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Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing on October 30, 1939) is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and as a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. Slick was an important figure in the 1960s psychedelic rock genre, and is known for her witty, often acid-tongued, thought-provoking lyrics and powerful contralto vocals.
e Slick was born in Evanston, Illinois to Ivan W.
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Quotations
I've enjoyed the accommodations offered by police departments from Florida to Hawaii. Any time I saw a badge, something in me would snap.
The first words I ever heard the alcohol rehab counselor say were 'Good morning, assholes!' With that, I liked him right away.
One pill makes you largerAnd one pill makes you small,And the ones that mother gives youDon't do anything at all.Go ask AliceWhen she's ten feet tall.
And if you go chasing rabbitsAnd you know you're going to fall,Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillarHas given you the call.Call AliceWhen she was just small
When the men on the chessboardGet up and tell you where to goAnd you've just had some kind of mushroomAnd your mind is moving low.Go ask AliceI think she'll know.
Jim Morrison was a well-built boy, larger than average, and young enough to maintain the engorged silent connection right through the residue of chemicals.
Encyclopedia
Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing on October 30, 1939) is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and as a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. Slick was an important figure in the 1960s psychedelic rock genre, and is known for her witty, often acid-tongued, thought-provoking lyrics and powerful contralto vocals.
Personal life
Grace Slick was born in Evanston, Illinois to Ivan W. Wing (of Norwegian-Swedish extraction) and his wife Virginia Barnett (a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers). In 1949, a month before her tenth birthday, her brother Chris Wing was born. Her father was transferred several times when she was a child and, in addition to the Chicago area, she lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco before her family finally settled in Palo Alto, California, south of San Francisco, in the early fifties. She attended Palo Alto Senior High School before switching to Castilleja High School, a private, all-girls school in Palo Alto. Following graduation, she attended Finch College in New York from 1956–1957 and the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida from 1957–1958. Grace was an artist who continued to write songs as well as paint japanese sumi paintings.
Before entering the music scene, Slick was a model for I. Magnin for a short time in the early sixties.
Slick maintained a friendship with Janis Joplin that began early in her music career and lasted until Joplin's death by drug overdose on October 4, 1970. She also had a friendship, as well as a one-time sexual relationship, with Jim Morrison. According to her biography, the sexual relationship occurred during their 1968 European tour but no real romance was involved.
Jeff Tamarkin's Jefferson Airplane biography, however, makes no mention of such a relationship. She was also good friends with The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia.
Slick was married twice, to cinematographer Gerald "Jerry" Slick from 1961 to 1971, and then to Skip Johnson, a Jefferson Starship lighting designer, from 1976 to 1994. She has one daughter, China Wing Kantner (born January 25, 1971). China's father is former Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner, with whom Grace had a relationship from 1969 through 1975. During her stay in the hospital after the baby's birth, Grace sarcastically told one of the attending nurses (whom Grace found to be annoyingly sanctimonious), that she intended to name the child "god", with a small "g", as she 'wished for the child to be humble'. The nurse took Grace seriously, and her reports of the incident caused both a minor stir and the birth of a rock-and-roll urban legend.
Musical career
During her musical career, Slick was a member of several rock bands: The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, and Jefferson Airplane's successor bands, Jefferson Starship and Starship.
The Great Society
Slick's music career began in 1965 in the burgeoning San Francisco scene. Slick, and her then husband, were influenced to start their own band by The Beatles and after they saw the newly formed Jefferson Airplane perform at The Matrix. Slick, who was a model at the time, stated the big reason for going into music was because after seeing Airplane perform, she realized they were making more money than she was as a model and were having more fun performing . Slick and her husband formed a band along with her then brother-in-law Darby Gould-Slick and other friends, calling it The Great Society. The group debuted in the fall of 1965 and by early 1966, were one of the popular psychedelic acts in the bay area. Grace provided vocals and played guitar, piano and the recorder. In addition, she and her brother-in-law wrote a majority of the material.
