RaR23 – White Rabbit
DIRECTIONS:
Listen to the recording of the tune by clicking the attached mp3 file. This will open the recording in a new window or tab. Listen and follow along with the listening guide in the book.
Read the liner notes below.
Read the information “What to Listen For”
Respond to the Rate-A-Record/Questions by clicking on the assignment link and then click on on the button “Write Submission” (to the right of Text Submission) to record your response. Do not use the comments field.
White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane were pioneers of psychedelic rock and was the first of the San Francisco bands to get a record deal with a major label. In fact, they were signed so early —in 1965, that recording sessions and touring obligations kept them out of San Francisco during many of the generation-defining events of late 1966-67 like the Human Be-In and the Acid Tests; as a result, their importance is often understated in histories of the period, in favor of later bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead who seemed more intimately connected to the hippie counter-culture.
The group was formed in the summer of 1965 by musicians connected to the San Francisco folk-rock scene. Singer Marty Balin recruited a number of people he knew from various folk venues around town, and Jefferson Airplane (a pun on the name of blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson) soon built a local following at the Matrix Club. When Bill Graham opened the legendary Fillmore West he hired the Airplane for the premiere; by that time they had been signed by RCA records and made an album called Jefferson Airplane Takes Off.
After the debut, drummer Skip Spence and singer Signe Tolle Anderson left the group. They were replaced by Spencer Dryden and Grace Slick, the lead singer of another San Francisco group, the Great Society. Slick’s powerful contralto was well suited to the group’s increasingly psychedelic music; she was also a fine songwriter and brought with her some numbers she had written for the Great Society but not recorded. One was “White Rabbit,” a song she wrote after an LSD trip spent listening to Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain album over and over. The lyrics were inspired by Alice in Wonderland, which featured a hookah-smoking caterpillar, magic mushrooms, and pills, and vials of liquid that altered the reality of the protagonist, all of which seemed quite appropriate to the San Francisco drug culture of the late 1960s.
The album Surrealistic Pillow became a chart-topping hit, and both the song and the album brought psychedelic rock into the mainstream. However, the only number one hits the group would have were in the 1980s with an incarnation called Starship, in which Grace Slick was the only “original” member. “We Built This City,” written by Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin, topped the charts for weeks in 1985 but has since been voted the worst single ever made in several magazine and radio polls.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR:
The predominance of the repeating snare figure on the snare drum
Unique vocal stylings by Grace Slick – grinding on consonants, aggressive delivery
Lack of a hook
RATE-A-RECORD/QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:
There is no audio file to listen to here. Instead, here is a recording of Jefferson Airplane performing the tune on TV. This is better as it really captures the essence of Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane. https://youtu.be/WANNqr-vcx0
Watch the video. Many would say that this tune “sums up” the whole Haight-Asbury, flower power culture in San Francisco in the 60s. What do you think?
Give it a rating: 0 = Bad, 100 = Awesome. Defend your number.
Image preview for”the album Surrealistic Pillow became a chart-topping hit, and both the song and the album brought psychedelic rock into the mainstream. “
APA
315 words