The Harder They Fall (41 page)

And the guys—not the older proctors who, at thirty-five or forty were keeping an eye on the college kids, but the students—were so shocked they said they didn’t want us around anymore. They said we were dirty girls from California. I thought, “Oh, this is way too snotty for me. What the hell is this? If one of their male college buddies had sung the same song, would they have said ‘Leave and never come back’? No, they would have laughed it off.” I thought, “There’s no way I can stand this crap.”

Sure enough, years and years later, I talked to this old friend of mine I had gone to high school with, and she told me she was envious of the life I had led, what with rock and roll and all of that kind of stuff. She had married one of those Princeton guys, and raised some kids, and was the perfect soccer mom. She had kept it together in the sense you do what you’re supposed to have done. But once you get to be old and look back, it’s not what you did that you regret, it’s what you didn’t do. At this point—I’ll be sixty-five shortly—I’m glad that I had the life I did. The only thing I regret not doing is not screwing Jimi Hendrix and Peter O’Toole. I missed that!

I was aware that I was famous as a singer in the band, but I wasn’t aware that I was in the same category that I could have “my people” call “their people” and say that I would like to meet Jimi or go out with Peter O’Toole. I didn’t know I was capable of that, unfortunately! I know it now, but I didn’t know then that it could have been arranged. Because I would have gone and done that real fast!

Like I said, I don’t regret much of anything except hurting people. Occasionally I stepped on people along the way who objected to my behavior. My parents from time to time.

Anyway, I was going to the University of Miami in my sophomore year in college. I left Finch because on Easter vacation at Finch I went down to Nassau in the Bahamas for a vacation. And I went, “Hey, this is great!”

I never went to college because I wanted to learn anything. I went to see New York. You don’t say to your parents, “I’d like to see New York. Why don’t you give me $20,000 so I can go hang out for a year?” Going to college sounds better, so they give you the money. You couched it by going to an easy school. And the next year, I wanted to hang out in and be around
Nassau, so I went to the University of Miami. While there, I got a letter from a friend of mine, in conjunction with having first heard of Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce was unknown to me when I heard him in a record store when I was buying something else. I was mesmerized. So I got a Lenny Bruce album and laughed so hard my face hurt. I’d never encountered anything like it. Also in Miami at that time, I got this letter from my friend Darlene saying, “You got to check out what’s happening in San Francisco. There is some stuff going on here.” She enclosed an article by
San Francisco Chronicle
columnist Herb Caen. Herb wrote about the new Bay-area scene. Herb Caen had coined the word “hippie,” and he was talking about all these bands and the action, and I thought, “Well, that sounds like a good deal.” Especially since Darlene had already proved her instincts for promising scenes. So I went back to the West Coast, which was probably the most pivotal decision in my life, considering where I ultimately headed. My idea, though, was just to go around and hang out where the good times were.

So I returned home, and sure enough, Darlene and Herb Caen were right. Things were going on. Included with alcohol was now marijuana and the psychedelics, and new rock and roll. As you know, it took off from there. Now at that time, taking drugs was not something you went into rehab about. Everybody had their drug. Some guys like speed. In The Jefferson Airplane, there were a couple of guys in the band who favored speed. Paul was more of a marijuana guy. Marty and I drank. Spencer drank. Everybody had their drug of choice, but we all took pretty much all of them. Except our band was not into heroin. Heroin was not a no-no. From my point of view, it was too much trouble. You had to have somebody else that you relied on, and I don’t care for that. Now, cocaine …

We had a guy living in our basement who was a carpenter and he taught karate or kung fu. Also he was a coke dealer, so we had our own coke dealer living in the basement. It was easy. You see how lazy I am. If a drug was easy, fine. Apparently it was easy to get nitrous oxide. We had a tank of it in the basement. What’s more, the coke dealer living in the basement, Owsley, was around all the time with LSD.

There were a lot of pranks. Tricia Nixon went to Finch College ten or twelve years after I did, so she didn’t know me. Finch College is so small
that she could and did have a tea party for all the alumni. She got a list of everybody that went to Finch, and Grace Wing was on the list. So Grace got an invitation to a tea at the White House from Tricia.

