The five figures who epitomised the 1960s, according to Grace Slick
Psychedelic exploration, political protests, peace and love, a vast mythology has been built around the 1960s, and it is easy to see why. Over the course of the decade, the doors were blown open to an entirely new world of art, music, and culture. It was a period of revolutionaries, both political and cultural, and the legacy of those pioneering figures still remains to this day. Among them, Jefferson Airplane’s endearingly anarchic vocalist Grace Slick was at the very forefront of the blossoming hippie age; in many ways, she encapsulated the 1960s.
It was in 1965 that the musical world was first introduced to the incredible vocals of Grace Slick when the singer formed The Great Society alongside her then-husband Jerry Slick. However, it was her shift to San Francisco psychedelic heroes Jefferson Airplane a year later that cemented her as an indisputable hippie queen. Anthems like ‘White Rabbit’ and ‘Somebody To Love’ from the seminal record Surrealistic Pillow became some of the defining sounds of the peace and love era, launching the band right into the nucleus of the American counterculture.
Slick always took full advantage of her position on the upper echelon of hippiedom, consistently living life to the fullest and existing on a cocktail of alcohol, drugs, and sleep deprivation. The vocalist partied with the best of them, striking up friendships with the likes of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jerry Garcia, to name only a few. Together, these iconic stars laid the foundations for the archetypal rock and roll lifestyle that was worshipped by virtually every future musician and rock obsessive.
Woodstock Festival captured the essence of that wild period in rock history, and Jefferson Airplane played one of the weekend’s stand-out sets, although the band was likely too tripped out to fully realise that fact in the moment. The festival epitomised the counterculture era of that time, and, according to Slick herself, it was Jimi Hendrix’s iconic performance that really summarised the spirit of the period.
In fact, during a 2015 interview with Forbes, she declared, “He [Hendrix] probably represents as an individual the 1960s more than anybody else, if you’re talking about rock and roll.” The guitarist’s pioneering psychedelic improvisations certainly captured the free-spirited musical innovation of the 1960s, and his influence seemed to touch everybody, regardless of tastes.
However, the guitarist wasn’t the only person to epitomise the decade, at least in the mind of Grace Slick. Expanding upon her view of the time, the Jefferson Airplane vocalist continued, “The Beatles and The [Rolling] Stones may represent it as bands. Obviously, Martin Luther King and JFK represent the ’60s overall, but if you’re talking about rock, probably Jimi is the guy.”
Slick’s account is certainly a strange, unexpected mix of individuals, but then the 1960s were an incredibly vast, diverse period, when music and politics collided for the very first time. In truth, you cannot have one without the other.
For Slick, the appeal of Hendrix, in particular, was in “the colour, the clothes, the fact that he flipped from being for the war in Vietnam to against it within a year, his music, his stunning guitar playing, his showmanship.” None of which could ever be disputed; Hendrix was the 1960s, both in the mind of Grace Slick and thousands of others who were there to witness that stunning period of cultural revolution.
