The Great Society was a 1960s San Francisco
rock bandRock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...
in the burgeoning Haight Ashbury
folk-psychedelicPsychedelic folk or psych folk is a loosely defined music genre that originated in the 1960s through the fusion of folk music and psychedelic rock...
style pervasive during the time of its existence, 1965 to 1966. The band was also known as "The Great! Society!!." Remembered as the original group of model turned singer
Grace SlickGrace Slick 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...
, the initial line-up of the band also featured her then-husband Jerry Slick on drums, his brother
Darby SlickDarby Slick Is an American guitarist and songwriter, best known as a member Of The Great Society, and as the writer of The Jefferson Airplane Song, Somebody To Love. In 1965 he co-founded The Great Society with Jerry Slick, Jenn Piersol, and Grace Slick...
on guitar,
David MinerDavid Miner , sometimes credited as David Minor, is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, perhaps best known as a member of Grace Slick's The Great Society in the 1960s. He actually co-founded The Great Society along with Jerry, Darby, and Grace Slick as well as Bard Du Pont, in the sense...
on vocals and guitar, Bard DuPont on bass, and Peter Vandergelder on saxophone.
The Great Society was a 1960s San Francisco
rock bandRock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...
in the burgeoning Haight Ashbury
folk-psychedelicPsychedelic folk or psych folk is a loosely defined music genre that originated in the 1960s through the fusion of folk music and psychedelic rock...
style pervasive during the time of its existence, 1965 to 1966. The band was also known as "The Great! Society!!." Remembered as the original group of model turned singer
Grace SlickGrace Slick 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...
, the initial line-up of the band also featured her then-husband Jerry Slick on drums, his brother
Darby SlickDarby Slick Is an American guitarist and songwriter, best known as a member Of The Great Society, and as the writer of The Jefferson Airplane Song, Somebody To Love. In 1965 he co-founded The Great Society with Jerry Slick, Jenn Piersol, and Grace Slick...
on guitar,
David MinerDavid Miner , sometimes credited as David Minor, is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, perhaps best known as a member of Grace Slick's The Great Society in the 1960s. He actually co-founded The Great Society along with Jerry, Darby, and Grace Slick as well as Bard Du Pont, in the sense...
on vocals and guitar, Bard DuPont on bass, and Peter Vandergelder on saxophone. Miner and DuPont would not remain with the band for the duration.
History
In the late summer of 1965, Grace, Darby, and Jerry were inspired by
The BeatlesThe Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music...
to start their own group, assembling it fairly quickly. Grace also said that seeing
Jefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
perform for the first time was a influence for starting the band as well. The band made its debut at the Coffee Gallery in San Francisco's
North BeachNorth Beach may refer to a number of places in the world:United States*North Beach, San Francisco, California*North Beach, Florida, a census-designated place in Indian River County...
section on October 15, 1965, and continued to perform throughout 1966.
The band released only one single during its lifetime in 1966, "Somebody to Love" (originally titled "Someone to Love"), written by Darby, backed with "Free Advice." Issued on
Autumn RecordsAutumn Records is a Wisconsin based Christian music record label. It was founded by Matt McPherson, who is also the founder of McPherson Guitars and Mathews Inc, the world's leading manufacturer of compound bows. Matt himself is a music artist, along with his wife Sherry...
' tiny North Beach subsidiary label, the single made little impact outside of the Bay Area, but the association with Autumn did lead the band to working with staff producer
Sylvester StewartSly Stone is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly & the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s...
, still in the process of forming his own band, Sly and the Family Stone. Purportedly, Stewart would eventually walk out as the band's producer during a demo session after it took Great Society over 50 takes just to get one song right.
Momentum for the band began to build as they started opening for
Jefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
and other successful local bands, with
Columbia RecordsColumbia Records is an American record label founded in 1888.Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers,...
offering the Great Society a recording contract. By the time the contract arrived in the mail, however, Grace had been spirited away to replace departing vocalist
Signe Toly AndersonSigne Toly Anderson is a singer who was one of the founding members of the American rock band Jefferson Airplane.-Early life and joining Jefferson Airplane:...
in the Airplane, taking "Somebody to Love" and her own composition "
White Rabbit"White Rabbit" is a psychedelic rock/acid rock song from Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow. It was released as a single and became the band's second top ten success, peaking at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100...
," one of Great Society's live showcases, with her. As both the visual and musical focal point, the band could not survive without its lead singer, and disbanded in the fall of 1966. Grace and Jerry would divorce as well.
Columbia would eventually release tapes of live performances by Great Society as two separate albums in 1968 after Grace found fame, repackaging both as a
double LPA double album is an audio album which spans two units of the primary medium in which it is sold . A double album is typically, though not always, released because the recording is longer than the capacity of the medium...
in 1971. In 1995,
SundazedSundazed Records is a record label based in Coxsackie, in the Catskills of New York. It specializes in obscure and rare recordings from the 1950s to the 1970s.Label founders Bob Irwin and his wife Mary started the label in 1989...
issued a compilation
discA Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store sound recordings exclusively, but later it also allowed the preservation of other types of data. Audio CDs have been commercially available since October 1982...
featuring the band's lone single amidst unreleased studio session material.
Notably, "The Great Society" was a popular name for musical groups in the 1960s, due to the popularity of the term as used by the Lyndon Johnson administration in Washington, D.C. One so-named four-man group, based in
Dallas, TexasDallas , with a population of 1,279,910, is the third-largest city in Texas and the 8th-largest in the United States. The city is the main economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area that according to the March 2009 U.S. Census Bureau release, had a population of...
, consisted of two British and two American musicians. The group lasted three years, toured extensively in the United States and Canada, then disbanded in 1969. On one occasion, in Ft. Worth, Texas, The Great Society (with Grace Slick) and the British/American version performed on opposite sides of the city on the same evening.
Members
Vocals
- David Miner
- Jean Piersol (short time in 1965)
- Grace Slick
Harmonica
Recorder
Saxophone
Organ
Guitars
- Darby Slick
- Grace Slick
- David Miner
- Oscar Daniels
Bass
- Bard Dupont
- Peter van Gelder
- Grace Slick
Drums
Albums
| Album |
Label |
Year Released |
Year Recorded |
| Conspicuous Only in its Absence Conspicuous Only in its Absence is an album by American psychedelic rock band The Great Society, released in 1968. Later tapes of the 1966 live performances at The MATRIX in San Francisco were released as two separate albums called Conspicuous Only in Its Absence and How It Was...
1 |
ColumbiaColumbia Records is an American record label founded in 1888.Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers,...
|
1968 |
1966 |
| How It Was |
ColumbiaColumbia Records is an American record label founded in 1888.Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers,...
|
1968 |
1966 |
| Collector's Item |
ColumbiaColumbia Records is an American record label founded in 1888.Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers,...
|
1971 |
1966 |
| Live at the Matrix |
Edsel/Demon |
1989 |
1966 |
| Born to Be Burned |
Sundazed |
1995 |
1965 |
1Concert version of "
Somebody to LoveSomebody to Love may refer to:* "Somebody to Love" , released in 1967 on the album Surrealistic Pillow* "Somebody to Love" , released in 1976 on the album A Day at the Races...
" from this album included on sampler
Rock Machine - I Love You, 1968, CBS