Grace cracks up because she realizes they don’t know who Grace Wing is. That was my maiden name. So Grace calls up Abbie Hoffman because the invitation said you could bring your husband or boyfriend, and I thought Abbie and I would go as husband and wife … and take a shitload of acid.

I know about formal teas because that’s one of the really important things they teach at Finch. Abbie and I got dressed, showed up at the White House on time, had our invitation ready, and were standing in line. I wore a black fishnet top and black skirt above the knees and tall black boots up to the knees. Everybody else was dressed like straight Republican women. If I had worn a camel hair coat, the security guards might not have recognized me. We dressed Abbie so he didn’t have a flag T-shirt or tie-dye. He had on a suit, but he’s so dark that putting a suit on Abbie, he looked like a Mafia hit man. Both of us looked pretty strange.

We had to go through some security because the president of the United States was in there. What I was going to do was … At a formal tea, what happens is everybody stands and there is a long table with big tea urns at each side, and you have somebody—and this is so corny—somebody that you prize or your best friend do the honors at the tea table. I knew the setup. I figured that “Tricky” would be standing there with his teacup in his hand. I got my teacup. I also have lots of acid in one of my pockets, and a long fingernail to scoop it. All it takes is a little acid to get you to the moon. Entertainers gesture a lot, and I’ll be talking to Tricky and I’d kind of gesture over his teacup and the acid would drop in there, and he’d never taste it, and in forty-five minutes, the guy would be gone. So I was standing in line, and I fully intended to do it, when one of the security guards came over to me and said, “I’m sorry, you can’t go in.” And I said, “But I have an invitation.” And he said, “No, we know you’re Grace Slick, and you’re a security risk.” And I thought, “They’re right! Isn’t that interesting? They don’t know why, but they’re right!” So they wouldn’t let me in.

But the weird part is that Tricky Dick didn’t need acid; he got himself
out of office. You know they say he was so goofy he used to wander around the White House talking to the presidents’ pictures on the wall. So if he took acid, nobody would have noticed. He would have been talking about the walls melting, and they would have said, “Yeah, sure, there he goes again.”

But he got himself thrown out of office. That’s mainly what we wanted to do. Have him behave in such a manner that they’d have to take him away.

The Airplane became famous as the original psychedelic band, but personally, I was more a drinker. Anything that was around and easy I took—marijuana was very easy to score, but alcohol was my drug of choice. That’s the genetic deal going on, where I’m an addict in the sense that anything I like I’m all over. Like flies on shit! And sometimes that works out fine. Right now I’m a painter. That’s how I make my living and pay the mortgage.

Once I start a painting, I work on it until my nose runs. Then I guess I better blow my nose. Until gravity hits me, I don’t stop. In that sense, being an addict is okay, as long as you’re directing it at something productive. Unfortunately I do it in any area, good or bad. If I like something, there I am right in the middle of it. That operates with men, the job, cars.

Once in the sixties I went into a showroom to buy a car. I never paid any attention to the James Bond movies. I went in to get a Jaguar. I had all this money in cash. I went in dressed in jeans and sandals—your typical hippie. And I saw this English car and thought, “Damn, this is neat looking! I like this better than a Jaguar.” I said to the salesman, “What’s that called?” And he said, “That’s an Aston Martin.” I asked, “Is that an automatic?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Fine, I’ll take it.”

“Wouldn’t you like to drive it first?” “No, not really. I just like the way it looks.” So he said, “Well, how would you care to pay for that, ma’am?” And I said, “Cash!” I pulled out $17,000 in cash. The band thought it was
great. They said, “Hey, that’s the James Bond car.” And I didn’t even realize that it was. I just was attracted to its look. Talk about impulsive! That’s what I mean. If I like something, it’s “That’s okay, I’m having that.” The problem was that the British cars at that time had a problem with the batteries, and the thing didn’t start all that reliably. It was like a fancy racehorse. You had to kind of coax it. We lived out in Bolinas, way outside of San Francisco, in the boonies. By then I had my daughter, China, and I decided, “Okay, I’m not going to have that type of car with a newborn baby.” So I took the Aston Martin engine out and dumped a Chevy engine in. I thought the guys in the band were going to pass out and die! But that’s neither here nor there. It’s not talking about addiction. Although maybe it is! I do what I want regardless …

The sixties idea of sexual freedom was something I could relate to. My upbringing may have been proper, but I switched to the new life-style without a hitch. Diversification in bed also made sense to me, at least at the time, like with drugs. Night after night we sang together, and it seemed natural that we slept together too. Sometimes it felt like being married to seven different men.

