Grace Slick

A women who needs no introduction...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My desk today is truly legendary. Great slick Grea. Hello,
I gotta ask. We're in the hills above Malibu. Where
were you during the fire? I was right here and
they said mandatory evacuation. So I went with a friend

(00:33):
of mine to a hotel in Santa Monica and watch
what I thought it was my house burning down on television.
Turns out the property around it it's burned up, but
not the house. So I'm back where I used to live. Wow,
that's great. Now. People always think you think of you
as a North Cow kind of girl, and here we

(00:53):
are in so cal and there's a really big different mindset. Whatever,
how'd you end up in so Cal? Um? I moved
down here. I thought my daughter was down here, so
I thought, I've always liked l A. Most people from
San Francisco are real snobby about l A. And I
want to say to them, how about the movie industry,

(01:15):
which has influenced your life, whether you think so or not.
This is a storytelling land and that's been what people
have done forever, is tell stories either around a fire
or in a big cinema So what are a couple
of your favorite movies. Oh, start for starters, the old

(01:38):
uh Disney stuff, Fantasia, Snow White, and The Seven Dwarves.
But during the fifties I didn't care for the style
of drawing that they did with Disney. I liked the
earlier style, Like you have night on Bald Mountain in
Fantasia and you see this black mountain and it starts

(02:00):
opening up and it's this horrible creature with red eyes.
I mean, it's really well done. So I like that
the red shoes that taught me don't give up. She
kills herself. Oh, I can't decide whether I want to
be a ballerina or or be married to this guy.
How about both? You can't do both? Come on? So

(02:24):
I wanted at all the kid the man job, and
it can be done. Something's going to suffer, though, assuming
looking back to your career from an outside perspective, you've
achieved all of that more or less. Yeah, you hang
onto it for a while. I think the person who
suffered most with this is my daughter because she's all

(02:46):
sensitive and stuff, which is part of her generation. They
have like a lot of issues. Okay, let's start to
you don't have any issues. Oh I probably do. I'm
just not aware of them because we didn't talk about it. Okay,
let's go back to Fantagia. The big thing. Fantagia was
made in the thirties, big thing in the sixties, came
back to the theaters and you would go on drugs.

(03:08):
Did you have that experience too? Sometimes? Yeah, okay, And
then you're saying, even though looking inward in California is
really inside seeking, staten't do that. You never went to
the psychiatrist. Never. I went to a psychiatrist once because

(03:29):
the left side of my body hurt, and I went
to heart people know your heart too. I went to
muscle people. No, maybe it's psychosomatic. Go to psychiatrists not Okay,
I don't do psychosomatic. That's corny. But I went anyway,
I'll do what i'm told occasionally. So I went to
the head of UC Parnassus, and I did four sessions

(03:52):
with him. And he said, is that your purse? He's
looking down. I put it on the floor and I said, yeah,
its off the big and he got up, walked over
and lifted it up. He said, are you right handed?
I said yeah. He said so you wear this on
your left shoulder and I said yeah. He said, why
do you have so much stuff? I said, well, maybe
I want to go to France tomorrow. So I got

(04:12):
my passport of toothbrush on your pants. He said, well,
I'll tell you what. Either I don't load the purse
or start wearing in the right side for a while.
Sure enough, he's right, So that's fun. You have to
go to a psychiatrist for that, for real practical advice. Yeah,
because they couldn't figure out what was wrong. It kept
hurting and they didn't know. So that's that's the only Okay.

(04:34):
But if we were here alone till midnight, just the
two of us, would you be plumbing your inner depths
or will be more talking external stuff? Oh? Sometimes it
depends on you. In other words, if you I'll talk
about anything except physics, because I don't know anything about physics.
I didn't even take physics in high school. After chemistry
forget it. Yeah, I didn't like algebra. Love geometry because

(04:55):
that's spatial, but I don't like algebra. And I told
the algebra teacher, Uh, he said, why are you looking
out the window? I said, because I don't add letters.
I add numbers and he said, well, but you have
to pass the course. I said, in California public school,

(05:15):
if you show up, you get a D. You can't
funk if as long as you show up. So I
showed up. Well, the I D. I ever got. I
like everything else, but I didn't like algebra. And I said,
not only that, sir, but I'm never going to have
to use algebra. And I never have because I knew

(05:36):
myself well enough at that time to know that's one
area I'm not going into. No thanks, okay. So Joe
Walsh says, the challenges is to live not to die young.
There's this seven club. A lot of rock stars die
for whatever reason, especially drugs. You've lived through it, and

(05:56):
since it's totally available on Wikipedia, you're going to be
eighty in the fall. How do you feel about getting older?
I'm not really fond of it. But the only the
only thing that's good that happens unless your brains are fried,
is you acquire some wisdom and you aren't quite as

(06:17):
frantic about everything. You realize that there are very few
things that are that important. Just relax because uh, you know,
for one thing, I don't have much longer. If you're eighty,
you don't have a whole hell of a lot of time,
So just relax and enjoy whatever you got left. There
was that movie The bucket List, which actually I did

(06:38):
not see. But at this stage your life, is there
anything you feel you have to or want to do
before you pass? No, it's all already gone. In other words,
I didn't learn how to ride a horse, but now
every bone in my body break if I tried to
learn how to ride a horse. I never did. Jimmy
Hendrix and uh Peter O'Toole, But see they're both dead,

(07:00):
so I can't do them anyway. So everything I have
on a bucket list is not available. How how old
were you when you first lost your forginity? You were not?
Were you the bad girl growing up? Or were you
sort of a street arrow? I was bad ish, but
I didn't get in a lot of trouble. Uh. My

(07:24):
friend and my best friend and I said, I went
to a private school, Casteleia in Palo Alto for my
junior and senior year. And uh, we used to the
girls that talked about who are you going out with
this weekend? And Pam and I would say, oh, Gordon Gilby.
My parents drank Gordon's gin. Her parents drank Gilby's gin.

(07:47):
So she and I'd go out and get to screw
it up together. But we made it home and we
didn't get arrested. I didn't start getting arrested until I
was something. Okay, looking at you right now, it does
not appear you've any had any cosmetic surgery. Okay, no,
I did about thirty years ago. But you've got to

(08:07):
keep it up. It doesn't stay. You've got to keep
it up once every couple of years. Um, eyelids, the eyelids,
you have to. I've been told you I'm gonna have
to have the eyelids because they droop and you can't
have any peripheral vision, so that's necessary. What else did eyelids?
And uh? Pulled up face stuff? Here? It goes around

(08:29):
the ears and you can see a scar in the
back of my head where they did it. But that's
like thirty five or forty years ago, so it's a
little bit more crude than it is now. Okay, are
you happy you did it? Irrelevant? Sure, because I kept
on for another ten years. Uh in the eighties doing
I was around forty at the time, which means around.

(08:52):
And so I had another ten years of being on
a stage and not looking like a drooping slob. But
after that, I stopped when I was about fifty. So
after that there's no point in it's expensive and I
wasn't on a stage. I don't need to look like anything. Okay,
So at this stage of your life, do you have

(09:13):
a love life? You have a significant other for some reason? Uh?
And I used to be a real horn dog, but
now it went away about ten years ago. And I
don't know if it's hormones. I don't know if it's uh.
Other medical things that I have, one is the ethro melalgoe,
which is very rare. It is if my feet get

(09:36):
over about fifty sixty two degrees fahrenheit, feels like somebody
poured boiling water into But it's so rare they don't
study it because it's called up. They wouldn't make any
money off it, so they don't know what causes it.
They don't know how to care it. It's not people
who smoke. It's not people who don't smoke. It's not
people who do. It's not young, it's not all that.

