Record Collector

Excerpts from the Febuary Issue of the british magazine Record Collector

RECORD COLLECTOR:You don't seem to be the kind of person who would write an autobiography, but the book reads like you thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

GRACE SLICK: I enjoyed it when I got going, but the idea in the beginning didn't interest me at all. A friend made me talk to an agent friend, who talked to me for seven hours. After that, I gave in! I started off with a co-writer, but I didn't like the way it sounded, because she's a very nice person; she's not sarcastic and it just sounded like somebody else. I said, this isn't gonna work, I'm gonna have to write it. People who know me say they can hear me all the way through.

RC: Do you feel uncomfortable as a 60s legend?

GS: No, 'cos that's how they see it. What they see is a persona that they've developed in their head. That's fine 'cos that's not who I am anyway. I don't even know who I am, so how's anybody else to know.

RC: Do you still have a piano?

GS: Oh yeah. A woman taught me block chords when I was about 14 or 15. It's very fast and really good for writing songs. Now I would love to work with a guy called James Horner. He did Titanic, but Zorro is the one I really like. Jesus, is he good. And the only places you can hear new music with a full orchestra is on movie soundtracks.

RC: If someone like Horner asked you to collaborate would you consider that?

GS: I can't because the way I write is for a voice and in song form. Horner writes big instrumentals and I haven't got a clue how to do that. But I'd sure love to sit in on a recording session where he's working.

RC: How are your ears?

GS: I haven't had them checked for 20 years. I hear funny. What I hear is usually funnier that what's been said so I don't wanna have my ears checked! Why mess with humour?

RC: Has that ability to see the funny side helped keep you going?

GS: Oh God, yes. Without that people are really doomed.

RC: Do you have a different public and private persona?

GS: No. American entertainers are less vaudevillian; I think we're pretty much who we are on stage as well as in person. The British guys had more sense of entertainment. Jimi Hendrix had the two of them going on. Hendrix, more than anyone, represents the 60s - the way he looked, his life, his race, his music, his lyrics, the fact that he was bicontinental. His `Star-Spangled Banner` was beautiful. He played it so well that he might as well have been using words, but we knew exactly what he was saying.

Why do you like outraging people?

GS: I guess I must have once said or done something and loved the reaction. I love watching people getting pushed out of shape over something that affects nothing. People are getting crazy over Clinton. WHO CARES! It doesn't have anything to do with anything. It's just entertaining. I love to watch people pushing these things right out of proportion. It's a sick thing.

Aren't you vegetarian now?

GS: I'm not only vegetarian, I'm vegan. No dairy, no nothing, and that's for both human and animal health. I don't push that off on anybody- if they wanna die of clotted heart arteries, fine, go ahead. We got too many people in the world anyway.

Wasn't Jefferson Airplane really three bands in one?

GS: That's what I liked about it, but unfortunately that's what everybody else didn't like. Jack and Jorma wanted to do blues, wanted to play more and get down home. Paul wanted to go to the moon and revolution. Marty wanted to sing love songs, and I wanted to sing dark, spooky stuff that was semi-classically oriented. I didn't have a problem with that. That's the way I thought Airplane was, this big table full of different kinds of food you could graze through. Then what happens with people is that, `Oh, my stuff is better so there oughta be more of my stuff`. I don't have a problem with sharing.

Is there a complete Jefferson Airplane album?

GS: Probably Surrealistic Pillow because we practised so much that we played well on it. But there are individual songs. I love `Embryonic Journey` by Jorma. I like some of Paul's anthems, especially on Blows Against The Empire. Casady didn't write, but I love his bass-playing; that's one of the reasons I joined the group. Marty's `Today`, Marty's `Comin' Back To Me`. Portions of `Miracles`.

RC: One area of vulnerability in your life seems to concern men.

GS: Oh yeah, I can go in there and get totally involved. There was an article in a newspaper that I was reading about men having women as friends, not lovers, and it said, you always know when they've got a lover because you donÕt hear from them anymore. I fall in love and I just go all the way into it, same as I do with art. I'll sit here and draw and I won't stop until my nose runs. I'm obsessive about almost anything that I do. So if I get into a man it's like getting into a new art; I'm just totally into that. And there's a lot of blindness in it. You get kinda crazy.

RC: But anything less is . . .

GS: Yeah, I don't see the point. I'd make a much better mistress than a wife. I'd love to see a guy maybe once a week, overnight, and you'd do it perfectly - you'd look good, you'd smell good, the food is perfect, you rub his back, you do all this stuff, 24 hours of perfection - and then go home and fart! But for that one night, it will be fabulous.

Thanks very much to Mark Payress for these excerpts and outcuts. Now, you can buy Febuary's issue of Record Collector magazine to read the whole thing.