Jefferson Airplane—Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

FUN FACTS

• Surrealistic Pillow (1967) is the second album by rock band Jefferson Airplane. The album was released through RCA Victor on February 1, 1967.
• Jefferson Airplane was originally formed in San Francisco by Martin Balin and Paul Kantner. Balin wanted to start a folk rock band. So, like any enterprising musician, he started…a music club called—I kid you not—the Matrix, where he spent the next few months simulating building his supergroup with Kantner.

• Even in its earliest incarnation, Jefferson Airplane didn’t have a permanent line-up. By the time they recorded Surrealistic Pillow (1967), they had replaced three of the original cast. Grace Slick replaced Signe Toly Anderson after Anderson quit the band to focus on her family. Slick, alongside bassist Jack Casady and drummer Spencer Dryden, who replaced Bob Harvey and Skip Spence respectively, brought important changes to the band’s sound and texture that would propel the band to their legendary status.
• Two of the band’s highest charting singles, White Rabbit and Somebody To Love, were originally written by Slick for her previous band, The Great Society.

• Surrealistic Pillow (1967) was the unofficial soundtrack of the Summer of Love. Jefferson Airplane’s fusion of folk rock elements with hypnotic psychedelia headlined the counterculture movement that coalesced in San Francisco.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Trying to get a perspective on Jefferson Airplane was kind of a rollercoaster. Listening to No Protection (1987) by Starship first and then going back in time to listen to Surrealistic Pillow (1967) feels like a study in selling out, read backwards.

Which might not be entirely fair to say, since none of the later incarnations of the band were anything like their original line-up. But I don’t think that distinction makes that reading any less true, or that truth any less fascinating. The band went from being a figure of 60s counterculture to a mainstream shill. Which to me, is a kind of less glamorized death than say, substance overdose or a plane crash.

And it’s the type of death that, I think, we all fear in some philosophical way, because it resonates with our own struggle of holding onto our true selves as we go through life.

In 1967, we find Jefferson Airplane standing in the epicenter of a cultural movement. The variety of sound in Surrealistic Pillow (1967) is a sweeping vision of the 60s cultural paradigm.

The sugary summer child affections in My Best Friend. The woodsy organic Hobbit stroll in Embryonic Journey. The hypnotic introspection in Today and How Do You Feel. The blues of an after morning haze in In the Morning. That intense bewitching sound in White Rabbit and D.C.B.A-25 that invites you to a Wonderland journey where choices and desire are abstracted.

There is as much positive exploration in the music, as there is discontent. It effuses moral angst over the war in Vietnam and unceasing civil rights injustices, and embraces the invitation to broaden one’s horizon of experience with love, sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. With the latter, the band led by example, sharing acid-fueled stages over the years with other icons of the decade, as they did in Monterey, Altamont, and Woodstock.

But the high was to be short-lived.

The magical idea that love and drugs opening people’s hearts and minds could somehow manifest into a real-life revolution waned over time.

Divisions deepened in the group, as public tastes split. And, eventually, the band. Martin Balin left first, after it was clear that his much more sober vision for the future did not appeal to the other members. The band further splintered as touring, in-fighting, and substance abuse wore them down. Whatever they could salvage was cobbled into Jefferson Starship and eventually just Starship. But both were a far cry from the band that headlined Monterey, the one from whose center the music, the style, and the energy of the 60s seemed to emanate.

Which sounds sad, but, when you’re 30 in the year 2020, it just seems inevitable. I used to think selling out was an issue of artistic integrity. But now I realize it’s just people making choices in their lives and some of those choices will not always align with how we idealize them.

Take Grace Slick for example. Patti Smith wrote about how Slick inspired women across the decade with her magnetism, her style, and that voice that seemed to echo across realities. But that centrality came with the stereotypical rockstar conceit of invincibility. Which Slick took to excess. Even when it paid off artistically, it took a toll on her relationships and her health.

But the thing is, unlike many of the people she shared that stage with, she was able to climb out of Wonderland. She attended Alcoholics Anonymous and learned to hold her tongue while singing “awful” pop songs under the Starship flagship. Eventually, she retired and became a painter, peacefully living off her royalties, and inhabiting the philosophy that rockstars over the age of 50 had no business being onstage.

In the end, I think it’s wonderful to see that even at that stratospheric level of fame, people are making choices to survive. To hold onto who they are—who they truly are. Not what the public assumes they should be. My generation likes to talk about self-care and doing better by yourself. What if selling out is just cashing in? Like, even in Lewis Carroll‘s Alice in Wonderland, Alice didn’t go on living in Wonderland forever. She woke up, and grew up. And, nowadays, I think being able to do that is the truly wonderful part.

FOR YOU

What did you think of Jefferson Airplane‘s music? Send me your thoughts mxaboha@gmail.com!

1. Is there an artist you thought was a huge sellout? What made you come to that conclusion?
2. Who’s your favorite Alice in Wonderland character? Mine is the Caterpillar, the absolute snob that he is.
3. Well—which pill would you chose? The pill that makes you larger, or the pill that makes you smaller? Whatever those sizes might mean to you.

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Surrealistic Pillow (1967) Copyright belongs to Jefferson Airplane and RCA Victor.