Buffalo News

Fall From Grace

Grace Slick is no longer living the wild rock 'n' roll life.  But her eccentricities - and her philosophy - have survived intact.

This is all about Grace Slick, the first lady of rock, but let's start with rock's lady of the moment, Madonna.  Why not?  She's everywhere else.  This is not to put Madonna down.  Slick likes Madonna.  "That flagrant look in her
eye, that 'I'm doing this and I'm running thing's look, I like that." Slick says of the Material Girl.  But how different they are!  Grace is what rock was; Madonna is what rock has become.

Every move Madonna makes on stage or in her videos is calculated, choreographed to create an effect.  That's fine; that's what entertainers do.  And that's why my Vegas-loving mother-in-law digs Madonna.  She's into Wayne
Newton, too.

My mother-in-law never got Grace Slick.  Paul Kantner knows why.  Here's Kantner - Slick's partner int he Jefferson Airplane and in the birth of her daughter, China, her friend and foe in a nasty legal suit and now friend again - describing Slick on stage.
 
"A startling presence, both vocally and visually." Kantner said.  "Off the cuff, like the whole '60's were off the cuff.  An Oscar Wilde in drag who combined insight and sarcasm that was sometimes light, sometimes dark.  A
provocateur.  I remember one night in Germany she spotted a guy picking his nose and she jumped on the guys lap and picked his nose.  Half odf the audience was grossed out, the other half thought it was great.  Hey, half
isn't bad!"

I haven't asked, but I doubt my mother-in-law goes to Vegas to get her nose picked.  I doubt Wayne has ever done it, and I don't think Madonna is planning to work it into her act.  That's the difference between Madonna and
Slick.  Madonna is always in control.  Grace Slick was a continuing story that was written as you watched.

"I didn't plan Grace Slick." she said.  "I just fell into a real good deal. I had a real strong personality, and boom."  Slick is 51 these days and has the bags and wrinkles that go with it.  She refused to have her picture taken
for this story, because "nobody over 50 should ever be photographed."  She thinks that you can't be sexy over 50.  "You can parade around and look like Joan Collins and everybody says 'Isn't she well preserved?'  But nobody
wants...that, it's too old."

When she was 6 or 7, little Grace Wing went to see a Betty Grable movie and realized Grable represented "the truth about what women are supposed to be. Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Farrah Fawcett, Madonna, they're all the same kind of thing."  The archetype presented no problem for little Grace.  She was blond and assumed she would grow up to look like her mother, "who was a beautiful blond with wide cheekbones, big boobs and long legs."

Of course, she grew up to be a brunette with short legs who was so clumsy, she clutched the microphone and never moved much on stage because she was afraid she would fall.  She was once a model at Neiman-Marcus and had a flair
for innovative clothes - "I once wore two towels pinned at the shoulders and sides on stage because I liked the way they fell" - but Slick had a lot of "fear muck" ( a key Slick concept) about her looks.

"My fear muck is, women are supposed to look like Marilyn Monroe and I don't, so I developed this mouth," Slick said.  "I read lots of books, so when pretty girls come into the room I could say something that would make them
look stupid in front of the guys, which I've done."

How did Slick escape the fear muck swamp?  "Age got me through it.  Being who I am, an eccentric, that's fine." she said, lighting another cigarette.

Slick is an animal rights activist who is nutso about pandas.  One side of her house is full of stuffed pandas, many sent by fans from around the world, many bought by Slick herself because if she sees a panda in a store and
doesn't buy it, " I feel guilty, as if something terrible will happen to it. This is not a clear thinking individual here."

She does not eat meat, consumes no fish or dairy products and does not wear leather, yet she smokes.  A lot.  "I've cut out all the other bad stuff.  I deserve to have a few vices," she said.  "I can imagine myself without everything except cigarettes and a car."

As you can see, Slick is handling aging with the mix of honesty, humor,  vulgarity and inconsistency that is her trademark.  Actually, she tries not to spend too much time thinking about the ways of all flesh, which is by far
the best way to deal with aging.

"I have a friend who just turned 57, and she's miserable." Slick said.  "She told me, 'I look so old and I'm getting so ugly.'  I said: 'That's true, you are.  But here's the thing: If you'd get something to do besides thinking
about yourself all the time, then you'd only spend 5 percent of the day looking in the mirror and going 'Blah!' instead of 50 percent."

