. But I was still faced with a need to make money, and had no well-defined skills. The last stupid job I tried before my twenty-five-year rock-and-roll stretch, was modeling for the I. Magnin couturier department. Living with Jerry in a ninety-dollar-a-month shit-hole apartment in San Francisco with rats in the basement and unpredictable plumbing, I was expected to show up at the store each morning, change into a different four-thousand-dollar outfit every ten minutes, and float around, showing rich old women the latest in overpriced European designer wear. If they liked something I was wearing, the head of the department, Madam Moon, a bullet-faced frog with pretensions of social superiority, would measure their lumpy old bodies. Then, magically, with the help of her overworked seamstresses, she'd crank out a perfect copy of the original, transforming the outfit from a size six to a size sixteen. Mirrors don't lie, but denial systems rule—the old broads thought they looked fabulous and the I. Magnin coffers filled up.

  One afternoon, an old dowager, cocooned in fur and rattling diamonds, came waddling over to me with her best four-martini tack and said, “My dear, you really do need to cream your elbows.” What the fuck was she talking about? How dare she discuss dry skin? Her entire body had freeze-dried so long ago, the addition of moisture would have been a life-saving event. And she thought I needed a lube job? I was twenty-two years old. The only time a twenty-two-year-old is going to look too crispy is if she's been in a four-alarm fire. I'm now fifty-eight and still refuse to put cream on my elbows. Stubborn perversity.

  Ironically, while I was busy looking for a “real” job, I wrote my first song, without a clue that it was a precursor to my future. Jerry and I both got involved in a project with a mutual friend, Bill Piersol, an aspiring writer who'd written an interesting script treatment for an amateur sixteen-millimeter movie he named Everybody Hits Their Brother Once. A satirical comment on violence, Jerry filmed it while he was studying cinematography at San Francisco State, and it subsequently won first prize at the Ann Arbor film festival. I wrote a song for part of the succession of skits that made up that forty-five-minute reel, which was my initial experience at recording my own music—two layers of Spanish-style guitar picking that almost sounded like a cut from a professional soundtrack.

  One of the best parts of returning to San Francisco was getting back in circulation with our original group of friends—with a few new additions. Darlene Ermacoff had married a man named Ira Lee, who was literally possessed by a monster IQ. A handsome and eccentric part-time model/full-time student, he'd been a Quiz Kid, a contestant on the forties radio show of the same name. It was Ira who once told me (accurately) that I was an empty-headed WASP, and he proceeded to suggest reading material that might remedy the problem. I learned a great deal from him, not so much because of my thirst for knowledge, but because I was absolutely fascinated by his wild-eyed delivery of arcane details on every subject imaginable. His outbursts of enthusiasm became one-man performances lasting well into the night, and although Darlene was used to them and went to bed more often than not, I needed a tutor and he needed an audience.

  Darlene and Ira and Jerry and I used to take road trips to Mexico in an old station wagon, visiting the pristine beaches of Baja and, like all budding hippies, purchasing drugs. In those days, “south of the border” wasn't just a folksy phrase, it was the access route to a state of mind.

  14

  Use It

  It was 1965, a couple of apartments later and a lot of stupid jobs under the bridge, when Darby, Jerry, and I went to a small nightclub called The Matrix to hear a headlining group called Jefferson Airplane. Marty Balin, one of the two lead singers, had started the club with the help of other band members and some marginal outside backing from a couple of doctors.

  As I watched Airplane perform that night (they were an eclectic group that did electric folk-rock, blues, and pop), playing in a band like that seemed like the perfect thing to do. Get paid to make music, write your own songs if you feel like it, work for a couple hours a night, hang out with friends, and take lots of drugs whenever you want. When we got home that night and added up the numbers, we realized that the members of Airplane were making more money in one night than I was making all week at I. Magnin. It didn't take us more than about five minutes to start making plans to form our own band.

  Jerry had an old set of drums collecting dust in his parents' garage. Darby already knew how to play the guitar. My untrained voice was at least loud enough to compete with the amplifiers, and a friend, David Minor, could sing and play a few chords. And he was a good-looking front man. Peter van Gelder played sax and Bard Dupont could at best find the notes on a bass guitar.

  A name for the group? What about The Acid Fraction?

  No.

  What about The Great Society? (Making fun of Lyndon Johnson's grandiose moniker for the U.S. population.)

  It stuck.

  At that time, fortunately for us (and unfortunately for the listening audiences), you didn't have to be very good to get jobs in the local clubs. So once we formed the band, we managed to work on a semiregular basis. Some nights, we'd be playing to three drunks who were too old and wise or too loaded to even bother looking at the stage. Other nights, the clubs would be populated with members of the various local bands, just hanging out. Once in a while, a marketing representative from a record company came in and blew smoke up my ass, saying things like, “You guys are great. I'm going to make you rich.” One guy said he was going to make another Edith Piaf out of me.

