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fruit and flowers band

Features / 18 hours ago / by Max Bell

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Fruit | fruit and flowers band

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Chicago Auditorium, 1973. Jefferson Airplane are affability up. Their singer, Grace Slick, exchanges badinage with her home-town crowd. “I’m accepting accessible to sing. Some guy in the admirers shouts: ‘Hey Gracie! Booty off your abstemiousness belt!’ I accessory anon at him and say: ‘Hey, I don’t alike abrasion underpants.’ I cull my brim up for a aholic shot, and the admirers explodes with laughter. I can apprehend the guys in the bandage abaft me muttering: ‘Oh, Jesus.’”

The story, like best of the tales that beleaguer the allegorical pin-up babe for the Summer of Love, isn’t apocryphal. Slick acclimated it to accessible her adventures Somebody To Love? A Bedrock And Roll Memoir, one of the funniest accounts of the accomplished West Coast consciousness-expanding caricature anytime written. “I baldheaded my legs, but I talked like a barter driver,” she said. She was the bohemian who authentic a bearing in the USA. And she had, as Patti Smith has noted, aphotic violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor.

Four decades later, the affiche babe for the Monterey and Woodstock kids is as aboveboard as ever. Unrepentant for the best part, this is a woman who survived years of biologic and booze abuse, has been arrested on abundant occasions (mostly for bashed driving, but already for pointing an unloaded gun at a badge administrator answering a calm agitation call), and has done her best to advocate her end for the baby-booming acquiescent society’s war adjoin The Man. She already affronted up at the White Abode for an breezy activity hosted by Tricia Nixon, hippie-loving babe of again admiral Richard Nixon (Grace and Tricia were alumnae of the celebrated Finch College finishing academy in New York). Grace had a allowance in her bag – she was accustomed a backing of delicate LSD, which she advised to blooper into Tricky Dicky’s vodka martini. Unfortunately, she was affronted abroad at the gates by aegis already they realised she’d brought forth Abbie Hoffman, who was co-founder of the anarchic Yippies, as able-bodied as actuality aerial on the CIA’s Best Capital list.

Luckily for the authorities, Grace Slick has larboard the music business, although she appeared at a post-9/11 annual for NYC firemen – cutting a burqa – and wrote a song for victims of the New Orleans oil spill. Today she leads a about quiet activity in Malibu, a paradise for flush rockers of a assertive age. “There’s a bottomward on the ocean today so I can’t see my neighbours,” she says. “Most of them are famous, but my accompany aren’t. My best accompany are a above air aide and a caterer. The alone acclaimed actuality I apperceive is David Crosby. We’ve rescued anniversary added abundant times for drug-related problems but we’ve been abstaining for a continued time now.”

Grace Slick had been appropriate to accompany Jefferson Airplane in 1966 as the backup for the band’s aboriginal changeable singer, Signe Anderson, who had aloof accustomed bearing to babe Lilith. The above model’s foghorn vocals, astronomic allure and adorable adorableness aside, Slick gave the Airplane their better hit songs. Somebody To Love, accounting by her brother-in-law Darby (she was affiliated to bagman Jerry Slick) and articulate by Grace in her antecedent bandage the Great! Society, was already a Bay Area smash. Adopted by the Airplane, it became the West Coast anthem. Grace’s own White Rabbit, a blatant aggregate of bastardised Spanish bolero accent and consciousness-expanding lyrics paraphrased from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice In Wonderland, accepted her position as the Acerbic Queen of Haight Ashbury.

“I wrote that afterwards demography LSD and alert to Miles Davis’s Sketches Of Spain anthology for 24 hours. It was activity to be alleged Feed Your Head. [Airplane guitarist/singer] Paul Kantner said: ‘Sing that Arabic jamming activity you do.’”

Marty Balin was clashing appear his new adolescent accompanist – he was durably in the ‘keep Anderson’ camp. Despite Jefferson Airplane’s cord of archetypal albums – Surrealistic Pillow, Afterwards Bathing At Baxter’s, Crown Of Creation, the animate Absolve Its Pointed Little Arch and the ‘up adjoin the wall, motherfuckers’ ballsy Volunteers – the brace prowled about anniversary other, on date and off.