Jefferson Airplane
By the summer of 1966 the San Francisco scene became a hot spot for rock music and The Great Society was one of the biggest bands in the area. The band recorded material, releasing one single in San Francisco; a precursor to the future Jefferson Airplane hit "Somebody to Love" (titled "Someone To Love") written by Darby. In the fall, Jefferson Airplane's singer had left to start a family and the band asked Grace to join them. Slick stated part of the reason for leaving was because the Airplane was a far more professional band than The Great Society. She took her two compositions from the band: "White Rabbit" (which she is purported to have written in an hour), and "Somebody to Love" (both of which became huge hits) and the band began recording an album. By 1967, Surrealistic Pillow and its singles were huge hits and Jefferson Airplane was one of the biggest bands in the country. Grace became a household name and one of the first popular female rock stars. Her striking beauty and stage persona also turned her into a sex symbol for the era.
Other notable songs that she recorded with Jefferson Airplane include "Two Heads", "Lather" and "Greasy Heart". The songs "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" appeared on Rolling Stone's top 500 greatest songs of all time. Both songs were first performed by The Great Society and White Rabbit featured an oboe solo by Slick.
Grace ended a performance of "Crown of Creation" on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968 with the black panther fist. Additionally, Slick was in black face. In a 1969 Dick Cavett Show performance, Grace became the first person to say "motherfucker" on live television during a performance of "We Can Be Together" as Jefferson Airplane.
Jefferson Starship and beyond
After Airplane broke up, Slick along with other bandmates formed the even more popular Jefferson Starship. Slick's solo albums include Manhole, Dreams, Software and Welcome to the Wrecking Ball. Dreams, which was produced by Ron Frangipane and incorporated many of the ideas she encountered attending 12-step meetings, is the most personal of her solo albums and was nominated for a Grammy Award. The song "Do It the Hard Way" from Dreams is one example of how Grace was viewing her life and concerns at the time.
Grace was given the nickname "The Chrome Nun" by David Crosby, who also referred to Paul Kantner as "Baron von Tollbooth". Their nicknames were used as the title of an album she made with bandmates Paul Kantner and David Freiberg entitled Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun.
In the eighties, Slick was the only former Airplane member to be a in Starship. The band went on to score two chart topping hits with We Built This City and Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. Despite scoring number one hit songs, Grace has since spoken negatively about the experience and music. She left the group soon after their second number one hit. In 1989, Slick and her former Jefferson Airplane band members reformed the group. They released a reunion album and a successful tour followed.
Run-ins with law enforcement
Slick and Tricia Nixon, former President Richard Nixon's daughter, are both alumni of Finch College. Grace was invited to a tea party for the alumni at the White House in 1969. She invited the political activist Abbie Hoffman to be her escort, and planned to spike President Richard Nixon's tea with LSD. The plan was thwarted when they were prevented from entering after being recognized by White House security personnel.
In 1971, after a long recording session, she crashed her car into a wall near the Golden Gate Bridge while racing with Jorma Kaukonen. Amazingly, she suffered only a concussion, and later used the incident as the basis of her "Never Argue with a German if You're Tired or European Song", which appears on the Bark album (1971).
While Slick was involved in several run-ins with the law while a part of Jefferson Airplane, she was arrested individually at least three times for what she has referred to as "TUI" ("Talking Under the Influence") and "Drunk Mouth". While technically the charges were DUI, the three arrests mentioned in her autobiography occurred when she was not actually inside a vehicle.
The first occurred after an argument in the car with then-partner Paul Kantner, who grew tired of bickering, pulled the car keys from the ignition, and tossed them through the car window onto someone's front lawn. While Slick crawled around on the lawn looking for the keys, a police officer arrived and asked what was going on. Her response (laughter) didn't amuse the officer, and she was taken to jail.
The second time occurred after Slick neglected to check the oil level in her car engine and flames began leaping out from under the hood. When an officer arrived and, as previously, asked what was going on, her response that particular time was less amusement and more sarcastic. With her car belching fire, it seemed obvious to her what was going on. As a result of her quip, she was taken to the Marin County jail.