(09:57):
It's all over the map. Demographically, so they don't know
anything about it. So I have two pots that I
keep on either side of the chair where I sit
and paint, and about four times a day pull the
pots out, put ice in the pots, put my feet
in the pots, and that solve the problem, Yes, it does.
And any other health problems, yeah hard. I've had two

(10:18):
heart stints, i have Type two diabetes. I had high
blood pressure. I think it's gone down a little bit.
But I'm a mess of stuff. I've got really good
doctors though. Uh, so they keep throwing medication at it
and then pulling this one out for a period of
time and then putting that. So I'm my pile of

(10:40):
non fun drugs. Uh. Do you do still partake of
drugs that might change your viewpoint? Shall we say no?
Because uh, people have often said, let's say your drug
of choice is speed. So they said, well, I'm not
to any speed anymore, but I do drink. Uh my opinion,

(11:06):
and it's only my opinion, And as opinion is that
you can do some other drug that was not your
drug of choice for a certain period of time. Eventually
you're gonna wind yourself back to whatever was your drug
of choice. So I don't do any so called fun
drugs at all. When did you stop twenty three years ago? Okay,

(11:31):
do you you went to a A Yeah? And do
you still go to meetings or not? Yeah? You're not
supposed to be talking about it though, neither mind, but
I can talk about you kept talking. But uh, People
Magazine broke my nanimity about forty years ago anyway, so
it doesn't matter. Well, it's just you brought up the
program otherwise, know either, like I've had my anonymity broken.

(11:54):
But I don't care because either you want to get sober,
you don't what motivated you to get sober? The look
on my daughter's face, and I thought, I can't keep
punishing my body this way. I'm too I'm getting too
old for this, like Danny Glover said, I'm getting too
old for this ship. And uh, that's pretty much it.

(12:15):
Like if I were to get as loaded as I
did a long time ago, I'd probably kill myself in
one night because I'm too old. And your drug was alcohol. Yeah, now,
both my sponsor in a whom I've had for a
long time, and I said, if Roar, which is a

(12:36):
company German, did they make sobers whatever? If they make
coludes again seven fourteens and they've been in a dark
bottle in an ice box somewhere unopened, say for thirty years.
I did this just to be funny. When my sponsor,
I said, uh, what would you do, she said, I'd

(12:57):
ask you to share. You know, this comes up. Everybody
was in the early seventies. Howard Stern was talking about
that being soapers. They thought, you know, queyludes were the
best drug. So uh, at this point in time, I
know that you go on the road with your art,
we'll talk about your art. Leader not anymore. You can't
do it because my feet. Okay, so when did you stop? Uh?

(13:19):
Five six years ago something like that. Okay, So were
you more of a homebody or O? Yeah, I don't
go anywhere. The only place I go is to a
grocery store because it's cold. You know, they keep them
cold to keep their food fresh. So my feet don't
mind a grocery store. My feet don't mind a car
because there is the little thing on they are conditioning
that points to the feet. So if there's a foot situation,

(13:44):
I'm good. But most places don't have that. Once every
six months I'll go to an actual movie, and it's
something that usually draws my attention so heavily that it
doesn't my feet. I know they're hurting, but if your
attention is drawn away enough, then it's okay. So how

(14:05):
long did the foot things start to happen? When I
was about fifty three and I moved down here from
San Francisco, And at first I thought it was Oh,
I guess I'm just because it only happened maybe once
every two weeks for a short period of time, and
I went to podiatrists, I went to oriental stuff, and

(14:27):
nobody can figure out what it was because it's so rare.
But a friend of mine's brother is a doctor, and
he found it on of some obscure medical book and
he called me up from he lives in Ohio, I
think or somewhere, called me out and said, how does
this sound? And he read the uh indications what happens
uh with this saying? And I said, that's it. What's

(14:49):
the name of etro me all allergy? And I said, oh, yeah, right, whatever,
but that's what it is. And then you do it.
The doctors about it looking for answers, yeah, but they
don't have any because no he studies it. Okay, so
you're a home body, are you tend to be alone
or people stop by or what? Well? I have friends
and my ex husband stays here for a couple of

(15:09):
weeks every month or so, and yeah, okay, so you're
still friendly with him. Uh, he's my good bunny and boy.
He came here after the fire, uh and just went
around fixing everything. I mean, pulled up floors and put
him went in to home deep and putting new floors.

(15:30):
He'd uh go over the paint that there'd be a
crack in the wall and you'd go over with this
white stuff that you do before you paint. And then
he painted and he'd climb up on roofs. Induced I mean,
it's just unbelievable. And what does he do when he's
not here? He's a production guy. He no, he's lives

(15:51):
in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Oh. Production road production in Lidditz
and everything where all the companies are. He does. Uh,
all kinds of stuff can be rock and roll or
he's doing. I think the next thing is Rick Wakeman,
who is both a musician and a comedian, which sounds
hard to do, but apparently he pulls it off. And

(16:13):
he's done Bett Midler, and he's done Us, and he's
done the Who, and he's done Kiss and he's done
all kinds of stuff. So he started cleaning toilets and
filled at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and worked his way
up to being a lighting guy and then worked his
way out to being a production Okay, let's go back
to the beginning. So your father did what for a living?

(16:34):
Investment banker and you today an investment banker makes tons
of money. Back then it was upper middle class. What
was the upper middle class? Yeah, he didn't make tons,
but he made enough. And I've had more or less
the same amount of money because I made about the
same amount he did. So I've been on uh, kind

(16:56):
of the same path, except for when I first got
married a Jerry Slick. He was going to San Francisco
State and I was modeling at I Magnuts in San Francisco.
So with two people in an apartment, and uh, I'd
take a car to the train station, train station into

(17:16):
San Francisco, a bus to I Magnets and then do
the reverse back home at night. And we lived in
a house. Uh I remember we were there when Kennedy
was killed it was ninety dollars a month for how
Wow in Petrero Hill. So you see how old I am.

(17:40):
It's been a while. Okay, Um today, do you have
enough money today? Yes? I'm not rolling around in money,
but I'm I'm good. And is that primarily from music
or from mart music? Yeah? Definitely from music royalties coming
and investments, because both my accountant and my ex husband

(18:03):
manage whatever money is coming through to me. And is
there any income left from music? Oh? Yeah, okay. And
then Jefferson Airplane had this famous battle with your manager,
Matthew Kates. Okay, Now it ends up being a big

(18:23):
legal case, and I'm a lawyer in a previous lifetime
having to do with whether you can be both the
manager in the agent getting digs whatever in the middle
of that, because supposedly he held all the money. What
was your perspective? I wasn't with the band when he
was the manager. So this was before when I was

(18:44):
a great society and I went to party and they said, oh,
look there's our new manager Airplane guys, and I looked
across the room. He's signaling what he is. He had
on black cape with red line. I said, you're kidding me,

(19:04):
come on, and sure enough he screwed him over. And
but it's I was only involved after I joined the
band because Paul Kantner was with Matthew Cats because of
the situation with airplane. But Paul was very generous. We're publishing,

(19:27):
so if you gave him one word, he would put
you in publishing. But then you're also Matthew So it
was tricky for years. It may still be going on.
I have no idea. I think it finally ended. It
certainly went off for decades. It was crazy. Okay, so
your father was an investment banker and you first grow

(19:49):
start growing up where Uh let's see, I was born
in Chicago, came out to l A when US three,
lived here for a year, moved to San Francisco, lived
there for about seven years, moved to Palo Alto, lived
there for another seven years. I went to college in
New York for a year, then the next year went
to college in Miami and Florida. Then came back to

(20:13):
San Francisco, and it's it was starting to happen. Okay,
let's go back to when you're you know, you're living
in San Francisco, You're going to school Were you a
popular girl in school? Oh, I don't know. It's a
grammar school and we didn't have high school high school,
uh more or less? Yeah, but I am very, very sarcastic.

(20:33):
So I got kicked out of the gang. There was
a gang of girls that were the popular girls, and
I was sort of in that. But I'm number two.
Number one was, of course, and she's still a friend.
One blonde, big boobs. I had dark, kinky hair and
no boobs and short legs. Otherwise I was great, but

(20:54):
I got kicked out for being sarcastic, and uh, they
that's reasonable. Okay. So you were always going your own way? Well,
I don't know if I was going my own way
because I liked hanging out with people. Uh, but I
have a difficult personality and if you pour alcohol on it,

(21:16):
it's really difficult. Okay. So when did you start pouring
alcohol on it about? Okay? And you know this about yourself.
Did you have your this insight back then or only
as a result of hindsight. No, it's pretty much hindsight
because we just thought, oh boy, we're getting away with it,

(21:37):
and isn't this fun? And it was fun for a
long time. You usually don't repeat stuff that isn't fun
the first time around. Oddly enough, Paul Kantner uh never
drank when I lived with him, and I said, why
don't you drink? He said, well, I tried it in
high school and made me throw up. I said, oh, yeah,
made me throw up to it. Who cares? But he

(21:58):
eventually got into al ca hal unfortunately that's what took
him out. But uh, you know, it's everybody has a
different storyline and different reasons for why they do or
don't do whatever it is they're doing, or there's no reason,
it's just fun. Okay, So you're in high school. How

(22:19):
does your father or your parents decided to send you
from the public to the private high school? That was
my idea because my friend, uh Judy Levidis was going
to Castle Out, which is private, and I was in
public school, pal Wata High School, so I thought that'd
be fun to go over there because a couple of
my friends were in private school. So I went asked

(22:41):
was it different from public school? Well, you wear uniforms
and there are no boys, which for learning is probably better.
So you graduate from high school, did you want to
go to college or that's just what you did. How
did you end up going to college? And I think
I was influenced by the Times. Everybody, you go to college,

(23:05):
that's what you do, you know. So I went to
probably the easiest college in the world. It's a dip
ship college in New York that teaches you how to
go out with Princeton boys, which fork to use speech classes.
Tricia Nixon went there, that's a well known story. No,

(23:30):
she's ten years younger than I am, okay, but she
u When she got to the White House with her father,
she decided to have a t and invite all the alumni.
It's real small school, so you can't do that of
French college. My name was Grace Wing at the time.