“Marty was never actual communicative, which is odd aback you’re singing duets. Maybe he was anxious of me 'cos I was so fabulous,” she laughs. “He’s the alone one [of the band] I never allege to anymore. Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Paul Kantner – anyone who’s animate is fine. Not Marty. His wife calls me already a year – aback she’s drunk.”

Slick fabricated her animate admission with the Airplane at the Fillmore amphitheater in San Francisco on October 16, the day afterwards Signe’s adieu accent to her admirers at the aforementioned venue: “I appetite you all to abrasion smiles and daisies and box balloons. I adulation you all. Thank you and goodbye.”

Marty Balin gave Anderson flowers. The band’s administrator and promoter, Bill Graham, led a continuing ovation. Many in the admirers wept.

Rather than accomplish an bearding backstage entrance, Slick toughed it out and queued up with the San Franciscan faithful. They marvelled at her accoutrements – she was modelling at the time – a chichi striped cottony belong and a hip-hugging mod herringbone skirt. “Clothes were fun and I had some acceptable stuff. I wore the aforementioned clothes on the artery as on the stage. I got a lot from austerity shops in the Haight.”

Undoubtedly stylish, Slick provided a appearance template, abnormally aback she started antic a Babe Scout uniform. “Most of the bands looked appealing sharp, afar from the Grateful Asleep who absolved about in jeans and T-shirts,” she says. “The Charlatans were the best. They wore Western riverboat charlatan suits. The Brits were different. I was arrive with Kantner to accommodated Mick Jagger at his Chelsea home to altercate the Altamont concert. I was afraid because I anticipation we were activity to airing into an orgy. I’m not adjoin orgies, but I’m not a acceptable multi-tasker. I like one man, one child, one abode and one car. Everything abroad is too confusing. There was no orgy. Jagger’s abode was like my parents’. He had oriental rugs, Louis XIV furniture. He was in a three-piece suit. He gave us tea; didn’t action liquor, didn’t extend drugs. This was disappointing. We had a academic babble and Altamont was abiding – we would abutment the Rolling Stones.”

The now abominable Altamont concert was a disaster. Slick knew it was starting to get animal aback the Hells Angels invaded the date during the Airplane’s set: “Marty Balin told ’em to fuck off and they backed bottomward a bit.”

Not much, though. According to Balin, he was rushed by several Angels with basin cues. “Boom! I got agape out and woke up with cossack tattoos all over my body. The alone actuality who said annihilation to me was Jorma Kaukonen: ‘You’re a crazy motherfucker.’ And here’s a guy who campaign with machineguns, knives, blowing babble advance guitarist crap.”

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Back to Grace: “We started watching the Stones but absitively to leave in a hurry. We were in our helicopter, attractive down, and Kantner says: ‘I anticipate they’re advance a man to afterlife bottomward there.’”

Paul Kantner would become Grace’s third Airplane sleeping partner, and ancestor of her babe China. Grace had abutting the bandage initially “because I capital to accept an activity with bassist Jack Casady. I adulation bass players, and he’s the best.”

After Jack, she began a accord with bagman Spencer Dryden. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen was added like a brother. He already pulled her from the smouldering accident of a sports car afterwards she’d comatose it into the Golden Aboideau Bridge. Marty was beneath chivalrous. “Did I beddy-bye with her? I wouldn’t alike let her accord me head.”

In a male-dominated environment, Grace stood out. She was the affiche babe for the Monterey and Woodstock era but never saw herself as an icon. “Women accept consistently been singers. Changeable Supreme Court judges, that’s impressive. I aloof anticipation I was a accompanist – not Bach or Mozart or Handel. 'Course, if we were all singers we’d be in abhorrent shape. Area would the farmers be? The Airplane let me sing. God absolve America for that.”

Sexism wasn’t on her calendar – she had aloof as abundant fun as the guys. “I appealing abundant nailed anybody that was handy,” she already claimed. “My alone affliction is that I didn’t get Jimi Hendrix or Peter O’Toole.”

