Somebody to Love?

by Grace Slick

  But the idea of never again using chemicals didn't register as a lifelong pursuit. Since I was fascinated by collective self-examination and the power of group energy, I continued to go to meetings long after the CHP had lost interest in my behavior or my whereabouts. But as far as drugging was concerned, I made up my own rules. I figured it was a good idea to stay out of the driver's seat while chemicals were still altering my motor skills, but for me, that didn't necessarily mean sobriety.

  In the meantime, there was some turmoil erupting between Skip and me. With my preference for liquor and Skip's affinity for opiates, we'd begun to exist on different planets of altered lack of consciousness. But because my loaded behavior was usually acted out publicly, while Skip's was private, I was the one who obviously needed restraining. People like my father and Skip, who spent most of their time quietly ripped, managed to enjoy their excesses without bringing down the wrath of the community.

  It was decided that I should go to Duffy's, a rehab unit that was located smack in the middle of California's wine country.

  Ironic.

  Someone dragged me, the offending drunk, up to the facility in the middle of the night, and I woke up in heaven—nothing but grapes bulging with potential every-where I looked. Some of the other guests apparently had convulsions and died before they could appreciate the satire, but the humor of the situation and the location of this particular “Fidget Farm” were not lost on Gene Duffy, the sarcastic bullhorn of a man who owned the place. The first words I ever heard him say were, “Good morning, assholes!” With that opening comment, I liked him right away. He was correct, of course. No one got to Duffy's by exemplary conduct.

  I wasn't there for long before I noticed some fellow drunks who were a bit further along in the game than I was. One man was shaking so badly he had to grab a towel, wrap it around his neck, and hold it steady with one hand like a pulley, in order to bring his orange juice up to his mouth without spilling it in his lap. Others just sat in chairs, reviewing their lives with a kind of unearthly stare. Those of us under the age of forty who were still able to sweat out the hangover took solace in the delusion of immortality that buttresses young souls.

  After a couple of weeks at the Fidget Farm, if you seemed to be making “progress,” they allowed you to go on a walk by yourself to the center of the town, which happened to be Calistoga. I took advantage of the freedom by visiting the various wine-tasting concessions that dotted the area, and, when I returned, no one seemed to notice my infraction of the rules. At that time Duffy's did no drug testing, so at the end of the required three-week residency, I was permitted to leave with the customary reminder to continue going to AA meetings.

  My story is and has always been that I enjoy being sober and I enjoy being drunk. I just wish it didn't unhinge my family and friends as much as it does.

  Some reasons (not excuses) for my incurable immoderation concerning food and drugs:

  At five feet, seven inches, 140 pounds, I consider myself about three inches too short and about ten pounds overweight. I maintain that slightly hefty appearance because about once a week I like to stuff myself on foods that I love. If I don't like the added weight, I take it off. If someone else doesn't like the extra ten pounds, they can go right ahead and not like the remaining 130 pounds right along with it—that's their problem. The main reason for dieting is that I'm lazy and I don't like lugging the blubber around. But, ah, the taste of a fine meal.

  Concerning my intermittent drug use, people have asked me, “Aren't you happy in your natural state?”

  Yes. I like the “natural state” (Montana?). I also like spaghetti, but not three meals a day, every day, all year. I like variations, both for my taste buds and for my forty-odd neural/chemical receptors. During my life, I've used drugs for a number of different reasons: to experience other levels of consciousness, to remain wakeful, to try to induce hallucinations (which I've never really had), to quiet my nerves, to lower my cholesterol levels, to shut up the committee in my head, to get silly, to reduce inflammation, and on and on.