(23:53):
That's my maiden name, so she didn't know. You know,
if it said Grace Slick, maybe they would have thought twice.
But so I got an invitation and I went, oh yes.
And so I had about six seven hundred mics of
acid in my pocket and a very long pinky fingernail

(24:15):
for cocaine dip that into a little thing. So I
figured I'm an entertainer and we gesture a lot. And
I knew about teas because I've been talked about teas
at Finch, you stand. You don't sit at a t
You stand. There are two urns on either side of
a long table. That's the way they kind of always are,

(24:36):
and you stand with your cup and you talk to
where you're talking to. I'm deciding that I'm talking to
Richard Nixon and the stuff is tasteless, but I get
a little bit of an in my fair nail out
of my pocket and just I'm gesturing, I'm talking over
his cup and he'd be loaded in forty five minutes
or a half an hour, just the idea of him

(25:00):
on the acid. But what I learned later on was
that the guy was nuts. Any we'd go around talking
to the pictures, you know, so we didn't have to
do that. But we were standing in line ready to
go in, and their security on the way, and I
took Abby Hoffman as my so called husband or partner.
You know, you can bring somebody, bring one person, and

(25:23):
we dressed Abbie Hoffman up so he wouldn't know he
looked like a mob boss, uh in a suit because
he had the black hair, black eyelasher. And they came
up and told me, they said, I'm sorry, you can't
go in. You're a security risk, and I said, well,
I said, I've gotten invitation, yes, but we know who
you are and you're a security risk. They didn't say

(25:45):
anything to Abby, not one word, and I thought, I'm
just a rock and roll singer. You know. I didn't
say it, but I wanted to say, you know who
this is, and so they wouldn't let me in. But
it's just as well, because that's rude to dose people.
I'm been dosed, and it's you know, ascid's good if

(26:07):
you know where you're taking. But being dosed is not
all Thatwhoever, being the president of the White House and
the era, you know, what was going on in the
country isn't like today. Although I was in your bathroom
and I did see the Trump toilet paper, which yeah,
Oh it would be fun to dose him. Oh lord god,
that would be fun if I could stay around and watch. Okay,

(26:28):
So you so, Finch sounds like a finishing school. It is.
And if you how long is ro Could you have
gone for four years if you wanted to? Yeah? But
you then how did you decide to leave there? I
went with a friend of mine from Finch on the
Easter vaccasion. We went to Nassau, and I thought, oh,
this is fantastic. So University of Miami's real close to Nassau.

(26:53):
So next year I went to university and I'm a
screw off. I'm not this big academic. I just went
as you're supposed to go to college, and why not?
It was fun. And so then after University of Miami,
you went to another college? Right? No, then I went
I went home to in the summer, to San Francisco.
But San Francisco was starting to have all this stuff happening,

(27:14):
and I thought, this is way better. Okay, so you
never graduated from college and your daughter did you care
if she went to college? No, she can do whatever
she wants. Okay. Now she was famously on TV at
age sixteen on MTV. Yeah, you think that was a

(27:35):
good or a bad thing. I think it was good.
I just wish she had kept You have to maintain
uh stuff in jobs, whether you're a dentist or your
work at a grocery store or your rock and roll.
To stop working and then try to pick it up
later and then stop where you can't do that, you

(27:55):
have to maintain. So if she had maintained, she got
job on the number one show at the time, which
is Home Improvement. So but she said she couldn't really
handle it because it was too much stress and stuff
like that. And to be an actor actress, she really

(28:15):
do have to be dedicated, she said, I'm not dedicated enough. Okay,
So you moved back to if you can remember what
you already moved back to San Francisco. Uh do you
mean from college? That would be fifty nine or sixty.

(28:36):
I'm younger than you, and I remember the everybody is
not everybody, but a lot of people. I remember the
sixties being explosive. What were the fifties like? Uh, leave
it to Beaver? So it was really like that, Yeah, Eisenhower,
leave it to Beaver. And Uh, A lot of us
people my age went to a certain amount of school

(28:59):
either to were four years of college usually. And if
you read you read say about Turn of the Century
in Paris, Alice b Chkalis, uh Daga Lev, the dancer, Picasso,
all those people turned the art world on its head.

(29:22):
And they were sitting around having a pot brownies that
Alice would make. They were accepting of her being a
lesbian with Gertrude Stein, and we read about that. Did
that look like way better than leave it to beaver.
Of course it did. So that made a lot of

(29:47):
us open up and very liberal, which I am to
this day. The Republican Party has a list of people
where they live and how much money they make, so
they have for years called here or written here, and
I just laugh. I said, look, I am a socialist Democrat,

(30:11):
so you're calling the wrong person. And I've been that
for since I was about twenty two or three. Maybe. Okay,
so who's your candidate in the election. I'm a Democratic side. Well,
my friend and I kind of argue about this because
and I think she may be right. She said the

(30:33):
deal is to beat Trump, of course, and she said
Biden is the only one who can do that. But
I like, uh, Biden's Now I shouldn't say this because
he's probably younger than I am, but he's old like
he was. He's been stumped a couple of times. He
doesn't have that fast reaction. I like Conala Harris. She's
from California. She's real sharp, she knows how to come back,

(30:57):
and she will come back at you. Budaja amazing mind.
Rhodes scholar done a military time. The guy's amazing and
Warren's got good plans. So all three of them. But
in order to beat uh Trump, it might have to
be Biden because people like who they're familiar with. About

(31:20):
Bernie and Bernie, I think he's too far left for
most people. No, he's not too far left for me. Okay,
let's go back to the sixties. So you go back
in fifty nine San Francisco. Is it palpable? I didn't.
I was living on the East Coast where it's uptight.
It was palpable. Something was going on. No, not. In

(31:40):
fifty nine, the shift was going between beat nick and hippie.
Now I hate to use those they're kind of silly words,
but they do disparaging whatever they do describe a certain
way of thinking or mail you or whatever you want
to call it. So is shifting from the Beatni thing

(32:03):
up at North Beach to hippie and it was you
could tell that things were kind of shifting. Wasn't there yet,
but you could tell you could feel it. So you
go back to Berry and you're doing what every day?
I'm a model because I have no skills. Okay, how
do you feel as someone who's intelligent and outspoken being

(32:27):
paid for your looks. I thought it was very strange
because I have short legs, kinky dark hair, and no tits.
Now no tits is good for a model, but short
legs and kinky dark hair is not good. Uh. So
I would straighten my hair by wrapping it around my
head after I washed it. That's a big roller which

(32:48):
will straighten out your hair without ruining it. A lot
of people ironed their hair. That's stupid, you ruin your hair. Uh.
And the long legs. At the time that I was modeling, uh,
skirts came down below the knee anyway, so nobody knew
how short my lower legs were the only thing they
didn't like about me was that it's I have a

(33:08):
big head, apparently, and it was very hard to get hats.
What happens is when you are going on a runway,
you come up to just before you're about ready to
go on, they give you gloves and hat and jewelry,
and they give me the gloves, fine hat. Uh, no good.
I couldn't get the cat on my head because my
head's too big. But they were fairly nice about everything.