  How? By breaking my back?

  The press vacillated between thinking we sucked and complimenting us on our originality. Good or bad, who's to say, but original is definitely what we were. Music lyrics were changing then, from the classic boy/girl romance stories to a wider variety of subjects, and we all took a shot at writing material. Pretty soon, the only “outside” song we did was “Sally Go 'Round the Roses.” The Motown-style arrangement lent itself nicely to the East Indian rhythms Darby and Peter loved; it had a sort of repeated mantra in the title chorus.

  Since all changes, no matter how small, are absorbed into and add impetus to t
he ongoing paradigm shift, nothing ever really slips away. The old themes and styles persisted as stitches in the unfurling tapestry, but they were hard to see. What caught the eye was all the newness.

  At a certain point, the “Why don't you love me?” concept was pretty much put on the back burner, replaced by what we considered relevant topics: political, social, and psychological ones. In a short space of time, we learned more than our parents wanted us to know about things they'd been too timid to investigate. Or, to put it more kindly and accurately, our new forms of communication hadn't been available to them at a time when their minds were open enough to “hear it.”

  In any event, our parents' world was crumbling (a perfectly natural evolutionary process that they refused to acknowledge), so they kept saying,

  “DON'T!”

  and we kept asking,

  “WHY NOT?”

  The same question that was being voiced in England, Africa, South America, Russia, and China, according to each country's own parameters, became an almost tangible force in our lyrics. Both the joyful songs that celebrated new life and the wrenching shouts of labor pains were heard in the music, the press, the movies, the prisons, the churches, and the state rooms.

  What concerns you? Put it in a lyric.

  What country's style of music best suits the idea you're trying to convey? English? Spanish? Jamaican? Whatever it is, use it.

  Global nation? Use it.

  Does colored oil and water produce interesting images when you backlight it and project it on a screen? Great. Use it.

  Are nude young girls shit-dancing a good example of freedom of expression? Sure, let 'em dance.

  Does living with a bunch of friends who aren't related by blood feel more comfortable than living with your family? Yes? Then move in.

  Does shooting a bunch of people in a foreign country for no good reason sound like a drag? Yes? Then don't do it, but do put it in a song.

  Darby Slick's “Somebody to Love,” which Darby originally wrote for The Great Society, is a good example of the shift that lyrics were taking. In the past, when people wrote love songs, they were talking about someone who would or wouldn't fill their personal desires. “Somebody to Love,” which became a huge hit later when Jefferson Airplane recorded it, turned the old concept around. The lyrics implied that rather than the loving you're whining about getting or not getting, a more satisfying state of heart might be the loving you're giving.

  Don't you want somebody to love?

  Don't you need somebody to love?

  Wouldn't you love somebody to love?

  You better find somebody to love.

  Cluster: Jefferson Airplane in 1968. (Jim Wells/Archive Photos)

  Darby wrote the words simply, without pedantry, suggesting that adhering to the old Puritan cliché “It's better to give than to receive” might actually make you a happier person. The idea of service and selflessness may sound like a tedious task reserved for bald monks, but the way Darby wrote the lyrics, altruism didn't seem like such a lofty and unattainable state. He gave people the impression that giving could even be an enjoyable adventure.

  As had happened with the seemingly overnight changes in lyrics, the sudden, yet natural shift from the rigid dress codes of the fifties to the if-it-feels-right-wear-it free forms of the sixties didn't give me a moment's pause. Does anybody question going from the fourth to the fifth grade? Remember reading about that kid who dressed up all the time?

  SHE'S BACK, SHE'S TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, AND SHE'S GOT COSTUMES!

  They ranged from a miniskirted, knee-booted pirate getup to a floor-length Indian caftan. I never wore tie-dyed T-shirts—too modern. I always went for the costume racks at the San Francisco Opera House or Western Costume Movie Rentals in L.A. If they didn't have what I wanted, I'd sew it myself.

  Shades of Lady Sue.

  I had the big buckled leather boots and belts made, and I got the jewelry from a secondhand store or a head shop. When all else failed, I got two extra-large paisley-printed towels, sewed them together at the top corners, stuck my head through the opening, and belted the front and back at the waist with an enormous five-inch-wide black rubber tire tread. No more couturier department for Grace. To this day, you can still see me in that towel outfit on some VH1 “Flashback” programs.

  Lucky you.