  The list of pharmaceuticals and street drugs I've availed myself of is endless, but the worst drug reaction I've had was caused by a prescription pill called Zomax. It was touted as a minor anti-inflammatory chemical mix that worked fine on rats—but unfortunately didn't agree very well with humans. I took Zomax to relieve a pulled back muscle. But when I swallowed one of these harmless-looking little cylinders that a doctor had prescribed for Skip, within a half hour, I was on my way to the hospital—cramping, throwing up, emitting diarrhea, and breaking out in a head-to-toe rash. The paramedics were forced to shove wet towels down my throat so I could breathe (my throat was so dry, it stuck together, blocking the air passages). When I told my doctor what I'd taken, he said, “Oh, they took that off the market—it was killing people.”

  What a waste—it didn't even get me high.

  42

  Working Solo

  While I was being cautioned about my drug and alcohol problems by authorities, associates, and friends, I was working on one of my solo albums, Dreams, which incorporated the sensibilities of the AA twelve-step programs. Although for many years I loved being a part of a rock-and-roll group, traveling and singing with the various versions of Airplane and Starship, I've always preferred writing solo, focusing on whatever inspired me. By contrast, Paul Kantner has always liked collaborating, so he was overly generous in sharing credit for songs that were mainly his creations. Sometimes we'd be hanging out talking, he'd hear a line from me that he liked, he'd use it in a song, and then my name would appear on the album as cowriter.

  But I like writing my own thoughts in my own time. I have a theory that my preference for writing solo is a result of playing by myself so much when I was a child. As I grew up and continued to work at my own pace with my own ideas and my own tools, sole authorship became a habit that was hard to break. I respect collaboration; when two or more people do manage to produce a successful joint venture, it's like a brief marriage of souls, an accomplishment that's very satisfying. But in my case, collaboration has always been an awkward effort; I really find no pleasure in marching to someone else's drum, and it can be uncomfortable trying to force my input into another's vision.

  With Airplane's Jorma Kaukonen, I enjoyed writing lyrics to music he'd already written (we did that a couple of times), but that wasn't so much a collaboration as it was a result of independent efforts. One person wrote the music, the other the lyrics. That's a common division of labor for songwriting teams—Rogers and Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hart. I was about to add Lennon and McCartney, but they may be the exception to the rule, since they often interacted on both the words and the music.

  Paul McCartney came over to a rehearsal at the Fillmore once, just to hang out and compare bass guitar notes with Jack. I remember feeling like we'd been blessed with an appearance by the Dalai Lama. Even though our album Surrealistic Pillow had stayed in one position or another on the Billboard Top Ten for fifty-six weeks, in comparison to The Beatles, we were still just part of the congregation. Paul was in the pulpit.

  But even with the esteemed Lennon/McCartney collaboration as a role model, I always preferred writing alone, which I got to do when I was recording Dreams. I'd just blown off the group in a rage against what I perceived to be our collective animosity and mediocrity, and I didn't even know whether I could continue to make records. How? Solo? With studio musicians? What did I really have to say in the lyrics? Did I care enough to do all the organization, the contracts, the interviews, hire new musicians, write the songs, go on the road “alone”? For what? Applause? Money? Habit?

  Since I was a kid, I've always written songs, stories, poems, and free verse. I had no thought of doing anything with them. I just wrote for fun—to see if what I created fell into the realm of acceptable communication. Sometimes I'd show my stuff to my parents or friends, but “professional output” never even occurred to me
. After I quit Star-ship in disgust with both myself and the music business in general, I continued to write as I always had, generating bits and pieces of thoughts in rhyming patterns. I never stopped writing, and since I had a collection of about six or seven song lyrics when I left Starship, Skip suggested I do something with them. “You've got almost enough songs for an album, why not make one?” he suggested.

  Why not?

  Of course, there was a downside to going the solo route. For me, doing solo albums felt like being in a plastic bubble. Sure, I was protected by the label and the status I had as the top-billed musician on the record, but my isolation was constant. If things weren't right, it was my fault. If ideas were discussed, people would usually accept my call, even if it was mediocre. If I wasn't up to par on a given day, no one could step in and do their song instead. It was at the recording stage that the feeling of separateness weighed most heavily. I preferred writing the songs alone, but when it came to bringing them to life, the input of people who had equal status made the effort so much more intriguing and unified.