(33:32):
I worked for uh Madam Moon, who was couterier department
at i'magnets. She was actually French, and she the only
reason she liked me is because I can look French
because of the dark hair and pointing face and all
that kind of stuff. In those days, bottling was a

(33:53):
lucrative correct well, it's not look at it for a
person who's only five seven, but it worked for floor modeling,
which is what I was doing. What I had to
do was change my clothes every ten minutes. And I
was working in the criterier department, so I had some
beautiful stuff to wear. But you change your clothes every

(34:14):
ten minutes. You wander around and all these old, fat,
rich ladies who look like I do now would come
up and feel the material, and you know, do that
and that's what you do all day. Really, what did
you end up with any of those clothes? Oh? No,
they were like ten tho dollars a suit. Are you
kidding something? No? Okay, So how do you meet Jerry Slick?

(34:39):
Jerry Slick his mother was my mother's best friend. And
it's very fifties if you look at it, Uh, sideways,
And I do like Jerry Slick. He's very bright and
he's funny, and uh, I've known him damn, since I
was about ten. Really, we didn't go together. He went

(35:03):
with my friend Asia. Her name was Darlene at the time,
she changed it to Asia. Um, he went with her
for a while. Uh, but I didn't. I didn't go
out with him until I was older. The whole when
you first started to go out with Okay, So you
say you lost your virginity at seventeen, was that to

(35:24):
a boyfriend or you just wanted to lose your virginity? No,
Dave Hunter, he's my boyfriend, and uh I ran into
him about thirty years later. He was selling furniture at
a department store and I looked at him and I thought, God,
he looks familiar. Dave. Yeah, it's me Dave. Okay, So
before you meet Jerry, before you start up with Jerry,

(35:44):
had you played the field. I don't know if we Yeah,
I guess maybe we called it that. I don't know. Uh.
Let's see, before Jerry, I was going out with Stanford
Boys because I was at Castella, So, uh, I would
go out with the Delta cap As song. My father

(36:06):
was in that fraternity, and I thought, well, that's a
good idea. They're also big drinkers, so am I so
you were a big drinker at that age, well, seventeen. Yeah,
I started it at fifteen, but not on a regular basis. Uh. Well,
I went to college in the Hindu Lands and Vermont
in the Old Asian before the Internet, etcetera. And then

(36:29):
you end up drinking a lot. Nothing. Drinking was taboo
in my life because my father owned a liquor store.
But I got to the point where I didn't drink
every night. But if you wanted you to have the
best night your like, call me. Okay. I tried, but
then you realize, you know, the best night of your
life is rare, you know, and you're you know, getting drunk.

(36:50):
I end up getting I won't tell the story of
how I ended up giving up drinking. That's for another time.
But okay, with these boys, you said earlier, a horn dog.
Is there sex with these fraternity boys? Uh, let's see.
Not no, because I didn't lose my virginity until I
was seventeen, and that was graduation night. Graduation night, and

(37:13):
that was not a Stanford boy. Was their furniture sissument?
Was that a good experience? I don't know, because I
blacked out. They probably call that rape today. Both me
and my friend who was in the next bedroom with
her date. But both of us lost the same night,
and we both in the morning looked at each other
and went, uh, because we couldn't remember. Now, that's what

(37:37):
drinking I'll do for you. Your first time supposed to
be magical on everything, I can't remember. Okay. So when
you meet Jerry, had you had sex with a lot
of guys before that? Uh? No, not really? Okay, So
you meet Jerry, how do you decide to marry Jerry?
I don't know. We just started going out and it
seemed like a natural thing to do. And it's also

(38:00):
very there's a fifties hangover in it in that. Oh
here's mother's my mother's best friend. We both come from
Palo Alto, we're both the same age, we both so
there's there's a little fifth hangover. Okay, but you're a
very atypical woman, and it seems like you're a typical
from day one. No, you were not. No, I'm pretty

(38:21):
standard up to about age twenty three, four four, I
start getting weird. Okay, before you get weird. When you
marry Jerry, do you think it's gonna be forever? I
assume so yeah, I got married in the uh big

(38:44):
cathedral in San Francisco called Grace Cathedral, which I told
my parents when I was four. I said I'm gonna
get married there, and I did because I'm stubborn and
uh but so it was. You can see from this
I'm pretty standard for a long time. Let's clean up
the thing for one second. You have siblings, Yes, I

(39:07):
have a brother and brother younger younger. He lives in
a park in a sleeping bag and has for as
long as I can remember. He's paranoid, schizophrenic and slightly retarded,
and he's very sweet. He doesn't hurt anybody. He lives

(39:27):
right next to the police station because he's paranoid. But
that's a perfect place for somebody like him to live
because nobody will hassle him. And he is one of
the town uh eccentrics, you know that every town has him.
Lives in Palato, and because he's uh paranoid, he won't

(39:50):
leave Palato. Now was he ever institutionalized? Only once? About
forty years ago. He pushed the girl off her bicycle
and they said why, and they said, because the wheels
were talking to me. Then he went to a mental
institution for I don't know, six months. But he's never
been in a hospital either. No, because he uh doesn't

(40:16):
carry a card. He doesn't know where and if you
tell him, he forgets it. Where the s S I
is to collect money. So my parents left a trust
for him, which lasted up to about five years ago.
Now I'm supporting him and I send him actual money

(40:38):
because he can't cash a check because he can't prove
who he is to him. I send it in uh
envelopes so he could go to the post office. I
have a post office box in Palato because obviously he
can't get one. I have one. I send it to
myself and then uh, he gets some money that way.
And how long has he been homeless? He has been

(41:03):
uh Skip and Eye my ex husband Skip and I
tried to get him an apartment a couple of times,
but he makes him kind of crazy because he's it's
too claustrophobic for him, so he'd prefer to sleep outside.
He's not doing it because there's no money. He just

(41:23):
doesn't like being I don't know. I guess he wanders around,
you know, and looks at stuff, and he eats because
he has enough money to eat and uh goes two movies,
I imagine, I don't know. And was this heart break
for your parents? Well? Yeah, I think so because he

(41:45):
was kind of he would be occasionally verbally kind of
violent with them. He's never done it with me, but uh,
it's unpleasant. It is sad to have a kid who's
screwed up and there's nothing you can do about it. Right, Okay,
start to get weird? What does that look like? I
will take whatever drugs I want, I will have sex

(42:10):
or whoever I want. I will stop working as a
model and form a rock and roll band with Jerry
Slick and Darby Slick and a couple other guys. Uh. Okay,
So Jerry, he graduates from school. What do you once
you quit modeling? What are you doing for money? Uh?

(42:30):
Then we started, uh a rock and roll band called
Great Society, and that progressively made more money. Yes, not
a monster amount, but more money. And uh, Jerry Slick
is I think still a cinematographer. That's what he was
going to San Francisco State four. Do you have no

(42:52):
contact with him? Sometimes? Yeah? Sometimes I talked to him. Okay,
so you start the band in what year? Good question?
Sixty five four. Okay, Now, what does Jerry think about
you sleeping with whomever you want and taking whatever drugs
you want. I'm not sure how aware he was of it,

(43:15):
because I didn't flaunt this stuff in front of him.
But he played drums in the Great Society. His brother
played guitar. And then we had other friends David Minor
and uh Dutch name Van something really anyway, Uh we

(43:39):
made some money with that man. And then the oddly
enough dark haired Norse which is what I am Norwegian Swedish,
uh the and s she Sydney Anderson. But before we
get there, okay, how did you side to be a

(44:02):
musician to be a singer? Because I went to see
Jefferson Airplane play at a uh nightclus small club called
the Matrix, and I looked up and I said, that
looks like more fun than modeling. My mother was a singer.
I can do that. Because you're young and stupid, you know,
you figure, Yeah, okay, okay, it's kind of like the
late seventies early eighties in Los Angeles. Now at that

(44:24):
time in you talk about in the fifties hangover, you
get married, etcetera. It's not because they talk sixty seven
is the summer of love? What is going on in
San Francisco? When does it start to change? I'd say
around sixty four ish. I wouldn't want to bet on it,

(44:46):
but I think it's around sixty four ish. Uh, because
probably of Beatles and some folk guys. Uh. There was
called Jefferson Airplane. Before where I was in it was
called folk rock, and it was still some folk rock,
but it got a little harder, got into hard rock.

