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Anatomy of a song


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2016 Jun 2, 9:20am   985 views  0 comments

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When Grace Slick wrote “White Rabbit” in late 1965, she never imagined the song would pave the way for psychedelic rock and inspire several generations of lead female rock singers, including Pink, who covers it in the new film “Alice Through the Looking Glass.”

I loved “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The stuff Alice drank and ate made her high [tall] or brought her down [small]. There were all kinds of drug metaphors in there. The ’60s were very much like that.

The music I came up with was based on a slow Spanish march or bolero that builds in intensity. I’ve always had a thing for Spanish folk music. Back in 1963, Jerry and I were living with Darby and his girlfriend in San Francisco on Potrero Hill. One day we took acid and I put on Miles Davis’s “Sketches of Spain.”

I loved that album and I listened to it over and over for hours, particularly “Concierto de Aranjuez,” which takes up most of the first side. It’s hypnotic. I’ve always been like this. Anything I love I’m going to cram into my ears, nose and mouth until I use it up. “Sketches of Spain” was drilled into my head and came squirting out in various ways as I wrote “White Rabbit.”

With the chorus—the Alice lines, like “Go ask Alice, when she’s 10 feet tall”—I shifted to major chords for a release and to celebrate Alice’s courage following the white rabbit down the hole. Once down there she didn’t have a Prince Charming. She had to save her own ass while going through all the insane hallucinogenic stuff.

I identified with Alice. I was a product of ’50s America in Palo Alto, Calif., where women were housewives with short hair and everything was highly regulated. I went from the planned, bland ’50s to the world of being in a rock band without looking back. It was my Alice moment, heading down the hole. “White Rabbit” seemed like an appropriate title.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-jefferson-airplanes-grace-slick-wrote-white-rabbit-1464712102

#music #sanfrancisco #drugs

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