by Grace Slick
An example. Long before the mitral valve prolapse episode—in 1973, to be exact—I had a pain in the chest on the left side, and when I consulted the does they suggested I go to a shrink.
Funny how often that suggestion keeps popping up in my case, isn't it?
Anyway, I went to the head shrink at the University of California. After four sessions that included the standard queries regarding family, emotional stress, sexual habits, etc., he glanced down at the floor where my purse was bulging.
“How much does that weigh?” he asked.
I picked it up and handed it to him.
“About twenty pounds,” he said, hefting it, “and if you're right-handed, you probably wear this hanging off your left shoulder. Right?”
I nodded.
“Try taking some of the stuff out of it, or wear it on your right shoulder for a while. You're not nuts, you're just over-loaded.”
I followed his instructions and the pain stopped immediately. So sometimes, if you have a sore throat, a helpful podiatrist might tell you to take your foot out of your mouth.
48
The Gamut
As I've negotiated the twists and turns of my own life, watching China run the gamut of social and educational extremes has been both fascinating and irritating. But always, she shows a rebounding ability that brings her back to her own center. Apart from being my daughter, she is also one of my favorite characters—animated, self-willed, talented, dramatic, and never boring. I love her, and, fortunately, I also like her. Sometimes, those feelings are not necessarily in sync, but on the whole, I couldn't have dreamed up a better child or a better friend. When we fight, it's an even match, and when we're close, it's an even love. Our styles may be different, but the absolute focus is the same. We can each be aggressively obnoxious or persistently entertaining. When China jumps into a “role” with both feet, its the same steamroller that Mama drives—rampant.
While she was attending Marin County Day School, China conducted herself in the proper beige manner expected of private-school girls. When I arrived to pick her up after school in my gullwing DeLorean, it seemed that between the outrageous car with doors that swung out and upward, my black knee-high leather boots, and my short skirts, I stuck out as true rock-and-roll sleaze next to the other moms who drove up in their BMWs in tastefully blended afternoon matron attire. Result: China was embarrassed—her mom was a freak.
Then a shift occurred.
When China's hormones and the boom box took her in the opposite direction, Mom's unusual employment and deportment were suddenly okay. Thirteen-year-old China no longer wanted to hide the fact that her mother might have sprung, claws bared, out of a boiling counterculture. She was now proud of her musician parents, and had even gone a few steps ahead of us by sporting the new punk look—asymmetrical short spiky multicolored hair, a line of pierced rings all the way up one ear, four inches of silver bracelets, and ripped shirts, jeans, genes, and friends.
Then the balance.
At age fifteen, the two extremes blended into a Duran Duran-loving, long-blonde-haired California girl appearance. Her summer job as MTV's youngest VJ was a high school kid's dream—she got to hang out in New York, meet and interview the bands, get her face on TV, and put some money in her pocket. During the punk stage, China's grades had been predictably rotten, but when she graduated from high school, her report cards contained primarily A's and B's. She'd tried on the polarities and settled into a balance that fell in line with her own disposition. Always quicker than Mom to recognize potentially destructive patterns of behavior (either right or left), she now alternates between being my parent and friend and being part of her own somewhat disenchanted generation.
Grace and China, Evening Star premiere: different styles, same focus. (Fred Prouser/Reuters/Archive Photos)
Not that she's turned into a doormat. Sometimes more of a pit bull than I ever was, she's able to do what I generally couldn't: express sober rage. Skip's ex-mistress (remember the AA prom queen?) was still carrying a torch after some length of time, and China, more of a mail ferret than I, sniffed some perfume on a letter addressed to him. Matching up the envelope to previous pieces of Miss X, seventeen-year-old China telephoned her and left this little reminder on her answering machine:
“If you ever interfere with my family again, I'm going to send Mafia wise guys over to break your whoring ass.”
So much for becoming friends with all my boyfriends' lovers.
49
On the Road Again
I know it's holy rock and roll, but I spike it.