(45:09):
But people started forming bands because it looked like more
fun than what they were doing at the time. For
those people who didn't do that. The heat Ashbury aware
of that whole scene, and uh, some people were making
clothes for instance. Some people were uh making music. Some

(45:30):
people were having uh medical you set up medical thing,
help for people with no money. Some people were making newspapers,
the oraticle. Some people were getting into politics as much
as they could. You know, everybody was doing stuff. Now,
there was a guy named Emmett Grogan. Did you know him?

(45:52):
I met Emmett, but now I didn't know him. He
wrote a famous book called Ringle Leavio. We talked about
He had a freak chen, but he actually stole all
the food. Was interesting what happens. So you're with great Society.
Great society makes a record, right sort of? Yeah, who
pays for that? Let's see. I think it was offered

(46:16):
Big Daddy Tom Donohue DJ heard us and he offered
he had a Sun Studios I think that was the
name of it um and he got sly Stone to
come and help us. Now we were really pretty lame musicians.

(46:39):
I mean what we did was Jerry had a set
of drums, so you're the drummer. You have a guitar,
so you're the guitar, you know, and uh, but sly
Stone could play any instrument you hand him. Well, so
he helped us and at one point he just stopped
the thing and said, look, I'll do this and he
would run played all thing. Now he can't sing because

(47:02):
it if he sang, and they said that's great, Like
so I had I did sing, but it was never
a record until after White Rabbit and Somebody Love came out.
We got pretty famous and uh, and then they went
back and researched. You know, can we okay with sly
Stone because now he seems like, you know, off off

(47:24):
the grid mentally? Was he on it? Then he's on
he was right here. Okay, so now you're saying you're
in the Great Society and you hear about Sydney. Yeah,
the bass player who That's one of the things I
liked the most about Airplane is Jack Castie's bass playing.
He was a lead guitar player before, so the way

(47:47):
he played bass wasn't just doom doom doom. It was
all over the place, and this sustained notes that were
just beautiful. He came up and asked if I wanted
to join a band. Two of the members of Great Society.
We're going to India because it was popular at the time,
study sitar and his lead singer Sidney Anderson was going

(48:11):
to Oregon to have babies and be married. Do you
want to join the band? Oh? Yes, I do. Now
doesn't this leave Jerry out? Yeah? But Jerry's going to
film school. He's not a like a guy who's sitting
around saying all I want to do is play the drums.
He's more of a cinematonity. But you're still together then yes, Okay,

(48:32):
So you go to the Airplane and famously you bring
Somebody to Love and White Rabbit. How developed were those
successful songs for the Great Society when you played live
with those your key songs. Uh, I guess so we
had we wrote our own songs. I think the only

(48:53):
thing I did that was somebody else's was uh some
Sally go around the Roses. I don't know, but I
wrote songs. Father Bruce was about Lenny Bruce. Uh. Okay?
Was there a dream to become internationally famous or you know?
I was just doing it because it was fun and
I could. You know, It's the same reason people climb

(49:16):
efforts because I can. Okay, So you joined the Airplane,
which already has a record contract and it always has
already put an album out, Yes, and you immediately start
to gig with them, right, yeah? And then when does
it come up with the idea to make an album
with you in the band? About two minutes because we
had played uh to the album only took a couple

(49:40):
of weeks. H surrealistic pillow because we had played all
those songs live, so it wasn't hard to get them right.
We've already done it. Who is the producer of that record?
Rick d starts with a d Okay, I don't remember,
but he didn't really. He was kind of just in
the room uh, uh, Schmidt did Al Schmidt did most

(50:05):
of the production because the director or producer or whatever
you call him, God love him. What's mostly having some alcohol?
And uh, you're working for R C A Records. It's
not known as a strong label. But how controlling of
they of you were? They? They were fantastic with freedom,

(50:25):
artistic freedom. They're not so good with promotion. I kept
badgering them. I said, you've got to put this in
People magazine. Oh, we have a full page in in Billboard.
Everybody in Billboard gets the album for what Billboard? Who
cares you know? So he got a badroom. Okay, so

(50:47):
you weld if you're involved in marketing and business from
day one. M h, just the stuff. I was aware
of it. Okay, So you make the album, are you
aware when it's done, before it's release, that it's going
to be a legendary smash? No, we thought I would

(51:07):
do okay, but no, I had no idea. Okay, and
then when when did you realize something was starting to happen?
Take Away went on the road. We would have been
paying more attention to that. Then record sales, I can't
remember you heard your song on the radio. That must
have been a thrill. Everybody said it was a thrill. No,

(51:29):
I can't remember the first time I heard it, but
I can remember hearing the Beach Boys. She's given me
good violent. That was a stunning piece of work. That's
an amazing song. I remember where I was. I was
on sunset, I was headed west and I was just
stopped me in my tracks. But I can't remember where

(51:51):
I was when I heard my own soul. Okay, but
overnight you become a long baby with Janis Joplin. But
she was, You were considered beautiful, and that was her
beauty was not something that translated to the world at large.
What was it like to become an overnight icon? I
didn't really know I was an overnight icon. I was

(52:12):
I was a singer. I knew we were doing well,
but it's a hell band and there are a whole
bunch of other bands doing well. It was a group,
seemed like a group, huge group of people more or
less the same age, saying the same thing. Uh, And
so I didn't single myself out of that large group.

(52:35):
That's the Rolling Stones, the Beetles, uh, Momas and Papas
you know across the Stones, Nash and young Janis. Uh,
you know the British groups could change all those you
know from the outside, all those groups are happening. Yeah,
but you're the most famous woman in rock and roll.
You must go places and people say, you know, there

(52:57):
must be opportunities, people must be coming onto you. That
must happen relatively rapidly. The only person came on or
did anything it was David Anderley. He came up and
he wanted to take me out of airplane and do
start doing solo stuff. And I know what that is
that somebody else wants to program my ship. No, thank you.

(53:19):
I prefer being with people of like mind. And uh,
I don't want to be a I didn't want to
be a solo artist. Apart from Marty, you know. I
like the input Jack and Yarma blues. Marty sings love songs.
I'm kind of sarcastic political and Paul has lets everybody

(53:42):
go into the moon, uh space guy. So I like
the fact that it was a smartest board. Did everybody
get along at that point? At that point? Yeah, But then,
as often happens in groups, everything so well, my stuff
is better than your stuff or our stuff is all equal.
But I want to go off and do my stuff.

(54:03):
So that happens at all all not really know. It's
driven by Jack and Yorma are more blues oriented and
they really hate all the publicity of posing and having
We did two weeks of nothing but publicity at one
time in New York and we were staying at Chelsea
and uh, Jorma wrote a song called third Week at

(54:27):
Chelsea that is his statement about this is stupid. We're
not doing music, we're posing, you know. So they don't
like that. Uh, Marty was okay with it. I think
Marty at one point wanted to be more kind of
Elvis Presley ish type of deal. And Uh, Paul likes

(54:52):
the group arrangement to he he enjoyed that, so he
didn't want to split split it up. And Jack and
you Harmer took a off to go speed skating in
I think Finland or somewhere, but we didn't know which
country they were in. They were gone for a year.
So Paul and I just started making music together. Okay,

(55:12):
before we get to that second album. After Bathing at Baxters,
we had a number of radio successes on it. Surrealistic Pillow,
did you consciously try to make a radio success on
the next record. We we made what we wanted to make,
and port Rcia was still paying for studio time. And

(55:33):
it took after being battors because we hadn't practiced any
of those they were new songs. It took a long
time to make it, and because the UH instruments were
a lot of that electronic stuff was new coming out,
so he tested out and so let's see if this works,
and well, no, we have to run it through that

(55:55):
board or something. So it took a while to make.
Now San Francisco sounds a week. You were the first
act that made it. There isn't any San Francisco sound.
I don't understand. This is what labeled by the society,
by the press, by Sanrancisco seen, but not sound. So
there's the Dead, there's Quicksilver, there are other charge Yeah.