The third arrest happened after an officer caught her sitting against a tree trunk in the back woods of Marin County drinking wine, eating bread, and reading poetry. When the officer, again, asked what was going on, her sarcastic response landed her back in the Marin County jail.
In 1978, Grace arrived drunk at a Jefferson Starship concert in Germany. She verbally attacked the crowd and attempted to sing. The next day she left the group. She was admitted to a detoxification facility at least twice, once in the 1970s at Duffy's in Napa Valley and once in the 1990s with daughter China. Slick has publicly acknowledged her alcoholism, discussed her rehab experiences, and commented on her use of LSD, marijuana and other substances in her autobiography, various interviews, and in several celebrity addiction and recovery books including The Courage to Change by Dennis Wholey and The Harder They Fall by Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill.
She was reportedly arrested in 1994 for assault with a deadly weapon, after pointing an unloaded gun at a police officer (after, according to her, the officer came onto her property without explanation). A remarkably similar situation is described in Grace's song "Law Man", released on the Bark album in 1971.
Semi-retired life
Slick left Starship in 1988 at age 48. Following a brief Jefferson Airplane reunion and tour the following year, she retired from the music business. During a 1998 interview with VH1 on a Behind the Music documentary featuring Jefferson Airplane, Slick, who was never shy about giving her age, stated that the main reason she retired from the music business was that "all rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire." Even so, she has made a couple of appearances over the years with Paul Kantner's revamped version of Jefferson Starship when the band has played in Los Angeles, the most recent being a post 9/11 gig where she came on the stage initially covered in black from head to toe in a make-shift burqa, which she removed to reveal a covering bearing an American Flag and the words "Fuck Fear". Her statement to fans on the outfit was "The outfit is not about Islam, it's about repression; this flag is not about politics, it's about liberty."
After retirement from music, she turned her attention to painting and drawing. She has done many renditions of her fellow '60s musicians such as Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and others. In 2000, she began displaying and selling her artwork. She attends many of her art shows all across the United States.
She has generally stayed away from music, although she did perform on "Knock Me Out", a track from In Flight, the 1996 solo debut from former 4 Non Blondes singer, and friend of daughter China, Linda Perry. The song also appeared on the soundtrack to The Crow: City of Angels.
In a 2001 USA Today article, she said, "I'm in good health and people want to know what I do to be this way...I don't eat cheese, I don't eat duck — the point is I'm vegan..." However, she also admits that she's "not strict vegan, because I'm a hedonist pig. If I see a big chocolate cake that is made with eggs, I'll have it."
Grace released her autobiography, Somebody to Love? A Rock and Roll Memoir in 1998 and narrated an abridged version of the book as an audiobook. A biography, Grace Slick, The Biography by Barbara Rowes was released in 1980 and is currently out of print.
In 2004, Grace had an American Quarter Horse named after her, Emeralds Grace Slick, a grulla mare bred raised by Emerald Hills Farm in Smock, Pennsylvania. Emeralds Grace Slick now lives in Aurelia, Iowa.
In 2006, Grace suffered from diverticulitis. After initial surgery, she had a relapse requiring further surgery and a tracheotomy. She was placed in an induced coma for two months and then had to learn to walk again.
Also in 2006, Slick gave a speech at the inauguration of the new Virgin America airline, which had named their first aircraft "Jefferson Airplane."
In 2008, Slick contributed vocals to the hidden track (actually a previously unreleased 1970 outtake featuring Slick, Paul Kantner and Jack Traylor) of the latest Jefferson Starship release, Jefferson's Tree of Liberty.
Visual art
After retirement from the music business — and after a devastating house fire, divorce, and bad break-up — Slick began drawing and painting animals, mainly to amuse herself and because doing so made her happy during a difficult period in her life. Soon thereafter, she was approached about writing her memoir, which ultimately became Somebody to Love? A Rock-and-Roll Memoir. Her agent saw her art work and asked her to do some portraits of some of her various contemporaries from the rock and roll genre to be included in the autobiography. Hesitant at first — because she thought “…it was way too cute. Rock-n-Roll draws Rock-n-Roll.” — she eventually agreed because she found she enjoyed it; and color renditions of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jerry Garcia appeared in the completed autobiography. In addition, an “Alice in Wonderland” themed painting and various other sketches are scattered throughout the book. Her paintings of Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady were used for the cover art of the album The Best of Hot Tuna.
