Posted on 02/24/2010 8:05:14 PM PST by woofie
Side One of the Jefferson Airplane's classic 1967 album 'Surealistic Pillow' gets a heavy workout in the Coen brothers' latest film, 'A Serious Man,' loosely based on the directors' own coming-of-age in suburban Minnesota in the era of acid rock. Bar mitzvah boy Danny listens to 'Somebody to Love' on transistor-radio earphones to get through Hebrew school.
The powerful voice on that hit single belonged to Grace Slick, one of the first true female rock stars, and one of the most unrepentant characters to emerge from the hedonistic '60s. Her appetite was legendary, even among her famously indulgent peers. And she had a nose for trouble: As recently as the 1990s, she was having run-ins with the law.
As the San Francisco rock scene began to form in the mid-1960s, the young department store model born Grace Wing started a rock band called the Great Society with her then-husband, Jerry Slick, and his brother Darby. When another local band, Jefferson Airplane, lost a singer to maternity leave, they offered to buy Grace out of her contract. She brought two songs with her from the Great Society: the Darby Slick composition 'Somebody to Love' and her own 'White Rabbit' -- a dirgelike drug-culture anthem teeming with trippy 'Alice in Wonderland' imagery that would follow the former song into the Top 10 during the Summer of Love.
(Excerpt) Read more at spinner.com ...
“She would still be nice looking if she lost fifty pounds and grew some hair.
What makes people get so fat when they get older?
Look at John Travolta, Williams Shatner and James Spader to name a few, their heads are so fat and huge they look like basketballs.”
First of all, the woman is 70 years old. It used to be common knowledge that a little weight on an older person smooths out the wrinkles. When you are older and skinny, you look like a prune. And she is not “so fat”. Bodies change as they age, women get matronly looking unless they devote their lives to the gym or have naturally slender bodies. Men often get stockier like Travolta. It is kind of depressing to see that despite a legacy of talented work, artists are judged by people like you on how fat they’ve become when they are over 65. Very superficial.
Hey, the song she’s known for is White Rabbit!!!
http://www.dipity.com/timetube/YouTube-Jefferson-Airplane-White-Rabbit
The only guy in the band who wasn’t “worn out”, apparently, was Marty Balin. Unrequited [or at least, unreturned]love.
Got it.
I missed the sixties by more than a decade, and I’m pleased I did.
It’s call hormones.
That was Mama Cass
Just barely, though.
LOL!!!
Shit, we all got old. Maybe not old & dykey, but old.
I have always loved her voice.
Well day-em! Can’t anything be done about it?
If you can remember the 60”s, you weren’t there.
It was always understood (don’t know if it was myth or not) that Grace would never sing “Across the Board” in concert.
I saw Grace with Airplane at the Akron Rubber Bowl in 1972 when I was in my teens. It was a crazy scene. There were guys with cloth bags slung over one shoulder walking up and down through the bleachers selling drugs just like a vendor used to at a ball game yelling “popcorn, candy....”. The guy working our area was a skinny black dude with a huge afro.
The stadium was packed and there were a bunch of people who couldn’t get in who were climbing up the barrier and hanging there to catch a free show and the cops were getting more and more up tight as the concert began.
Gracie was really wild. She got so into the music (I think it was the White Rabbit song but am not sure) that she started tearing off her clothes. Then the crowd went even more nuts. Next thing you know the cops apparently made the stadium people literally pull the plug on Gracie. They cut the power for their sound equipment, mikes and electric guitars.
We were approximately in the middle section half way between the stage and the back barrier. Things seemed to be happening all around us with people protesting what had happened and the back barrier was heavy with people who started to come over it and into the stadium. We were just sitting there with our mouths open looking at the pandemonium all around us and wondering what to do when we saw a cloud of white smoke starting to envelop the crowd. Then we heard screams of “tear gas” and “get down near the ground to breathe”.
Well, we made it out alive and in one piece but, thanks to Gracie, I know what it is like to be tear gassed and it is not good. Was sick the entire next day. The eyes were the worst.
We never really got the full story on what happened and why the cops shot tear gas into the crowd. I didn’t think it was called for - Gracie with bare boobs was hardly a reason for stopping the concert and ruining everyone’s night. I always though it was all the drug selling and using - it made the cops nuts.
The ‘70’s were a strange time to be young.
“One of the greatest female voices of rock, ever.”
Agreed. Maybe even the very best of them all. “Somebody to Love” is just a perfect song.
Karen Carpenter would have vomited it out in the nearest bathroom and died anyhow.
Actually the whole "Mama Cass died from choking on a ham sandwich" thing is an urban legend. The coroner did not find any traces of recently eaten food in her trachea. Most likely she died of complications due to her obesity. It should also be noted that she died in the same apartment that Keith Moon would die in four years later.
I remember when Karen Carpenter died, I was in the mess hall at Camp Pendleton eating fried rabbit when the news came over the loudspeakers. I do not remember what I was doing when Mama Cass died but it was only a few days before Richard Nixon resigned.
Not bad?
Sure.
(For an addled, disease ridden hose beast.)
My grandmother, who has been slender all her life, is 70 and she is not wrinkled like a prune.
I rather think the cause is pigging out and not moving from the couch.
They stopped taking the high energy drugs of their youth that kept them sleek and quit smoking.
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/mamacass.asp
Mama Cass choking to death on a ham sandwich is a MYTH. Read up. I saw a Biography on her the other night and her daughter says the doctor on the scene was looking to get his name in the paper and started that rumour in the press. It hurts her daughter to this day every time someone jokes about it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.