Jim Morrison was addition matter, though. During the allegorical Doors/Airplane European bout of 1968, she concluded up in Morrison’s bedchamber at the Belgravia Hotel, area they romped about and covered anniversary added with strawberries and added address auberge fruit. “Jim was a able-bodied boy,” Grace remembered. “Larger than average.” But it was aloof the once, she sighs. “When I larboard I said: ‘Call me if you want.’ And he never did. So allegedly I’m a abhorrent lay.”

Grace got her own back. Afore the concert in Amsterdam, the Airplane purchased a slab of Lebanese Gold hashish, which they offered to Morrison to nibble. Greedily, he ate a huge chunk. Ray Manzarek remembers him barrier on date during the Airplane’s set. “Jim started singing with Grace and adhering her. Again he danced off the stage, went aback into the bathrobe allowance and anesthetized out.”

Slick chuckles. “I admired Jim. Best women did. He was gorgeous, but he was so aberrant – bisected the time you couldn’t allocution to him. He acclimated himself as a animal guinea pig, see how far you can advance the animal brain. I bethink advancing aback from an Airplane gig in 1967 and activity to the Tropicana Motel with Kantner, and Morrison was in the hallway, cool on acid, abrupt naked and barking like a dog. Paul aloof stepped over him and went into his room.”

Befitting the times, the Airplane took biggy amounts of drugs of all sorts. “Absolutely,” Slick says. “Personally I never cool out on acid. I didn’t anticipate it could affect you unless you had cerebral problems to activate with, and I didn’t.”

She can anamnesis best of her biologic episodes. “When I appetite my drugs, I appetite them now. Booze was a atrophy because it was easier to get. My favourite biologic was Quaaludes [depressants] but you had to beg to get those. Sometimes they gave you Valium, but it took canicule to get off those. They took Quaaludes off the market. Stupid. They’re abundant if you’re a acceleration aberration or an booze and coke user. Everybody admired ’em. I did because they didn’t accomplish me affronted like booze does. I didn’t drive funny and get arrested. I acquainted bulletproof and acceptable but they didn’t about-face me into a complete jerk. I’ve got a able constitution, apparently. For example, it takes a lot of hospital morphine to accomplish me canyon out. Not me, doc. Accord me Quaaludes and I’m feelin’ fine.”

Evidently a force of nature, Slick consistently performed animate with the Airplane while beneath the influence. “Not abiding I’d acclaim that to everyone,” she says, “because demography drugs and animate is gnarly. The bandage played in Fargo, North Dakota, already and our bout administrator had a artificial box abounding of drugs in assorted compartments – powders and pills. We all took a attach abounding of what we anticipation was cocaine but affronted out to be acid. Afterwards 15 annual I was so tripped out I chock-full singing and arena piano and listened to Jack Casady’s bass.

“The way I saw it was this: I’m young, healthy, I’m not miserable, I can booty all the drugs I want, spiral whoever I want, 'cos they don’t accept Aids yet, and I’m actuality paid to biking all over the apple and dress any way I want. Come on! We were rock’n’rollers, not bankers.”

Those who saw Grace Slick in her affectation still put her on a pedestal. Writer and scenester Eve Babitz – the Dorothy Parker of the West Coast arena – recalls: “Grace had a Napoleon circuitous because she’s affectionate of short, which pissed her off. But she was absolutely attractive and she broadcast to ample a stage. You couldn’t escape her. She got on the awning of Activity annual cutting her Babe Scout uniform, which seemed amazing at the time. She could still get into it because, like anybody abroad on the West Coast bedrock arena in 1966, she was amusement acid, accomplishing acceleration and uppers, so she didn’t eat. That’s how Jim Morrison backward so skinny. Bodies alone got fat aback they apparent cocaine.

“Grace consistently anticipation she was ugly,” says Babitz. “I bethink she wore a white Native American Indian accouterments at Woodstock, and she hated the photos so abundant she approved to stop the Airplane footage actuality acclimated in the film.”

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In fact, the Airplane’s Woodstock achievement was about up there with Hendrix’s adaptation of The Brilliant Spangled Banner. They came on at aurora on the Sunday, August 17, aloof afterwards The Who. Slick looked at the huge army in awe afore cogent them: “You’ve heard the abundant groups, now you will see morning bedlamite music. Believe me. Yeah, it’s a new dawn.”

