“He was loaded”: The strange tale of Grace Slick’s fan-gifted white rabbit
Some of the more wildly off-kilter stories in music history are the ones that are too far out to make up. While many of the more outlandish occurrences can be pinned down to a handful of notorious rock stars, some of the more intriguing anecdotes are those that are more unexpectedly unruly, defined less by the perils and pitfalls of a life in the spotlight and more by the pure unpredictability of life itself. Just ask Grace Slick.
That said, as someone who emerged from the psychedelic, counterculture scenes of the 1960s and 1970s, it’s understandable that Slick would have plenty of anecdotes to choose from. After all, this wasn’t just an era filled with immense political transformation, it was also a time when everybody’s realities were tested, not just societally but under the influence of substances that sometimes made certain things difficult to decipher.
Even at Woodstock—a place most enjoyed for the sheer atmosphere of unkempt unpredictability and immense mythicality of simply being there—Slick stood out as a more laid-back realist, even in the midst of an intense acid trip. As she once recalled, “Woodstock was fun. If you’re 18 and you don’t care about sitting in the mud, it’s fun.” Of course, the truth of it was an experience and performance Slick and her bandmates would remember for its chaos, even if some parts seem a little less easy to understand.
At the same time, having a hit song as provocatively titled as ‘White Rabbit’ also created some unexpected experiences and stories, with some fans mirroring the blurred acid-induced lines between reality and fiction with rabbit-inspired gifts they send directly to Slick, whether as a note of their admiration in the context of Slick’s career or fixation with with the song itself and its creator.
Either way, it sourced some of Slick’s most bizarre and relentless fan experiences, including one instance during a gig in the 1970s when a fan put a live rabbit on stage mid-performance. Recalling the incident to The Guardian, Slick described the immediate panic and the decision to take it home after the show: “We were worried because what do you do?” she said, admitting they “took it home” afterwards.
“I remember it had one ear that wasn’t working, it didn’t stick up like rabbit’s ears do,” she continued, adding, “And, oddly enough, he liked marijuana seeds. So not only were we loaded, but the rabbit was loaded too! We might have given him to one of the members of the band who had a child … I don’t know. We didn’t kill him or anything.”
It might not have been the most offensive incident involving a musical star and a suspected live animal on stage, but it certainly left an impression, even in the ’70s, when all bets were off when it came to rock concerts and expected audience behaviours. And, although this ranks highly on Slick’s list of weird and wonderful memories during a time when anything felt possible, it also proves just how much the absurdity of the song’s lyrics actually bled into their real lives.
At the same time, the surrealism they offered with the song likely beckoned it back in more ways than one, not just with their deliberate provocation of certain members of society wrapped neatly in the imagery of a well-known children’s book, but also reaching into a broader consciousness about what it meant to push the boundaries of reality as we know it. Or, the person putting the rabbit on stage could have just as well been on acid and blissfully unaware of the oddity of their action.