(56:18):
Are you friends with all those people? Yeah? Asa cops.
We didn't see him on a regular basis because we
have to work. And after the records came out Janesis
and I Think and big Brotherren and our first record,
then the record company puts you on the road to
sell a thing. So then I didn't see anybody because
I was always on the road, did you or did

(56:40):
you like being on the road. Yeah, it's okay. My
favorite part though, is creating a song in the studio.
I love that. That's my favorite. But yeah, and I'm
okay on the road. And at the time, you were
going by what kind of vehicle? Airplanes? Sometimes when we
first started, it was cars. And that was the only

(57:02):
time I've ever had penis envy. And it's because you
didn't have to stop for a guy if he had
to go to the bath There's a lot of cars.
There's a lot of cars. You know, there's equipment in
this car and to three of us in that car,
and for so the whole thing has to stop if
I have to go to the bathroom, because I can't

(57:22):
just hang it out the window. So I thought, damn,
this is inconvenient. Um, But you have cars, trucks, airplanes, buses, anything.
So when you would get to a town, because you'd

(57:42):
go on to Finch and you had some sophistication. Would
you ever partake of the culture in the sound No,
because we didn't have enough time. Really, the guys would
sometimes after a job, they'd go to a late night
club and play, but that's mostly blues and I'm not
really a blues person because I prefer to sing about

(58:06):
what I know and what I've lived rather than And
I may be negative about it, but I understand it.
But for me to try and act like I'm black
seems stupid. Let's stop on something you said. You said
you may be negative. It sounds like you've got a
lot of criticism in your life for being negative. Oh no, no,
this one I'm I'm talking about. I may be negative

(58:29):
on purpose about aspects of the fifties. Oh, I got it,
so or something I don't like in the sixties and seventies,
some politicians, some way of conducting yourself, some something. So
my stuff is like, okay, sun cuts loose from the

(58:50):
frozen until it joins with the African sea. In moving
it changes it's cold and its name and it does
it means shipped to a tree and you're you're good.
R c A. Let me do it. They were very
good with art. I remember that was one of the
first records that and ultimately m C five that got

(59:13):
censored where there was actually profanity. Yeah, so up against
the wall, motherfucker. Yeah that's Paul. Yeah, and he got
away with that. The only time that we were questioned
was when Paul insinuated that Jesus and Mary Magdalen had
a thing going on. And the president of our ci
A at that time was Catholic. So they argued every day,

(59:36):
and Paul had the tapes of it. I don't know
where those tapes aren't today, but Paul tapes from them
arguing back and forth. Uh, really, come on, you let
me say, I don't mean shied to a tree and
up against the woman and you're worried about whether he
insinuated that. Come on. So that was the only time
they've ever stopped us. Okay, Now, what was it like

(01:00:01):
being the only woman on the road amongst a group
of guys? Nice well experiand upon that. I pretty much
loved it because they're musicians. Most of them are funny,
so they're fun to be around. And uh, it's always
good if you are walking around with Uh not only that,

(01:00:22):
because you've got the crew and you know, walking around
a whole bunch of guys around you, you don't get accosted. Right,
But to what degree now you're famous, are people recognizing
you and wanting something? It was I cannot remember it
being really difficult now I'm sure, uh, Taylor Swift or

(01:00:44):
whoever has to have a whole bunch of goons around her.
But at the time, we just you handle it and
you learn to handle it. In other word, Jannis knew
how to handle it. If I was alone, I didn't
like you. You knew about it. Okay, you decide to
cut volunteers. Did you say to yourself, Okay, we're gonna

(01:01:06):
make a big statement or we're just making another album. No,
it's it's making another album. But we didn't get together
as a group and say, okay, let's all say this.
It still was Armor rights certain amount of music. Paul
writes a certain amount, I write a certain amount. Marty right,
certain amount. Jack didn right and didn't. Spencer didn't really right.

(01:01:30):
So it was the four of us. The album was
seemed to speak to the uh goings on in the
nation and preach some sort of action revolution or something
like that. Yeah, because that's our experience at that time.
So we're talking about our own experience. Okay. So Bill Graham,

(01:01:51):
who became your manager for a period, he said that
as soon as you the group got any money, they
want to go back to the home and get stoned
and wouldn't work again until they ran out of money
or drugs. Is that an accurate representation? No? But I
do like Bill Graham and he's uh, he was not
interested in getting loaded. He was a little bit older

(01:02:14):
than we were, but he's real good promoter. And uh,
I think the whole San Francisco thing, I don't know
about New York that's uh velvet underground and whatever. But
I think he didn't like it because it's not business
like and it doesn't get anything done, you know. But no,

(01:02:36):
we we kept writing. I mean, we didn't stop. We
didn't stop working here. And why did you let go?
Let Bill Graham go? Well, he had us playing at
one point three different towns in one day. You get
an airplane, you go you play here, you get an airplane,
you go to the I'm sorry, we didn't want to die.
You know. That's that's pushing it too much. Let's do

(01:03:00):
it normally, like you play maybe five jobs a week,
and you take off one day in the middle of
that and then another day in the three days or
something so you can wash your clothes, so you can regroup.
You don't push it like that, you know. So didn't
he say he was willing to work with you and

(01:03:20):
have you work less. No, he wants to push it.
So we got which was a mistake because he's a
sweet man, but not a businessman. A friend of Marty's
who was a copy boy at the San Francisco Chronicle
and he was our UH tour manager early on UH

(01:03:42):
and he was promoted to manager. But boy, in the
music business, you've got to have a little shrewd going
on in there and a little bit of killer too,
you've gotta you know. And he was the guys at
the record company loved him. Everybody loved him because he's
fun to hang out with. Yeah, sweet man. Just I

(01:04:06):
can't say enough good stuff about him, except that he
was in a position that he was not suited for. Okay,
how did you all decide to live in one house?
We didn't all live anywhere. The house that was our
office occasionally. Yeah, it's a five story Victorian, so occasionally
if somebody's having a fight with their girlfriend, they'd stay
there or something. And Paul I think lived there for

(01:04:28):
about six months. But we didn't all live in that house. Okay,
so you're still living with Jerry part of the time.
Then I started hanging out with and lived with Spencer Dryden. Okay,
so what did Jerry say about that I had gone?
I just went on the road and never came back
one of the road trips, and I forget which one
it was. And he didn't try to get you back.

(01:04:50):
He did, wasn't unhappened? No, he he probably thought the
hell with her? Uh, for good reason. I think I
got a letter in the mail about six months after
China was born, where when I was living in Bellinas,
one that said, you're divorced? Is that easy? And neither

(01:05:13):
he or Skip Johnson went for the fifty fifty California
law thing. Both very upstanding human beings. Speaking to which
there's a lot of people in the airplane, six people whatever.
Was there enough money to do? What? Well? He kept
the engine going, Yeah, could you bank anybody? Yes? And

(01:05:36):
I did. My father is a concern, was conservative Republican
investment banker. But I figured he knows more about banking
than I do. So he said, I know you don't
care about business and numbers and all that, but I'll
tell you it's something that's easy. One third one third
and one third one third, you save one third, you

(01:05:57):
pay all your bills and the last goes between having
fun and maybe extra payments on something. So if you
do that, you'll be okay. So I've done that ever since. Okay,
so over sixty seventy years. So you end up playing Monterey.

(01:06:17):
Oh that was wonderful. Wonderful because it was well planned.
The weather was good. You could get to a toilet
within about four minutes. All the acts were good, the
audience was happy. The stuff that they sold on the
outer around the edge of the where it was we're
all handmade stuff, and uh, the little newspapers. I mean,

(01:06:42):
it was just and we saw people that we've never seen.
We'd heard them, like I'd heard Jimmy hendrickson record, I'd
heard the Who on record. I'd heard Robbie Shankar, but
I've never seen him. So we were just as odd
as like, uh, Mama Cass's face when she saw Janice

(01:07:03):
Choplin is a real good example of what was going
on there with the musicians and the audience. Just wow.
So you were sitting in attendance, you performed, but also
you checked every act out. Oh yeah, okay, and did
you realize acts like uh, Laura Nero and Hendrix and

(01:07:25):
who would blow up after that? Uh well Hendrix we
knew was go to the Moon and who uh Laura
near are not so much? Uh this is my opinion,
of course, only not anybody else's. And Robbie Sharenka was
already uh genius, so uh but yeah, we watched each

(01:07:50):
other even when they weren't performing, Like Brian Jones was
there backstage. Backstage was fun. There was a lot of fun.
So uh, the whole experience of that was fantastic. And
wood Stock is the one that gets the most pressed.
But wood Stock was a mess. Well I think the
problem was the Woodstock movie came out first and the

(01:08:11):
Battery Pop Move film came after that, so it didn't
really get the legend. So what was it like being
at wood Stock? A mess? In other words, what we
couldn't see anybody because of the weather. We stayed in
a motel and half an hour before we're supposed to
go on, a helicopter would come pick us up, drop
us off backstage, You walk up the stairs, you go,

(01:08:34):
do your set, you walk back, the helicopter takes you
back to the hotel and gets next whatever their next
deal is. But something went wrong with the equipment so
they took us up. We're supposed to play at around
nine o'clock at night. We were on stage, backstage all
night and we played at six o'clock in the morning,

(01:08:54):
or if you don't think rock and roll is weird
at five thirty in the morning. But uh so, and
the people in the audience or half a million of them,
are wet, it's raining. You can't get to a bathroom
for about a week. I mean, it was just you could.