  That said, meeting whole new groups of musicians and producers for each successive record brought a fresh sound to the music that was both exciting and gratifying. It taught me a lot, too. So with Skip managing me and pulling together the various and demanding elements, we hired Ron Frangipane as producer, combined some lyrics I already had with some new ones, and made Dreams for RCA. Since I was working solo, this album contained my most personal grouping of lyrics up to that time. Instead of pointing my finger at “you” like I'd done in the past, very often “I” was the subject of these new songs. Although I was still distancing myself by using the pronoun “she,” it was obvious that the concerns expressed in the lyrics were mine. Take, for example, one of the album's songs, “Do It the Hard Way”:

  She said I've got to make 'em all think I'm winning so I'll just tell 'em lies

  That way I can make sure no one ever knows just exactly what I mean

  Then I can beat the drums and yell it to the skies

  I'm the queen of the nuthouse, I'm the queen

  And I can justify myself—say I've been cheated

  I'm the only one in this game who knows how to play

  And if it weren't for time—I'd never be defeated

  But people, places and things—they get in my way

  And I don't like what they say.

  She's gonna keep on doing it till she proves that they're all wrong

  She's got to let 'em know she's the exception to the rule

  She's got no friends 'cause she thinks she's so damn strong

  But she's the only one who doesn't know that she's the fool

  Talking about hurt, pain, and fear has always been difficult for me. I've viewed that type of “victim's” lament as pathetic inertia, so when it came to expressing my feelings in lyric writing, I usually tried to shuffle the linguistics so that no one would see the pathos card whining at the bottom of the deck. I was more comfortable being perceived as irritating rather than brooding. Empathy, yes. Sympathy, no. But with Dreams, the boundaries were getting thin.

  Did my solo albums sell? No. If I'd been willing to go on the road to promote them, they might have fared better. What wasn't fully clear to me then is abundantly clear now: no one in his or her right mind puts out an album without tour support. Steely Dan is the only outfit I can think of that managed to stay alive without doing concerts, and I think even they finally caved in and hit some clubs later in their career. To add to my self-created promotional difficulties, I had this grandiose idea that onstage every song on my album should have a completely different set to fully complement the lyrics. That was not only physically impossible, it was financially unrealistic. But I was unwilling to go out and do a half-assed Airplane set in order to sell records.

  To be honest, doing solo albums scared the shit out of me; making music was no longer fun, it was nerve-racking pressure. For someone who couldn't handle a quarter cup of coffee without wondering where the quaaludes were, working solo was just a couple of steps short of flinging myself off a 150-foot diving board. I much preferred to write the songs and give them to a group of friends to help me make the music in a band format.

  Only a handful of people have been able to sustain solo careers after leaving a popular band. Sting, Peter Gabriel, Diana Ross, Phil Collins, and Michael Jackson come to mind. Most egos can't wait to get their hands full of their own importance, and when they do, they realize it's not as easy as they thought.

  Of my four attempts, Dreams was probably the best and Manhole the most unique. But if you don't or can't give all of yourself to a project, it's easy for listeners to recognize a lack of inspiration. In the case of my solo albums, every detail was not attended to, every aspect was not evaluated by the person responsible—me. For instance, when I needed to have my English lyrics translated into Spanish for Manhole, instead of taking them to a professional Berlitz kind of guy, I used an easier method. I honked up a bunch of cocaine and stayed up till about five in the morning, waiting for the Mexican janitor to come into the recording studio to clean up. He and I swilled some wine together and I had him translate my lyrics. We traded languages the best we could, which resulted in “Celtic Taco” grammar, so if you don't understand Spanish, the lyrics in Manhole sound okay. But if any Latinos heard it, they probably wondered who put the WASP in the tequila. It was fun hanging out with a fellow wino, but rough on album continuity.

