The frontman who could leave people in awe without opening his mouth, according to Grace Slick
There were many quintessential figures of counterculture, and for many reasons, Grace Slick was one of the most significant.
When you consider that the defining characteristics of the entire scene were based on freedom of expression, escaping from reality, existing in your own values, and pushing defiance against social norms and expectations, it makes sense that Slick would become a central figure, because after all, everything down to her look screamed rebellion, and it helped that her music captured the spirit of the era in more ways than one, too.
One of the most obvious examples is Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’, which seemingly ticked all the boxes of counterculture in one. Inspired by Alice’s trippy grip on reality in Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Slick used the symbolism of the rabbit to anchor the disconnect between two generations, and how kids had grown up with a warped sense of reality because of everything their parents warned them against.
However, there’s also a sense of foreboding in the song’s atmosphere that pushes the ways that Slick challenged this trend, criticising the generation’s upbringing and urging them to venture out and explore on their own to discover the truth. That was the sentiment that typified the entire counterculture scene; the mindset that said, go and find out for yourself, there’s no one stopping you except you.
Other reasons why Slick became a major counterculture icon were how she navigated an entire period that was heading towards immense uncertainty. And yet, a lot of what she captured in their music played on those anxieties and pulled unity out of it, proving that all of those insecurities could be channelled into a collective mindset that pushed against the system. Or, at least, unity through the collective disorientation of feeling lost yet surrounded by people who felt the same sense of unease.
On stage, this came to the forefront. It was the same with many other icons of the time; on stage, they could communicate the entire ethos of the era, sometimes before they’d even opened their mouths to sing. According to Slick, the one person who best achieved this was The Doors legend himself, Jim Morrison.
“You could see [Jim Morrison in concert] just waiting for ignition to come flying up through his body…he yelled, ‘FIYAAHH!’ The audience let out a collective scream,” Slick once said. “He had the ability to draw people into his mood without opening his eyes or mouth.”
It takes a lot to embody an entire era, and yet those who did it best were the ones who were totally and completely effortless with it, not forcing anything too much and simply appearing on stage in all its disjointed, disconnected mystification. Morrison was a good example of this because he immediately looked the part, but these are all reasons why Slick also saw the same threads of the movement in their own music, even in the midst of it all, when it’s more difficult to figure out where the times are heading.
It’s also why Surrealistic Pillow is one of the records she later described as a major counterculture moment, not only for boasting the aforementioned ‘White Rabbit’ because it had all of those quintessential qualities that people like Morrison captured on stage. Or, in her words, it was “good, simple and easy for people to get up next to and is [still now] a good representation of that time”.