—ANONYMOUS
In 1988, Paul called together all the original members of Jefferson Airplane and suggested a short (one album, one tour) reunion. After some brief discussion about logistics, we all agreed to the adventure.
Fantastic, I thought. This time Airplane will be assisted by one of those professional management teams in L.A. (as opposed to well-meaning hippies from San Francisco) who really know how to put a rock-and-roll package together. Now that we're all old enough to prefer seamless negotiations, it'll be a snap.
Sure, Grace, and polar bears use toilets.
The old Grace and Paul versus Jack and Jorma game resumed immediately. Skip, in alignment with my tight organizational vision, recommended Trudy Green from H.K. Management. After meeting her, I was delighted with both her easy manner and sharklike business sensitivities. She was my unequivocal choice—a smart blonde Jew from L.A. who knew how to laugh and bark at the same time.
But Jack and Jorma wanted to have a fan/friend/lawyer type call the shots. This man was already managing their blues band, Hot Tuna, and he was afraid that if the West Coast (e.g., Trudy Green from H.K. Management) ran things, his two meal tickets would split for sunnier pastures. He didn't know Jack and Jorma well enough; they'd always chosen the more intimate club scene, and that wasn't about to change. The Airplane tour would only magnify their visibility, and when they returned to their smaller, more down-home jobs, which they actually preferred, they'd have benefited from the high-profile management coming out of Trudy's office.
The lawyer's reservations may not have been the only factor, however. The truth is, the unfamiliar, high-profile L.A. business scene probably made Jack and Jorma nervous.
There was no way, though, that I was letting Trudy Green disappear because of the other guys' fears of the West Coast entertainment monolith. Skip acted as arbiter, Paul was satisfied with Trudy's competence, Marty didn't care, and the guys eventually agreed; we signed with Sony for the record and gave responsibility for the tour to Trudy at H.K. The only deviation from the original group was the absence of Spencer Dryden due to an illness. He was replaced by Kenny Aronoff on drums, but the rest of the original line-up, including a yoga-healthy, blond Marty Balin, was finally ready to hit the boards.
We rented a bus, Jorma brought his wonderful dog, Marlow, and we got back into the old rock-and-roll tour mode—minus the narcotics and alcohol. I can't ever remember enjoying singing with Marty as much as I did on that tour. We'd both grown up, and in the process, we'd lost whatever competitiveness had been present in the earlier phases of Airplane.
Did we have groupies or group gropes? No. Everybody was married and temporarily or permanently faithful.
Did we get ripped to the tits on large amounts of “medication”? Nope. Too old. The livers would explode and the AAs would converge. Besides some pot for the native San Francisco boy, Paul, it was a fairly clearheaded journey.
Did we tell cops to eat shit and die? Not at all. Several “lawmen” were in the paying audience, and they were half our age.
Did we scream about government stupidity? No. Too lazy? Too old? Too numb? Or just defeated? Who knows? We were a nifty little rehash that reminded boomers of how it sounded when they didn't have to take Metamucil to get it out and get it on.
Depressing? Sure, if you're looking at it through the imposed radical chic of rock-and-roll parameters. But when a group of people come together to enjoy mu
sic, it can be a polka or a slam dance. When it's viewed from a nontrendy position, it really doesn't matter.
So apart from ten extra pounds on each of our middle-aged bodies, the quality of life enjoyed by members of the 1989 Jefferson Airplane was far tighter than the 1969 version. We were treated to higher-tech equipment, better venues, relatively sober audiences, good management, no incidents with law enforcement, egos tempered by age, and a tour's worth of relatively successful concerts. And because there was no lifelong commitment among the group members, we were more like a caravan of old friends who happened to be musicians than musicians involved in a “business deal.”