Though Slick has been drawing and painting since she was a child, she admits to not being able to multi-task, and therefore didn’t do it much while she was focusing on the various bands and music she was involved with during her musical career. One notable exception is the cover art of her first solo album Manhole, which she signed “Child Type Odd Art by Grace” on the front cover.
Slick isn’t faithful to any specific style or medium in her production of visual art and has no interest in developing one. She uses acrylic paints (she says oil takes too long to dry), canvas, pen, ink, scratchboard, pastels, and pencil. Many of her works are mixed media. Her styles range from the children’s bookish “Alice in Wonderland” themes to the realism of the Rock and Roll portraits and scratchboards of animals to the minimalist Japanese sumi-e-styled nudes to a variety of other subjects and styles. The best selling prints and originals are, not surprisingly, her various renditions of the white rabbit and the portraits of her colleagues in the music industry. In 2006, the popularity of her “Alice in Wonderland” works led to a partnership with Dark Horse Comics, Inc. that resulted in the release of stationery and journals with the “Wonderland” motif.
While critics have alternately panned and praised her work, Slick seems indifferent to the criticism. She views her visual artistry as just another extension of the artistic temperament that landed her in the music scene in the first place as it allows her to continue to produce art in a way that doesn’t require the physical demands of appearing on a stage nightly or traveling with a large group of people.
She attends many of her art gallery shows across the United States, sometimes attending over 30 shows in a year. While she says she enjoys talking with the people who come to her art shows, she is not a fan of the traveling involved, particularly the flying. At most of her art shows, those who purchase a piece of her art get a photo with Slick, an opportunity to chat, and a personalized autograph on the back of the piece that has been purchased.
Area Arts is her art distributor in the United States, and The Limelight Agency is her world-wide art distributor.
Legacy
Alongside her close contemporary Janis Joplin, Slick was an important figure in the development of rock music in the late 1960s and was one of the first female rock stars. Her distinctive vocal style and striking stage presence exerted a definite influence on other female performers, including Stevie Nicks, Patti Smith, Sandy Denny and Dolores O'Riordan. Like Joplin, Slick's uncompromising persona and powerful voice helped to open up new modes of expression for female performers, giving a new legitimacy to the role of the female lead singer in the male-dominated world of rock music.
Artistic accomplishments
Slick's longevity in the music business helped her earn a rather unusual distinction: the oldest female vocalist on a Billboard Hot 100 number one single. "We Built This City" reached #1 on November 16, 1985, less than three weeks after her 46th birthday. The previous record was age 44 for Tina Turner, with 1984's number-one hit, "What's Love Got To Do With It". Turner (who is, coincidentally within a month of Slick's age) turned 45 two months after the song topped the charts. Slick broke her own record in Summer 1987 at age 47 when "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" topped the U.S. charts. Her record stood for 12 years, but was ultimately broken by Cher, who was 53 in 1999 when "Believe" hit number one.
Slick did vocals for a piece known as Jazzy Spies, a series of animated shorts about the numbers 1 through 10, which aired on Sesame Street. The segment for the number two appeared in the first episode of the first season of Sesame Street, November 10, 1969.
She was nominated for a Grammy award in 1980 as Best Rock Female Vocalist for her solo album Dreams.
She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 (as a member of Jefferson Airplane).
She was ranked #20 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock N Roll.
Aside from singing, she also sometimes played piano, keyboards, oboe, and recorder for the bands.
Discography
Solo Albums
- Manhole (1973)
- Dreams (1980)
- Welcome to the Wrecking Ball! (1981)
- Software (1984)
Compilation
- The Best of Grace Slick (1999) (compilation album, also includes tracks by Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, in which Grace Slick was the lead vocalist)
with The Great Society
with Jefferson Airplane
with Jefferson Starship
with Starship
with Paul Kantner
Guest Appearances
External links
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