The feud between Grace Slick and Joni Mitchell
While the music of 1960s counterculture espoused togetherness, peace and living together in harmony, the scene was not without its ego. Regardless of time period, musical style or personality, musicians always seem to find a way to slag each other off. This competitive spirit has come into the foreground with artists such as Morrissey or Oasis taking every opportunity to take their contemporaries down a peg, but it has always been present, as shown by Joni Mitchell.
Back in the 1960s, Joni Mitchell was carving out a name for herself within the folk revival scene, quickly becoming one of the most prominent artists in North America. Defining a generation with her track ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and the seminal album Blue, Mitchell created some of the most enduring sounds of the 1960s, which is no mean feat given the saturation of incredible artists and groups at that time. Whatsmore, the folk star managed to rise to the top of an overtly male-dominated music scene during a time in which many women were not seen as having the same artistic capabilities as their male counterparts.
Another artist who knows all too well about the sexism of the ‘peace and love’ movement is Grace Slick. Among the greatest vocalists of all time, Slick rose to prominence during her time with Jefferson Airplane. The defining band of the San Francisco psychedelic scene, Jefferson Airplane are perhaps best remembered for seminal hits like ‘White Rabbit’ and ‘Somebody to Love’. In addition to the hits, the Airplane released some of the most consistently incredible music of any psychedelic group of the period, with their series of live albums such as Thirty Seconds Over Winterland or Bless Its Pointed Little Head somewhat forgotten gems.
As prominent female artists amid a scene dominated by men, you might think that Mitchell and Slick shared a kind of unspoken bond. To the contrary, Mitchell has spoken in interviews about her lack of respect for Slick, in addition to other prominent women in rock music. She often suggests that these rock musicians lack the kind of artistic integrity that comes with making the kind of folk music that Mitchell is known for.
In a rare interview back in 2010, Mitchell used the opportunity of an LA Times interview to rally against many of her 1960s contemporaries, including Grace Slick. She accused the Jefferson Airplane vocalist, along with legendary Big Brother and the Holding Company singer Janis Joplin, of “sleeping with their whole bands and falling down drunk.”
Never one to refrain from confrontation, Slick soon fired back, joking, “We didn’t really fall down all that much” through her social media accounts. It seems as though there is no love lost between the two iconic musicians of the 1960s. Though the pair were operating in similar circles and music scenes, they rarely crossed paths. While Jefferson Airplane were noted for their stand-out performance at Woodstock Festival in 1969, Mitchell was absent from the line-up despite later having a hit song with ‘Woodstock’.
Elsewhere in the LA Times article, Mitchell hits out at ‘plagiarist’ Bob Dylan, accusing the Nobel Prize-winning lyricist of being inauthentic. In a later interview with CBC, however, she claimed that those quotes were “journalistic bullshit”, saying of the interviewer, “I hate doing interviews with stupid people, this guy’s a moron” – though she did not make any clarifications about her comments regarding Grace.