Album sales? I don't know the figures, but nobody went out and bought a Lear jet. Maybe some of us paid off tuition for offspring or Jorma got another goat for his farm—simple acquisitions for a graying crowd of musical gypsies. Did we care? If I said it didn't matter, you'd know right away that I was so cool, I was beyond social pressure. We've all read the Buddhist books, telling us that attachment leads to suffering, and we berate ourselves for our attachments to material things. But that's not what the wise men intend for us. Be more gentle with and tolerant of your humanity.
Following that line of thought, I can say that, although the tour was not a financial gold mine, it was a good thing. By the time it was over, we'd traded a lot of energy, renewed our friendships, and had closed some uncompleted circles.
Nice.
PART
Four
50
Rising with the Sun
It was 1990, the Airplane tour was over, and I felt a mixture of peace and resignation. I was relieved that I could look, act, and think like a “real” person. I eliminated the goofy outfits—just took a shower in the mornings and put on some sweats. Like a “normal” human being, I went to the grocery store, did the laundry, fed the raccoons, and hung out with my equally casual friend, Pat Monahan. A small, determined Native American/Irish woman, Pat was both courageous and shy, blunt but self-effacing, spiritual and profane, funny and serious—the “five of one, half a dozen of the other” qualities that demonstrate the fascinating yin and yang of human behavior.
I found then (and I still find) extraordinary beauty in following a simple way of life. Those of you looking for “action” may not understand, but I was finished with my previous lifestyle. I enjoyed rising early with the sun, silently preparing my body and my surroundings for the day, studying a subject (biomedical research) that engaged both my intellect and compassion, trading love and lies with open-minded friends, and closing the night in a warm feeding ritual that coincided with the sunset.
Basic regeneration.
Although Skip and I were still married, we spent very little time together. He was located near Minneapolis, living in an apartment that was close to the large entertainment compound owned by “The Former Artist Usually Known as Prince.” Skip was doing production for the Purple One's projects, so although we spoke on the phone each day, I hardly ever saw him. Essentially, I was living alone, with his occasional visits on holidays. Neither of us could make the final break.
I didn't mind living alone, but it's sort of strange to see gas station attendants and grocery clerks more than you see your own husband.
My new boyfriend went by the name of Buckminister Ratcliff Esquire III. Every day, I'd drive to Tiburon and change his sheets, make his breakfast, straighten up his lodgings, and play with his fat, furry body.
He was a gentle, overweight lab rat.
“Bucky,” who'd been silently and carefully liberated from the University of California's research facility, was now living a pampered life, being looked after and loved by Pat Monahan and myself. Located on Main Street in Tiburon, Pat's animal store was one in a string of beautifully maintained turn-of-the-century shops along the San Francisco Bay. Early each day, before the customers started to fill up the area known as Arc Row, Pat and I would invite Bucky to have chocolate brownies with us in the store's center, which was filled with stuffed animals and various items for cats and dogs.
Like a little Buddha endowed with the ability to be charismatic without doing anything other than just being himself, he made converts of visitors who'd previously considered rats vicious, plague-ridden consorts of the devil. His girth gave him the friendly fat-boy appearance that is cute in animals and babies but gross in the adult human species. An excellent representative of his species, he lived as he eventually died—in peace.
So in the morning, it was the rat, and at night, the raccoons. Quite a shift from making “strawberry jam” with Jim Morrison, eh?
I often spent the middle of my days attending Marin Humane Society functions or participating in meetings on how to stop construction of the huge biomedical research complex called the Buck Center. After Beryl Buck left several million dollars in her will “to benefit the aging population,” local lawyers, business people, the University of California Research System, contractors, and a host of other opportunists saw a potential gold mine. But today, twenty-five years of objections later and with half the money now lining the pockets of the center's supporters, the facility still exists only on the drawing board. Architect I. M. Pei collected a million dollars just to draw the structure.
The Buck Center's proposed site, atop Mount Burdell in Novato, California, is located directly above an earthquake fault—a nifty location for a bunch of toxic chemicals. And, of course, many facilities already exist that do exactly the same sort of research. A better way to have spent Beryl Buck's money might have been to create the Buck Center for Research on Human Stupidity. We all suffer from that ailment to varying degrees, and if they ever figure out a cure for it by rat testing, I'll have to rethink my position on the subject.