Slick is very busy these days, although she performs only sporadically and doesn't even listen to music very much.  Paul Kantner is determined to change that.  "I'll get her back.  I'm working on a project with six women singers,
it's kind of outer folk.  Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers is part of it, and I'm trying to talk Grace into joining.  I'll get her."  As of late August, Grace has indeed recorded two songs for this project and will also sing with him on his upcoming solo album.

There is nothing rock 'n' roll about Slick's home high on a hill in Mill Valley - no awards or pictures of Grace on stage, no outer-space stereo system, no exotic Italian furniture.  Slick lives with Skip Johnson, her husband of 15 years, who is famous in the rock 'n' roll world as a lighting director - he has worked for the Doors, the Who, Rod Stewart - and is now production manager for Prince.  Except for the pandas and Johnson's collection of plates depicting sailing ships, the home is standard-issue upper middle-class California suburban with a slightly funky feel.

"I don't have a whole lot of stuff," Slick said, surveying her living room. "If I did, I'd have to take care of it, and I'm lazy."

Slick's family had a whole lot of stuff.  Her father was a successful investment banker, a solid Republican.  She grew up in Palo Alto, California, in a home where everything was carefully selected and perfectly arranged.

Slick went to Finch, a finishing school in New York where young ladies learned to pour tea, not because she was trying to be her parents' daughter, but because "I wanted to go to New York and hang out.  I couldn't say, 'Dad,
can I have 20 grand to go to New York?'  Saying I was going to college was a good way to do it."

Slick was looking for something.  What it was, she did not have a name for. "It was the big city, artists, scenes, the opposite of Palo Alto," she said. After spending a year at Finch, she went to the University of Miami, and it was there that she first discovered what she was looking for.

"I was dating a football player with a room temperature IQ, and I was in a record store when I came across an album with a picture of a guy having a picnic in a graveyard." Slick recalled.  "The album was 'The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce."  "I went: 'Yes! This is it!' 'cause I'd always thought burying people was grotesque.  I bought it and went home and listened and it was, 'Oh, yes!"'

From Lenny Bruce, Slick learned that nothing was funnier than the truth, a fact that she thanked him for in "Father Bruce," a song she recorded with Great Society, the predecessor of Jefferson Airplane.  She was still seeking
that intensity and honesty when she returned to the Bay area and got a job modeling at Neiman-Marcus.

Rock 'n'; roll didn't interest her much.  "This was the early to mid-'60's, what was on the air was Frankie Avalon and Fabian and we thought they were hysterical."  But the great explosion in popular music that blew away Frankie
and Fabian was about to take place in cities as far apart as Liverpool and San Francisco.  Grace was doing a little singing, but it was nothing serious.  And she wasn't serious about a career in music when she joined the band that
became Jefferson Airplane.

"I did it because it was fun," Slick said.  "You got to take drugs and drink and go to parties and wear funny outfits and get paid for it.  I thought, 'Yes!' "

Slick was one of the most distinctive voices in rock, but she says that it isn't a great voice.  "It's a very limited instrument.  I've got four keys instead of 40.  But it's a good voice for rock 'n' roll because it's powerful, loud and clear."

It wasn't just her voice, of course.  Slick and Janis Joplin are polar opposites as singers. Janis was the great romantic, pouring her heart into a microphone.  Slick was more of a classicist, working within a structured
framework, playing the listeners' minds more than their hearts.  But Grace and Janis are wonderful for the same reason: They sang with absolute conviction.

"What else could I sing about except what I was thinking?" Slick asked.  "Who else could I be but myself?  Besides, lying is too much work.

Because of Slick's gift for pithy quotes - "We are your parents' worst nightmare" sums  up so much of the appeal of rock 'n' roll during the '60's youth rebellion - she emerged as something of a spokeswoman for the counterculture.  You would think she would have emerged as a leader of the women's movement when it became one of the most powerful forces shaping American society in the late '60's and early '70's, but that never happened. The leaders of the women's liberation movement were serious.  Slick never took herself seriously.

 "How can you take yourself seriously when you've got short legs?" she asked.  "You look in the mirror and go 'Oh man, give me a break.  I look like a chicken!'  You can't look like a chicken and take yourself seriously."