Use It
It was 1965, a couple of apartments later and a lot of stupid jobs under the bridge, when Darby, Jerry, and I went to a small nightclub called The Matrix to hear a headlining group called Jefferson Airplane. Marty Balin, one of the two lead singers, had started the club with the help of other band members and some marginal outside backing from a couple of doctors.
As I watched Airplane perform that night (they were an eclectic group that did electric folk-rock, blues, and pop), playing in a band like that seemed like the perfect thing to do. Get paid to make music, write your own songs if you feel like it, work for a couple hours a night, hang out with friends, and take lots of drugs whenever you want. When we got home that night and added up the numbers, we realized that the members of Airplane were making more money in one night than I was making all week at I. Magnin. It didn't take us more than about five minutes to start making plans to form our own band.
Jerry had an old set of drums collecting dust in his parents' garage. Darby already knew how to play the guitar. My untrained voice was at least loud enough to compete with the amplifiers, and a friend, David Minor, could sing and play a few chords. And he was a good-looking front man. Peter van Gelder played sax and Bard Dupont could at best find the notes on a bass guitar.
A name for the group? What about The Acid Fraction?
No.
What about The Great Society? (Making fun of Lyndon Johnson's grandiose moniker for the U.S. population.)
It stuck.
At that time, fortunately for us (and unfortunately for the listening audiences), you didn't have to be very good to get jobs in the local clubs. So once we formed the band, we managed to work on a semiregular basis. Some nights, we'd be playing to three drunks who were too old and wise or too loaded to even bother looking at the stage. Other nights, the clubs would be populated with members of the various local bands, just hanging out. Once in a while, a marketing representative from a record company came in and blew smoke up my ass, saying things like, “You guys are great. I'm going to make you rich.” One guy said he was going to make another Edith Piaf out of me.
How? By breaking my back?
The press vacillated between thinking we sucked and complimenting us on our originality. Good or bad, who's to say, but original is definitely what we were. Music lyrics were changing then, from the classic boy/girl romance stories to a wider variety of subjects, and we all took a shot at writing material. Pretty soon, the only “outside” song we did was “Sally Go 'Round the Roses.” The Motown-style arrangement lent itself nicely to the East Indian rhythms Darby and Peter loved; it had a sort of repeated mantra in the title chorus.
Since all changes, no matter how small, are absorbed into and add impetus to the ongoing paradigm shift, nothing ever really slips away. The old themes and styles persisted as stitches in the unfurling tapestry, but they were hard to see. What caught the eye was all the newness.
At a certain point, the “Why don't you love me?” concept was pretty much put on the back burner, replaced by what we considered relevant topics: political, social, and psychological ones. In a short space of time, we learned more than our parents wanted us to know about things they'd been too timid to investigate. Or, to put it more kindly and accurately, our new forms of communication hadn't been available to them at a time when their minds were open enough to “hear it.”
In any event, our parents' world was crumbling (a perfectly natural evolutionary process that they refused to acknowledge), so they kept saying,
“DON'T!”
and we kept asking,
“WHY NOT?”
The same question that was being voiced in England, Africa, South America, Russia, and China, according to each country's own parameters, became an almost tangible force in our lyrics. Both the joyful songs that celebrated new life and the wrenching shouts of labor pains were heard in the music, the press, the movies, the prisons, the churches, and the state rooms.
What concerns you? Put it in a lyric.
What country's style of music best suits the idea you're trying to convey? English? Spanish? Jamaican? Whatever it is, use it.
Global nation? Use it.
Does colored oil and water produce interesting images when you backlight it and project it on a screen? Great. Use it.
Are nude young girls shit-dancing a good example of freedom of expression? Sure, let 'em dance.
Does living with a bunch of friends who aren't related by blood feel more comfortable than living with your family? Yes? Then move in.
Does shooting a bunch of people in a foreign country for no good reason sound like a drag? Yes? Then don't do it, but do put it in a song.
Darby Slick's “Somebody to Love,” which Darby originally wrote for The Great Society, is a good example of the shift that lyrics were taking. In the past, when people wrote love songs, they were talking about someone who would or wouldn't fill their personal desires. “Somebody to Love,” which became a huge hit later when Jefferson Airplane recorded it, turned the old concept around. The lyrics implied that rather than the loving you're whining about getting or not getting, a more satisfying state of heart might be the loving you're giving.
Don't you want somebody to love?
Don't you need somebody to love?
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love.
Cluster: Jefferson Airplane in 1968. (Jim Wells/Archive Photos)
Darby wrote the words simply, without pedantry, suggesting that adhering to the old Puritan cliché “It's better to give than to receive” might actually make you a happier person. The idea of service and selflessness may sound like a tedious task reserved for bald monks, but the way Darby wrote the lyrics, altruism didn't seem like such a lofty and unattainable state. He gave people the impression that giving could even be an enjoyable adventure.
As had happened with the seemingly overnight changes in lyrics, the sudden, yet natural shift from the rigid dress codes of the fifties to the if-it-feels-right-wear-it free forms of the sixties didn't give me a moment's pause. Does anybody question going from the fourth to the fifth grade? Remember reading about that kid who dressed up all the time?
SHE'S BACK, SHE'S TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, AND SHE'S GOT COSTUMES!
They ranged from a miniskirted, knee-booted pirate getup to a floor-length Indian caftan. I never wore tie-dyed T-shirts—too modern. I always went for the costume racks at the San Francisco Opera House or Western Costume Movie Rentals in L.A. If they didn't have what I wanted, I'd sew it myself.
Shades of Lady Sue.
I had the big buckled leather boots and belts made, and I got the jewelry from a secondhand store or a head shop. When all else failed, I got two extra-large paisley-printed towels, sewed them together at the top corners, stuck my head through the opening, and belted the front and back at the waist with an enormous five-inch-wide black rubber tire tread. No more couturier department for Grace. To this day, you can still see me in that towel outfit on some VH1 “Flashback” programs.
Lucky you.
My first experience with community living, a definite sign of the times, happened as a matter of convenience. I was with the other Great Society band members most of the time anyway, and to make the situation easier on us, we all decided to get a house together in Mill Valley. While this enabled us to play or practice day and night, the difficulties of communal living emerged quickly. What if one person wanted to sleep and the others were playing music? What if you'd just had an argument with someone and couldn't get away from that person? What if someone wanted to use the bathroom and she was in there? It was the usual interpersonal problems multiplied by six or seven. The difficulties eventually outweighed the advantages and probably hastened the departure of David Minor and Bard Dupont from the group. It's natural that differences escalate in tight quarters. You don't have to watch five rats in a small cage to understand claustrophobia.