Feed Your Head

Speaking of school days, The Wall Street Journal published another of Marc Myers' insightful articles about song origins this week. White Rabbit, written by Grace Slick, became a hit after she joined the band Jefferson Airplane and they released the song on the album Surrealistic Pillow.

Excerpts:

"In an article with the San Francisco Chronicle, I argued in favor of marijuana and LSD, and somehow the article got back to my parents. It was painful for them, I'm sure, but I didn't care whether they minded. Parents were criticizing a generation's choices while sitting there with their glasses of scotch.

"They also seemed unaware that many books they read to us as kids had drug use as a subtext. Peter Pan uses fairy dust and can fly, Dorothy and her friends in 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz cut through a poppy field and wind up stoned and fall asleep.

 "I loved 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.' The stuff Alice drank and ate made her high (tall) or brought her down (small.). There were all kinds of drug metaphors in there. The 60's were very much like that.

"One afternoon in December or January, while Jerry was out, I started writing a song about Alice and all the drug references in the story. I wrote the lyrics first. As I wrote, I'd read them out loud to be sure my voice could form the cadence. [Ms. Slick sings slowly to illustrate: 'One pill makes your larger / And one pill makes you small / And the ones that mother gives you / Don't do anything at all.]

"When the lyrics were done, I took the sheet of paper to the red piano and worked on the chords, writing the names of the ones I liked over the phrases. I wrote the song in F-sharp minor, a key that's ideal for my voice. Minor chords have a certain darkness and sadness.

"The music I came up with was based on a slow Spanish march or bolero that builds in intensity. I've always had a thing for Spanish folk music. Back in 1963, Jerry and I were living with Darby and his girlfriend in San Francisco on Potrero Hill. One day we took acid and I put on Miles Davis's 'Sketches of Spain.'

"I loved that album and I listened to it over and over for hours, particularly 'Concierto de Arunjuez,' which takes up most of the first side. It's hypnotic. I've always been like this. Anything I love I'm going to cram into my ears, nose and mouth until I use it up. 'Sketches of Spain' was drilled into my head and came squirting out in various ways as I wrote 'White Rabbit.'

"With the chorus - the Alice lines, like 'Go ask Alice, when she's 10 feet tall' - I shifted to major chords for a release and to celebrate Alice's courage following the white rabbit down the hole. Once down there she didn't have a Prince Charming. She had to save her own ass while going through all the insane hallucinogenic stuff.

 "I identified with Alice. I was a product of '50s America in Palo Alto, California, where women were housewives with short hair and everything was highly regulated. I went from a planned, bland '50s to the world of being in a rock band without looking back. It was my Alice moment, heading down the hole."

On January 17, 1967, Jefferson Airplane performed White Rabbit at the Human Be-In at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where Harvard's Timothy Leary encouraged the throng of 30,000 people to "tune in, turn on and drop out." A month later, RCA Victor released Surrealistic Pillow.

This clip from Dick Clark's American Bandstand captures the times and music Slick describes perfectly, right down to the cheesy Lava Lamp imagery and turning the screen upside down, and especially Clark's earnest interview and the band members' laconic responses.