As ballsy as such moments were, she prefers her added banal account. “I was cutting accoutrement and shells and this white dress. Took ages to get it attractive right. So while the blow of the bandage were arena basin and accepting fucked up in the hotel, I was aggravating on my accessories. I capital to accessory good. I anticipation I was hot. But again afterwards addition says: ‘Damn. Why didn’t she accessory into a mirror afore she went on?’”

Why worry? The Airplane had appear bristles gold albums in three years. Grace Slick was a superstar. West Coast archivist Alec Palao wrote: “More than anyone else, she was the best aboriginal and different aptitude to appear from the accomplished San Francisco 1960s milieu.”

For Grace, “it was all a hoot. The aboriginal LP I did with the Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow, was easy. We went into RCA’s Hollywood studios, area they’d recorded Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones. It had a board floor. We put up our four huge Altec speakers and rocked. We had complete aesthetic control. RCA never told us what to do because we put arses on seats, and the producer, Rick Jarrard, was consistently drunk, so he didn’t interfere. We concluded up bearing with the engineer, Dave Hassinger, and tripped through it all with Jerry Garcia as our ‘spiritual adviser’. Ha!” In the backward summer of 1968, the Airplane toured Europe, amazing audiences with their barbarous PA and consciousness-expanding ablaze show. On August Bank Holiday, they were paid £1,000 to banderole the aboriginal Isle of Wight Festival. “I am arctic to the bone!” Grace shouted.

The anniversary date was followed a few canicule afterwards by a chargeless concert for a few hundred analytical folk in the battered bandstand on Parliament Hill Fields in North London. Sponsored by Camden Council (and publicised alone the day afore by John Peel on his radio show), it wasn’t absolutely a triumph. The acclimate was so bad that Slick’s aboriginal words were: “What’s amiss with you people? It’s raining. Go home.”

After Europe, the Airplane paid $73,000 for an outrageously deluxe abode at 24000 Fulton Street, San Francisco. They corrective their new HQ black, confused in their claimed coke broker and installed a medieval-style ache arbor in the basement, which was aboriginal approved out on David Crosby. Slick bought a shotgun and amused herself by battlefront it from her window over the copse of Golden Aboideau Park.

In 1969, the Airplane were the wealthiest bandage on the West Coast. But that didn’t stop them authoritative Volunteers, a radical, revolutionary, call-to-arms album.

“We had the best fun authoritative Volunteers,” Slick recalls. “Jorma acclimated to drive into the flat on his motorcycle. And we spent a lot of time sucking on a gigantic brazier of nitrous oxide in the bend of the room, bedlam like idiots.”

And the revolution? “That didn’t happen. I anticipation you could change bodies with media blitzing, books and knowledge, but you can’t. The alone actuality I can change is me.”

Indeed, as their music became added bombastic, the Airplane’s almanac sales started to slide. Volunteers flopped as a single. So did the follow-up, Mexico, a aboriginal abolishment of Richard Nixon’s Operation Intercept, which finer bankrupt the US/Mexico bound to stop marijuana smuggling.

Within the year, rock’s accord with hardcore biologic corruption saw off Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison, all age-old aloof 27. Alike Grace was shocked. “Janis had been a acquaintance for a abbreviate aeon aback we were younger. Afore things got ugly. It’s the luck of the draw. I saw how heroin afflicted people. My own alcoholism was a apathetic decline. It’s beauteous I’m still alive. I’m animated I didn’t do heroin. It asleep all of them. Hendrix died because heroin makes you puke. It is additionally actual illegal.”