  My first experience with community living, a definite sign of the times, happened as a matter of convenience. I was with the other Great Society band members most of the time anyway, and to make the situation easier on us, we all decided to get a house together in Mill Valley. While this enabled us to play or practice day and night, the difficulties of communal living emerged quickly. What if one person wanted to sleep and the others were playing music? What if you'd just had an argument with someone and couldn't get away from that person? What if someone wanted to use the bathroom and she was in there? It was the usual interpersonal problems multiplied by six or seven. The difficulties eventually outweighed the advantages and probably hastened the departure of David Minor and Bard Dupont from the group. It's natural that differences escalate in tight quarters. You don't have to watch five rats in a small cage to understand claustrophobia.

  15

  Peyote, Sweet Potatoes, and LSD

  My group of friends spent a lot of time at Fay Roy Baxter's house. (No, he wasn't the one Airplane referred to in the album title After Bathing at Baxter's.) Fay Roy was a man who knew how to throw a party. He loved artists and musicians, so around twenty of us would gather at his house on the weekends for dinner and conversation while he ran in and out of the kitchen joining in the chat and preparing some of the best meals I've ever tasted. Great wine, candlelight, incense, marijuana, and interesting tablemates were a given at Fay Roy's.

  A gathering at his house was simply the best.

  When I was there, I felt as if I'd been transported back to the salons held by Gertrude Stein. Artists told each other elegant lies and engaged in spirited arguments over the integrity of some author or other. Listening to music through the pleasant alteration of hashish, we were young enough to think that we were the first group of people to really have a handle on IT—the next level of perception in human consciousness. And we thought that all those other “poor suckers” were just plodding along in the old survival grind. Arrogance, indeed—but it was fun buying into our self-created storylines.

  Along with the regular jazz musicians, macramé artists, writers, and students gathered at Baxter's, there was also a chemical engineer named Nick who worked for a big oil company. A twenty-two-year-old Brit with pink cheeks, a placid grin, an easy manner, and a Rolls Royce (an appreciation gift from his deep-pocketed employer), he'd invented the glue that adheres those plastic disks (road bumps) to street dividing lines. But industrial-strength glue was not the only powerful stuff Nick knew how to make. After loading us up with all the existing information on the subject, he gave us “homemade” LSD.

  Up to that point our group's experience with psychedelics had been pretty much confined to taking peyote, which was a “natural” plant—and that had only occurred a few times. It was at Baxter's house that we'd had our first taste. Peyote (a cactus that was already well known by the desert tribes of Native America), when boiled down to a concentrate, became a vehicle for going out of our minds. Or, in a more gentle interpretation, going from one plane of reality to another (and another and another). Our first peyote experience varied from person to person, but as well as I can use words to describe my earliest psychedelic shift in consciousness, this is how I remember it.

  After swallowing the bitter-tasting cactus concentrate with a chaser of water, I sat still and enjoyed the initial sensation, a very subtle tingling or vibrating. Then I became aware of a large, inner area of air that was automatically collecting in my lungs and releasing over and over, without any help or thought behind the process. It reminded me of smoking cigarettes, so I pulled a pack of Marlboros out of my purse. After marveling at the ugliness of the art design, a p
athetic blatant red-and-white attempt at flashy modern packaging, I took out a cigarette and lit it, just as I'd done hundreds of times before. But this time, it seemed like a very strange thing to do. As the smoke funneled down my throat, I felt a dry heat and then an interference with the air that was already in my lungs. I put the cigarette out and didn't light up another until I'd come down, about sixteen hours later. Feeling sort of nauseous (people usually throw up at the beginning of a peyote high), I went to the toilet bowl and arranged myself in the kneeling position, but nothing happened and the nausea slowly disappeared.

  Since flying off the edge of a cliff or trying to embrace a moving vehicle is not an uncommon desire for psychedelic drug participants (it's not that people become suicidal, it's just that in such a state anything seems possible), just before the six of us had ingested the drug, we'd designated one of the girls, Dana, to be our “straight” person. That was fortunate indeed, since in the middle of our high, we decided to climb a mountain that was close to Baxter's house. Before giving us the okay, Dana discreetly scanned everyone's faces, trying to determine if we were capable of comprehending the functions of simple things like doorknobs, curbs, traffic lights, and so forth.

  She finally voiced her approval, and after stepping out of the house (a monumental move into another world), it took us fifteen minutes to arrive at the sidewalk. There were just so many familiar objects that had suddenly taken on new importance, new vibrancy—and each flower, each square of cement, had to be appreciated at length. Children do this. Animals do this. Most adults forget how incredibly complex and beautiful the ordinary world is, but peyote was reminding us.

  As we lay on our backs in the tall grass on the mountain, each person made a brief awestruck remark about the diversity and synchronicity of the clouds, the air, the trees, and the animals. Unlike the Marlboro package, it all looked as if it had been perfectly designed.