  My solo albums were each like a half-finished puzzle; they represented only the beginning of a full picture. Simply put, they were inadequate and incomplete. Skip did everything he could to manage the productions and make things run as smoothly as possible, but even the finest Ferrari goes nowhere without the juice. All the people who worked with me were tireless, talented, and accommodating, but it took me four albums to realize that, in my case, true passion required the presence of an ongoing band of musicians rather than a linear autonomous framework. Give me the wolf pack and I come alive. Segregate me and I suck my thumb. Masturbation is fabulous, but nothing beats the old tango.

  Even though I was working and putting out music during the time I made Dreams, my erratic emotional behavior was affecting Skip and China. I knew it, but I didn't have a grip on who or what was going to inspire me to change it. Tripping over my own unanswerable questions, I felt like I was walking a tightrope without the pole; I was losing it and I couldn't see the net. I was too cynical to keep on with the “we can be together” flowers in the park stuff, and too old to pull off the angry young drunk punk, although at least it would have been more honest. I saw myself as Queen of the Nuthouse then, imagining people thinking, “Hey, let's go over and watch Grace rattle the bars and yell for room service.”

  Coinciding with my own maudlin “dark night of the soul” was Skip's painful physical illness, which increased his need for prescription narcotics. His body couldn't work and my spirit didn't want to work. But sometimes, fate, karma, or just plain dumb luck coaxes the phoenix out of the ashes, or at least out of the wine vats.

  43

  An Easy Ride

  In 1979, while Skip and I were still waging our silent (and sometimes not so silent) battles with chemicals, Paul organized another version of Jefferson Starship. Minus me. The group was composed of Aynsley Dunbar on drums, Craig Chaquico on lead guitar, Pete Sears on keyboards, David Freiberg on bass, Paul on rhythm guitar, and a new lead singer, Mickey Thomas (who'd sung the hit “Fooled Around and Fell in Love”). The new group produced a successful album, Freedom at Point Zero.

  While Jefferson Starship was working on a second LP, the producer, Ron Nevison, in conjunction with Kantner, called to ask me if I'd like to come in and put down harmonies on one of the songs. The group was recording in Sausalito, just five minutes away from the house Skip and I had bought in Mill Valley, so it seemed relatively uncomplicated. No pressure: just hang out, sing a little bit, see old buddies, and get friendly with the local recording studio operation.

 
As we entered the eighties, long songs about revolution and chaos were mostly in the past, now the property of the Brit punks, so rather than rely on group-written material, Starship reached out to outside writers. Of course, because most of us considered ourselves songwriters, we would have preferred to have our own songs on the records. But when an outside writer provided the producers with what they thought was an excellent song, or possibly a hit, we swallowed our pride and deferred to consensus.

  To give you a sense of how commercial considerations had—and have—taken over, consider a song I wrote in 1989, the year of the Jefferson Airplane reunion album, called “Harbor in Hong Kong,” about the initiation and success of the opium/tea trade and the eventual turnover to Communist China. It was a good song, not simple enough to be a single, however, and too anachronistic to rate as an album cut. So it wasn't used. Back in 1968, though, I would have recorded it, objections be damned, and the fact that it was quirky would have been even more reason to include it in the final product. But times had changed.

  “You want to make strange albums with no single possibilities in the eighties? Use your own money, Grace.”

  I didn't.

  Eventually, the group's commercial pandering got to Paul, starting with the pimple cream sponsorship to which we'd all agreed. By that time, mounting a rock-and-roll tour took a ton of money: the trucks, lights, sets, and transportation all required big bucks. So sponsorship was necessary. I didn't really object to it, but you had to be careful who your sponsor was. Integrity nags, so I certainly wouldn't have wanted to advertise Exxon. On the other hand, Tom's of Maine toothpaste just didn't have the bucks behind it to mount a tour. So the alternatives we were left with were few. Result: this way-over-thirty band accepted pimple cream money to support touring expenses.