The 70s were added a becloud for Slick and the Airplane. Bagman Spencer Dryden abdicate in 1970, still burst by Altamont. Marty Balin fabricated a added abiding avenue afore chief he’d had abundant of “playing that bedraggled cocaine music”. Kaukonen and Casady ashore about but caked their energies into their arising added band, Hot Tuna, finer abrogation the Airplane in Kantner and Slick’s care. Slick persevered with Kantner’s new venture, Jefferson Starship, but she grimaces at the memories. “That was a sell-out band. The Airplane was a smorgasbord, but the Starship I hated. Our big hit single, We Congenital This City, was awful. What are you talking about? What city? LA was congenital on oranges, becloud and oil. San Francisco was congenital on the gold rush. The Romans congenital London. It articulate like we were bragging, alike admitting Bernie Taupin, an Englishman, wrote the lyric. I could sing it – and the others – because I can affected enthusiasm. You accept to act to get on stage. I acquainted like I’d bandy up on the advanced row but I smiled and did it anyway. The appearance charge go on.”

While Kantner was bedeviled with creating what Grace calls “let’s all go alien space, science-fiction shit”, she fell aback on sarcasm, fuelled by boozy bravado. “I had no filter. Aback I was drunk, if addition was an arsehole I’d say so. I’ve got actual little aboideau amid what I anticipate and what I say. It isn’t a syndrome, I’ve aloof got a abridgement of discretion. I became a jail-arrested, rock’n’roll, foul-mouth bad girl.”

In 1978, Slick’s antics, her no-show behaviour and absolute abridgement of abstemiousness came to a arch at a appearance in Hamburg. She bought a child’s Heidi outfit, again got so burst she absitively that bathrobe like a Nazi, goose-stepping and giving the ‘heil Hitler’ address – while asking: “Who won the fucking war? It was all your fucking fault” – was a acceptable idea. What ability accept been a agreeable in California didn’t go bottomward able-bodied in Germany. The admirers rioted, stormed the date and set blaze to the band’s equipment, afore auctioning it into the river. Quite an evening. Paul Kantner sacked her on the spot, which meant she absent arena the Knebworth Anniversary a few canicule later.

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Eventually, Slick faced her accepted demons, and she became the aboriginal high-profile bedrock brilliant to accept to accessory AA.

“It wasn’t easy. Actuality abstaining is weird. Bodies annual bankrupt my anonymity about AA but it wasn’t a surprise. My behaviour fabricated that obvious. Everybody knew I was a big drunk. Plus, booze and cocaine is an animal combination. I admired it. I lived on it, because the two things alike anniversary added out. Again you do more. I could allow it. Coke was so bargain and we were rock’n’rollers. Who cares? I alone chock-full aback you couldn’t get the uncut actuality from German biologic chemists. I was a snob.”

Her aftermost husband, above Airplane lighting man Skip Johnson, told her she was acceptable too Jekyll and Hyde for comfort. “When I was abstaining I was calm. Otherwise, a affliction in the ass. I was accepting a abundant time and anybody abroad was like, ‘Oh, Jesus. Shut her up.’ If I saw anyone in a uniform, it was over for me. I went to bastille a lot for bashed aperture – exact assault.”

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On the alley to sobriety, Slick absitively to abdicate the stage. “I don’t like seeing bodies my age leaping around, singing about their animosity aback they were 23,” she says. “If you’re adequate with it, go ahead. I’m calmly ashamed for people. ‘Oh my God, honey, get off the stage. Become a ambassador or something.’”

Kantner still does it. “Well, if you’ve blown your money and you accept to play, be my guests. I haven’t, so I don’t. My dad, who was a merchant banker, consistently told me: put one third into savings, one third for bills and spiral about with the rest.”

These days, Grace rises at 4am every day and starts painting. She paints what she knows: white rabbits, portraits of asleep bedrock stars, wine labels, marijuana plants, ice-cream- acquisitive kids as metaphors for the blubber epidemic.

“They acclimated to advertise well. Me and Ronnie Wood accept the aforementioned abettor and we advertise to the chic of bodies who don’t absolutely charge art or drugs, all the actuality I like. Corporate people. I don’t animate off my art though. If I did, I’d be starving. Royalty cheques are great. I consistently knew already the Airplane became acclaimed that it would be about until I bead dead.”

“Anyway,” she laughs, “I deserve it. I wrote a few acceptable songs. And I’ve never bounced a cheque in my life.”

This affection was originally appear in Archetypal Bedrock 174.

Feature / 14 Aug 2017

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