If you live with anybody, I don’t care what it is, it could be a turtle, eventually it’s going to get gnarly, because of differences of opinion. That’s why a lot of bands break up. That’s why Metallica all went and got therapists, ’cause they figured that if you’re in a band that is this successful, why would you want to mess it up? That would be crazy, we got to work this out. They had something they wanted to stay in, and that’s great.

People ask me what it was like being a woman in a rock band. It’s very different if you wanted to be a Supreme Court justice or head of a corporation, but there were always singers. My mother was a singer. I have a very loud voice, so rock is a perfect medium. My mom is a big-band singer—“I’ll be with you in apple blossom time”—and I can sing like her. One of my friends requested I sing at her wedding, and I thought, “Oh Christ!” She wanted me to sing this Carpenter song which gagged me: “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Me singing that! Holy shit! But I thought, “I can do it. I’ll just sing it like my mother.” Everybody in the audience who knew me were looking at me and laughing…. I didn’t exert any power in our bands. I
liked having fun. Paul liked exerting power. I don’t care one way or the other.

In a band, you are so close to each other. Usually a man and wife go off to work, so you get a break from each other. You get no break with a band. You’re with them 24/7. All the time. It’s pressure because you have to look good, sound good, and be on time. We were lucky. We didn’t have to change our outfits or have dancing girls and videos and all that. The sixties were real easy. You just had to show up. If you could play or sing, or whatever it is you do without falling down. Even that was okay. The audience was just as screwed up as we were.

Compared to now where they really have to work. But anyway, you’re going to get on somebody’s nerves. All six or seven of you. That’s what happened to our band, and a lot of other bands. Jack and Jorma were mainly blues. They didn’t like all that “let’s go to the moon” that Paul liked. They weren’t all that crazy about Marty’s love songs, although Marty wrote some good ones. I didn’t care. I thought it was great: four songwriters, so the pressure is off in the sense that we each wrote a couple. Two or three songs each per album, that’s fantastic. But I’m also a girl. It’s different. At that time, there was some sexual tension going, and it was a little easier for me. With the rest of them, it was all male-male ego stuff. It was more fun for me.

As far as my addiction went, the drugs at that point were all still working. That’s why you use them. You don’t find out you hate them from the beginning and keep using. That would be stupid. They do something for you. It’s fun. To me, drugs were like food. I wanted variety. I liked steak but didn’t want to eat it every night. You eat different kinds of food. Same thing with consciousness: I felt the same way about my mind as I did about food. I wanted to experience different kinds of consciousness. I liked being sober but didn’t want to be sober all the time. I wanted to be sober for a while, then I wanted to have a marijuana high, or a booze high, or an acid high. The same as with food. In the line “feed your head,” I was referring to partaking of this consciousness the same way you do food. In other words, “Feed your head some interesting stuff.” That includes books. That includes new experiences. Knowledge feeds your head too. That’s why I used the line at that time.

I didn’t drink for any other reason than just to get high. My parents loved each other and stayed together until they died. I’ve had a great job. I’ve been able to screw anybody I wanted to. I have no claim to a miserable life. There was nothing to drink “over.” The only time I drank over something was when my house burned down in northern California. My husband was in Hawaii, China was in L.A. I was sitting in a Howard Johnson lodge trying to forget what was happening, and all the local TV channels said, “Grace Slick’s house burned down.” Usually I drank “for”—“Now I’m going to get ripped.” I like the idea of feeding my head with different consciousnesses, but I don’t do that anymore because at some point the stuff stops working for you and starts working
on
you.