But there are no cures for the hardball game of living; there are only processes that manipulate the symptoms. Meanwhile, we continue to mutilate everything in our path, trying, perhaps, to distract ourselves from the constant fear of death.
Which brings me to the ultimate topic of distraction: talk shows. Distract yourself from the living/dying process, sell your product, publicize your lifestyle by appearing on talk shows—it's the national pastime. Even when I was living my quiet life in Marin, I revved up a little excitement by playing “Butt Bongo” on The Howard Stern Show. I didn't even have a product to sell. I just like Howard and thought it would be an amusing experience.
When I was performing with Airplane and Starship and the records were climbing the charts, our publicist got on the horn and we were booked on all of the talk shows. Way back in the beginning, there was Jack Paar, but I was too young for him. Instead, I caught the polite boys: Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin; Dinah Shore's down-home chat; The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where goofy was okay; Dick Cavett, the reigning intellect; Geraldo “Hard Copy” Rivera; early irascible Tom Snyder; easygoing Larry King; and smart and smirky Letterman.
All of that was prelude, of course, to doing Butt Bongo on Stern.
My daughter, her then boyfriend Kelly, and I played look-out-here-comes-the-fast-ball with “The King of All Media.” Howard decided that China's beau looked liked the devil and told him so. Then he decided I should play Butt Bongo with him, which I did. I positioned himself across his lap and he did Ringo on my fully clothed butt cheeks. It could have been worse, and it probably will be when I do the promo tour for this book. Nobody is exempt from that fun-loving freak Howard Stern—especially not fifty-eight-year-old granny rock stars.
To liven up the usual chat format, I might bring along some of my own games to play with the Chin, Harpo, Worldwide Pants crowd (for a jargon translation, see back issues of Entertainment Weekly). Maybe I'll come on as my father, or be escorted by the police, or bring the current celebrity “in recovery” with me to see which of us unsuccessfully took more drugs.
As long as it's something tasteful.
Maybe I'll get everybody to streak into the bookstores, looking for an immediate upgrade in their spiritual condition by buying several copies of Grace Slick's autobiograp
hy.
51
Fire and Passion
It was toward the end of 1993, Skip was vacationing in Hawaii, China was living in L.A. pursuing an acting career, and I was close to accepting a monastic life of simple endeavors, when violent surprises started rearranging the tableau. My quiet world of Marin County living was split wide open by two formidable elements: fire and passion.
I returned home one afternoon after doing some errands in San Francisco, and when I drove up the hill that led to my house, I noticed two parked white cars. Nothing unusual in that, except that they were completely covered with orange stuff.
What the hell was it and what was going on?
A little farther up the road, I encountered the chaos. The entrance to my street was blocked by police cars, men were running around talking on cell phones, gesturing to each other as if something unpleasant was going on beyond the barriers. Something was. They stopped me and suggested that I turn around and go back down the hill.
“But I live up there,” I told them.
“Which house?” they asked.
“Eighteen Escalon … what's going on?” I demanded.
A man paused and slowly said, “One of the houses up there burned down.”
“Which one?” I asked. Somehow I already knew.
“I don't know. Let me call the fire marshall to get the address.” He fiddled with his handset and finally said, “Eighteen Escalon.”
I went numb. They took me up to the property, which was crawling with newspeople ready to interview me. “Miss Slick, Miss Slick, what do you think about it? What are you going to do? What happened? Who, what, where?”
“I don't know anything,” I said. “I haven't even seen it yet.”
A host of photographers followed me as I walked up to the front door to see what, if anything, was left of Skip's and my seventeen-year stay in that home. Something inside of me felt cold and sunken, like I was watching a bunch of vultures hover over a dying friend. My beloved house, that once sturdy protector that just hours before had been full of familiar possessions and memories, was now reduced to charred beams and ash.