(01:09:15):
We couldn't watch anybody. Were you going to stand? So
it was not good. So it was just big, is
all it was. Okay, So it wasn't a good experience
from your view, boys, Okay, then you also Jeffer's a
Airplane played Altimont and that was really not good. You
know that we're playing an airplane was on and uh

(01:09:40):
I didn't wear my contact lenses that day, and I
can sort of see without him, and I saw, I
sort of saw this scuffling going on, and I thought
that's Marty. And I went back to Spencer and I
said the drummer, he said, what's going on with Marty?
He said, the healthy angels are beating him up? And
oh good, So that started, Uh, and they punched him

(01:10:02):
and he fell down on the stage floor and the
guy said, never say fuck you to a Hell's Angel.
Sobarty says it again and our crew had to come
and get the health angel. And were you afraid at all? No,
because I'm too stupid to be afraid. There's something about
me that all kinds of you of use of things
are going on, and I'm just kind of either observing

(01:10:24):
it or being part of it. And I don't know.
Later on I looked back and go, jeez, what a fool.
But at the time, I I just think everything's going
to turn out. Okay, I'm kind of dip dip shot. Okay.
About a year later, Uh, you get the Blows Against
the Empire album. Yeah, how did that come together? That's pauls.

(01:10:46):
But you were involved, right? Yeah? I was involved, But
so was Jack Cassidy, David Crosby, Graham Nesh, you know,
Jerry Garcia, everybody was involved. But you and you were
also involved on Sunfighter, right. Oh. And at this point
do you think the band's ever going to come back together?
I have no idea because we don't even know where
Jacking are. We know they're in in Uh one of

(01:11:08):
the Scandinavian countries. We don't we don't know which one.
They're speed skating there and they come back together. You
come back together with Bark. Do you think the band
is going to go? Are you feeling while we're on
fumes at this point, yeah, Bark. You could tell we
didn't say anything publicly, but you could tell that Bark

(01:11:30):
is not quite as marvelous as it should be. And
then long John Silver, Yeah, I mean that from a
consumer point, I bought a great packaging, but not a
great record. No, Okay, So at this point you think
you're done or in the back of your mind you're
morphing into Jefferson Starship with Paul. Well, it already Paul

(01:11:55):
and I had already done that kind of thing. So
I wasn't worried about having a job. Uh you know,
I don't. I figured I could do that for another
ten years or something, So I wasn't really worried about that.
I just thought it was too bad that we sounded
poorly on those records, Okay, on which records? Mark long time? Okay,

(01:12:18):
So you say you're in the band, you have a
relationship with a drummer, Spencer Dryden, Then how do you
end up being with Paul who's been in with the
band for years? Um, Spencer and I uh split up
and Spencer started going with my friend UM Sally, who

(01:12:39):
I'm so friends with. She lives in Houston, Texas, that's
where she's from, and so Spencer went with Sally and
I didn't go with anybody. But eventually Paul and I
got together. I mean, did you always want a child?
Was it premeditated? No? I just said we were in

(01:13:02):
the Shatton and I think in New York. I said
to Paul. Because he's so different from me, I thought
that that would be interesting, both mentally and physically. He
likes to run ship. I don't I want you to
do your job. I'll do my job. I don't want
to tell you what to do. You don't tell me,
you know so, But he's just fine telling everybody what

(01:13:23):
to do. And I thought, well that's good. He's a
good management for the band and uh, physically different too,
So I thought, I said, I'd like to have your child,
but you don't have to worry about it because I'll
support it, you know, as a as a child, I'll
support the child. So he was pleased with that. He

(01:13:44):
likes children until they develop a sense of logic. Then
they're in trouble because he's keeping getting real nasty if
you have your own opinion, and that happens when you're
six seven something like that. But he's real good with
children that are younger than So after China hits six

(01:14:05):
or seven, then it started getting early. Was he still
hands on or did he distanced himself. Yeah, no, he'll
be hands on and he is not physically violent with anybody,
but verbally yeah. And then when does it end with
Paul must be seventy three? Does an end on its own?
Or it's because it's because Skips in the picture. Skip
was in the picture, but I don't think Paul knew

(01:14:29):
about it because Skip, at one point, about a year before,
we were in the Midwest in the bar on the
main floor of the hotel. There's a lot of Midwest
turners around. Skip came downstairs to hang out with us
in my red dress, harry legs, one dollar socks. You know,

(01:14:56):
dumb shoes, mustache, hair, need end, act any different. He
didn't try to come on like he just acted like Skip,
straight feet, no, nothing. But Paul thought that any man
who put her dress on was probably gay, even if
he was trying to be funny, because Paul couldn't imagine
wearing a dress. So I got away with hanging out

(01:15:19):
with Skiff for about a year because Paul thought he
was gay. So, oh, that's nice. That's what happened there.
And then one day I just uh called up our
truck driver who drove our equipment around and said, come
on over, I'm going to take a couple of things

(01:15:41):
and I'm moving to Saucelito. I'm out of here. And
he did. Mike Fisher came over and helped me move that. Well,
he wasn't very happy, but he's not very good to
live with either. You know, there's a part of him
that's uh uh very sweet and revolutionary and strong and

(01:16:03):
all that kind of their part that's just so nasty
you don't want to deal with it. I don't know
where it comes from. China, who is his daughter, said
he has issues and stuff. The kids use that word now.
I call her a kid. She's almost fifty, but they
say he has issues. Well, everybody has issues. Who you
can't act like a jerk just because you have issues.

(01:16:26):
If you got issues, go fix them. So I don't
want to live with people who have issues and don't
want to fix it. Okay, So then you embark with
the Jefferson starship and then you have the Monster album
Red Octopus. Did we anticipate that being as successful as

(01:16:48):
it was? No, I have no idea, but that's that's
largely Marty's album. But by the same token, you have
played on love on that album. Yeah, but that wasn't
really a single, but he had deepd miracles. Thought about
the album of general is a fans I love playoff Love? Well? Good,
I'm glad you did okay, and a lot of people

(01:17:08):
like that album was it did well? Okay, And eventually
Marty drops out, Paul drops out, and you do we
built this city. How do you feel about we built
this city? No? Thank you? Okay, Okay, here's the deal.
For me, this is not me I'm right or wrong either.

(01:17:30):
It's just I'm more comfortable when the band is writing
their own songs. We had I think three two or
three number one hits in the eighties, but they're not
our songs and they're dumb. And I love Diane Warren.
But nothing's gonna stop us now. I think a MC

(01:17:50):
truck will nail you right in the middle of the road,
and more than fifty of the people get married get divorced.
What do you mean, nothing's gonna stop us, you know?
And we built a city on rock and roll. That's stupid.
What city? There's no city built? Rock and roll is
too new? What are you talking? London has been around forever.

(01:18:12):
San Francisco is built on gold and shipping. L A's
built on oranges and oil and the movie. And what
city are you talking? What are you built a city?
Everybody thought we were talking about San Francisco. No, it
was written by Bernie Tappin, and Bernie was talking about
the clubs closing in l A. What are you talking?

(01:18:33):
Do you supply and demand? This country operates on If
people want clubs, they will get clubs. The police can
close up stuff for a short period of time, but
you can bet the heavenly city planning fathers want money,
and you keep those clubs open, they'll open again. Don't

(01:18:55):
worry about it now. Bernie Toppin is an amazing songwriter,
but we all have our missus. Even though it went
to number one, I call it a miss because there's
a stupid song. Rolling Stone said it was stupid. I
agree with him, stupid. How how do you decide to retire?

(01:19:17):
I'm imitating myself and that's that's not very artistic. And
I'm almost fifty. That's enough because if you continue to
do rock and roll after your fifty, it's kind of
silly because rock and roll is a young person's medium
that's storming the sit at all, you know, and when

(01:19:37):
you're fifty, you ought to be able to You ought
to be around trying to figure out how to keep
the citadel from being hideous, or you ought to try
to figure out how to organize the kids who want
to storm, you know, be a producer something. But leaping
around on a stage after your fifty, for me, is

(01:19:58):
just not cool. What do you've think about everybody who's
doing it? Then they're comfortable with it, so but you
don't judge them. No, they can Everybody can do whatever
they want except kill people. That's the only thing you
can't do in rock and roll. So what are you
most proud of in your music career? Persistence? Persistence? I
was talking about specific not characteristics of your identity. There

(01:20:22):
aren't specifics because there are parts of a number of
different songs that I like, but not an entire thing.
Like I said, White Rabbit, it's very lucrative for me,
but it's not written well because I was aiming it
at the parents, and you don't get that when you
hear it. So the lyric is not as good as

(01:20:43):
it could be. Uh there. I like parts of of
Eskim a Blue Day, but it's too long and it's
not as understandable as it could be lyrically music, so
I like some songs from a solo album called Dreams,

(01:21:05):
not Airplane, not Starship. So there are chunks of stuff
that I like, but I haven't written anything that is
good from beginning to end lyrically and musically, I don't think.
Do you still listen to your own work? Do you
listen to the music at all? Yes? What's currently on

(01:21:26):
my thing is Peter Gabriel's Melted Face album right now
is on my That's the best one he ever did,
the third Mercury record. So who is the love of
your life? Skip Johnson? So why did you get divorced?
Because both of us wouldn't stop working. In other words,
he has his stuff production, managing, and I had my stuff,

(01:21:49):
which was rock and roll singer and uh, we're booked
in different states most of the time, so it was stupid.
And our accountant called up and saying, you know, you guys,
really this is dumb. So we finally got a divorce.
But he comes out here since the fire, he's come
out here maybe two weeks. Then he'll go back for

(01:22:11):
a month to New Hope, Pennsylvania, which is where he lives,
and then he comes out here for two weeks and
he works like a maniac around here, fixing stone. Has
he ever found a new love. Yeah, he's got a
girl lives with him there. Okay, And uh so in
terms of your so, how did you get into the painting.

(01:22:35):
I did that before music. I would draw an angel
and my parents would make a Christmas card out of it.
You know, so I did that before music. So you
started doing that after you retired. Yeah, And what point
did you say, Okay, I want to show this work
and I want to sell this work. I didn't. My
accountant knows this agent who also has done handled some

(01:23:01):
of Jerry Garcia's work and some of John Lennon's lithographs.
He's not an international agent or anything. So I started
working with him do gallery shows, and I did really
well in New Jersey and Denver and Sacelito for some reason,
but not in San Francisco. And so at this point,

(01:23:22):
you're you're still painting whole frequently every day, every day,
And is that stuff still shown up for sale? Yeah,
there's going to be a show in September. I don't know,
thee September something at a rock and roll kind of
art stuff. Because, um, the brain, artistic people can usually

(01:23:49):
go from genre to genre because all the same part
of the brain. A lot of musicians paint. Marty painted,
uh only Stone, Ronnie Wood. He was handled by some
of the same galleries. Uh, Jerry Garcia. Uh, you know,
I can David Bowie. That happens a lot. So, um,

(01:24:13):
there's a gallery down here that handles rock crossover. So
how do you feel about your artistic work? Are you
satisfied with your career? Yeah? I am, because I enjoyed it.
I had a lot of fun, which I include in

(01:24:34):
the enjoyment, in the satisfaction. Uh. If you're if it's
a drudge, then you're doing something wrong. Pick something you like,
two things, you like it, you're good at it, do
that and any regrets only that I never nailed, Jimmy

(01:24:55):
Hendrix and Peter O'Toole never learned how to write a horse.
I've never been to the Middle East, and I can't
do any of those things now, so too bad. What
do you think you know, when you're old, you don't
regret what you did. You regret what you didn't do.
That's really kind of what I was asking. So I

(01:25:16):
certainly answered that, what do you think about the state
of our country? Well, it's sad, uh, But what's really sad?
It wasn't not. Donald Trump's a jerk. That that's obvious.
But he's not the problem. The problem is when you
realize how many people voted for him, and you go,
holy moly, we are in deep doo doo that many

(01:25:38):
people are thinking that way. That's trouble. So that's what's scary.
He's not scary, he's just a clown, But that many
people voting for him, that's scary. Now, we used to
believe in the sixties and early seventies music could change
the world, and certainly you and the Jefferson Airplane push

(01:26:00):
that envelope. Do you think he made a difference. I
think so. It's it's incremental and it's a spot. It's
like the fire in Malibu, the spot fires that jumps
over here. And this is good, But do you think
without the sixties push we could have had Barack Obama?
And we're lucky to have him. He's probably the most elegant,

(01:26:23):
well behaved he and his wife president like ever in
my life. Especially good for being born in Africa. Yeah,
especially her being from Kenya exactly. But he was just wonderful.
It was so watching him, uh speak, you know, he

(01:26:45):
knows how to do he knew how to do that.
Trump does not to do that. He's a mess. And
let me try to figure out how to say this. Uh,
it's a hideous job, by the way, right, Okay, I
don't know why. You know, you grew up. I remember
going to elementary school and they said anybody could be

(01:27:05):
president in America who wanted to It's like the CEO
of the country. That's just crazy. Yeah, that is just no, no, no.
And so you obviously mean you're your a unique character,
that's for sure. And they broke the mold when they
made you. Were you a fan of music in your era? No,

(01:27:27):
I didn't like Elvis Presley because I went over my
boyfriend at the time Joe McCarthy, his sister said, you
gotta come home, you gotta hear this guy. It was
a forty five black and blue with a picture of
a guy going like just on it with yeah, that's
a raised lift for those about a ton of vastline

(01:27:50):
near something in his hair. And I said, oh, that's gross.
You ain't nothing but a hound, I said, the stupidest song.
I was listening to Edward Greek pier against Suite. I
was listening to Rochmaninoff. I was, but if you're who
were your favorites? May era? Okay? The when the Beatles

(01:28:11):
first came out somebody, so you gotta come ome and
see the Beatles where there're guys who were twenty five.
They're all dressed alike. I want to hold Jim Han.
I don't know. Uh, But then I saw the Rolling Stones.
That that's rock and roll. That's funny because back in
that people don't realize there was a big war, either
Beatles fan or Stones. Yeah. I was rolling Stones. But

(01:28:33):
then the Beatles flipped over from uh being cutesie and
that was their manager's fault. They weren't cutie before that.
They were tough boys in Germany that you know with
the black leather jack is every what's his name? Whoever
their manager was, Brian Epstein changed that thing? Oh where

(01:28:54):
all those little suits? I'm sorry, they're too old to
be that cute. So I didn't like that. But they
change because they're not stupid, and they started really writing
some good stuff. So I'm both the Beatles and Stones
fan after a while. Okay, and you say you're difficult,

(01:29:16):
if I haven't heard that in this conversation, give me
a couple of examples where you're difficult. Okay, let me
use the words my mother used to use when she
was annoyed. Do you have to be so terse? Do
you have to be so curt with people? So on
terse and Curt? And I told her, well the terse

(01:29:37):
and Kurt is like, I don't like to waste time
that this. If you're just straight, shoot right into whatever
the heart of the problem, I said. I don't want
any frills. I don't even wear jewelry. I wear a watch,
that's it. I don't like frills. I don't like lacey things.
That's not my thing. My daughter's lacy and has birds

(01:29:58):
on her dresses and stuff that's because that's she's comfortable
that way. I'm not so uh Terse and Kurt is
part of the deal. So it doesn't sound like you
suffer fools. Well, I don't know about that phrase, but
I'll just go for the jugular and you have legs.

(01:30:20):
If you don't like it, it's very easy for you
to move. And so with hindsight, do you wish you
handled some interactions in a different way. Let's see whatever.
I would have paid a little more attention to the
business end, the music business because it's called the music
business for a reason, So I would have paid a

(01:30:42):
little more attention to the business end. Okay, this has
been wonderful. We certainly got insight into who you are,
which is the number one vision I have with this podcast.
So you're listening to Grace Slick. Grace, thanks so much
for doing this. Well, thank you for pulling it out.
Until next time, This is Bob left Sense