The Summer of Love was in many ways the point at which the '60s afterburner kicked in. The idealism, the questioning of authority, the drugs, the free love, the psychedelic rock'n'roll, the women of strength and equality -- those elements still lend a mythic status to the decade almost a quarter of a century later -- came to full flower in San Francisco in 1967.

Not coincidentally, The Jefferson Airplane took off about the same time, in the same place. Grace Slick, one of the newest members of the band at the time, became the engine that made it fly. Her tight, powerful vibrato became the group's stamp of authenticity. And one of Slick's own compositions, "White Rabbit," with its Alice-In-Wonderland-inspired lyrics, became one of the band's best-known songs.

Grace was the right woman at the right time with the right talents. Imagination was her guiding star; her path was the realm of sensation. She loved to be outrageous, and her position in th elimelight gave her ample opportunity to indulge. Slick became the bitch-goddess, the "acid queen."

But after twenty years of exploration with The Jefferson Airplane and its subsequent incarnation, The Jefferson Starship, Grace Slick is giving music a rest. She is currently devoting herself to community activities ranging from animal rights activism to AIDS work. She and her husband live in Marin County, California.

MB: What made you decide to stop performing music?

GS: The form doesn't appeal to me very much anymore and hasn't for about eight years. The music industry is a business based on money. Record companies are not artists; they're business people. Part of it's kind of fun; it's like playing a game. But once you start playing a game with the art itself, it gets kind of stifling.

The last record I made, everything felt wrong, but I kept doing it anyway because I'm so used to operating from the mind. But there were so many things that were out of synch, especially regarding questions like, "Who are we?" and "Why are we getting together?" and "Is it an honest remark from all of us to be together at this time?" When musicians are in synch, you'll hear it in the music. I can't even tell you why, but you just will. And if they aren't -- even if the music if fine, everybody is playing

MB: Your community activism seems to relect a personal concern for the Earth and its creatures. How do you view these troubled times?

GS: Well, there is a shift that's happening rather rapidly, and I think you can probably view it from any angle. If you're an atheist, you can say it is nature's way of letting us know that we have to change our act. If you belong to a dogmatic religion, you could say it is God punishing us. And if you belong to a spiritual organization, you could say that it is simply an opportunity for growth. Any way you look at it, it's happening. You can feel it and see it all around. People are being asked from wha

You know, if you involve yourself in any of the helping professions, you learn about yourself. I think primarily what we're doing here is being caretakers -- caretakers of ourselves and of everything else. It's because we have been users for so long that the planet is in the condition it's in.

The vertical structure of various religions -- and I don't mean spirituality; I'm talking about religion -- puts God on top as a sort of policeman to us who gets to fuck us over. Then, we are next, underneath God, and we get to fuck everything else over. That seems to be collapsing into a more horizontal thing where you don't look up to God to pray. God's not somewhere else. God -- if you choose to acknowledge that word, or that idea -- is within and all around. It's right here. It's everywhere.

I think when people seek spiritual experiences, they are looking for something on the order of what they were taught when they were little, though they may not admit that. They want to see something that's just totally out of context with nature. But I think miracles happen totally within context with nature.

I was leaning out of my window and feeding some cookies to these raccoons that visit my back yard. They'll come over and rub their little hands together and stand up on their hind legs if they want a cookie. One raccoon reached for a cookie while I still held it and, during that second of exchange, the image of the Sistine Chapel came into my mind, where God is touching the hand of Adam. I got this tremendous feeling and wondered who was the giver and who was the receiver here. I think that's erroneous.

MB: In the '60s your music was a statement of hope for the unity of mankind. But when that became bogged down in bureaucracy, or just didn't seem appropriate any more, you moved on to something else. But you're still putting out that message of hope -- "Hey you guys, let's get together. We're the answer, you know. Let's be it."

GS: Well, we had the feeling, twenty years ago, that if you told everybody how it was, they would say, "Oh, yeah, you're probably right." But basically the only person you can change is yourself. And then, oddly enough, what happens is that when you start changing, other people start changing around you. It's like when you throw a rock into a pool; concentric circles go out from it.

The '90s are picking up where 1970 left off. There are some people who have continually worked for change and were not floored by the fact that it didn't happen in five minutes. But some of us were so perturbed by it not happening quickly that we went to whatever peace we could find -- you know, in a needle or a bottle or a monastery or whatever. The monastery is probably healthier than the bottle, but who knows?

MB: In your years in the limelight, you certainly had a reputation for exploring the edge of excess. Was it hard to let go of that?

GS: I'm so stubborn. I have to walk into walls before I learn anything. You know, it took me four years to get sober. Most people say, "Gee, there's something wrong with my drinking," and they call AA or something. Not me; it had to be the highway patrol, because I'm so stubborn. And then after that I'd not drink for six months and then I'd go out and get drunk one night and all hell would break loose. For four years I tried giving up alcohol about five times, and it simply didn't work. But it took me fo

That's why most marriages fail. Everybody thinks it ought to be fun all the time, and if it isn't, people freak out. I know I have reacted that way myself. If it isn't fun and if the guy isn't just creaming in his pants over me, I guess something's wrong and I'd better leave. It never occurred to me that you had to work on a relationship. I always thought either it's fun or you get the hell out.

MB: That sexual insecurity you hinted at becomes even stronger as the aging process distances us from the popular image of what is sexually desirable.

GS: There is a certain amount of grief in the passing of the process of giving love that is physical. I don't mean that you have to stop doing that. I just mean that for a period of time the giving and receiving of love in a physical dance, where it's an animal attraction, is the predominant way. We dress for each other, we say certain things; the whole thing is based around the interaction and sexual attraction or lack thereof. But when that becomes not as interesting, or when the form in which you give

Some people can move successfully or peacefully from one segment to the next. More commonly though, there's a grieving for the losses involved. But you are simply moving into another stage -- like some animals moving out of their shells or termites dropping their wings. At each new segment of these things, you make decisions about that you're going to do with that particular part of the illusion.

MB: You've moved into another stage in working with animals. Do you think you've been able to convey to your daughter, China, the magic of feeding cookies to the raccoons?

GS: China doesn't have a big thing about animals. She's probably more interested than she was before I started it, but each person has their time schedule for when they become truly interested in something. You can't force somebody to be interested in history, or in politics, until they are at the point where that's what they're going to do.

I didn't have a big thing about animals until about six years ago. Because it was simply not my time to investigate that particular area of life. It just didn't mean anything to me. It was like the Taj Mahal; I know it's there, but how often do I think about it? Animals were around, but I just didn't think about them except to ask, "Is it well done or is it rare?"

But animals are my teachers for the moment. I've had other teachers, you know. Terrible experiences are good teachers. Terrible human beings are good teachers. Good human beings are good teachers. All we are doing here anyway is learning. So you may as well enjoy the classroom.

And China will either die never havng been interested in animals or she may get interested. But it's sort of irrelevant, because it's her life.

China has always been easy for me to talk to and get along with and hang out with. A psychic told me that my daughter and I were very old souls and that we'd been together in all kinds of permutations. I'm assuming that most of our stuff has pretty much been cleared up, because it's just so easy to talk to her and to be her mother and friend.

MB: Do you feel that same way about your husband?

GS: Yes, but I'm not as close to him or as easy with him. We still have stuff to work out. But sex tends to distort or amplify feelings of insecurity in most human beings. If China says for five nights in a row that she's going out, that's fine. But if a man I'm living with goes out five nights in a row, I think, "Oh my God, he doesn't like me; I'm getting boring; something must be wrong; maybe he's balling somebody else." You know, with the male-female thing, it just gets really weird.

So sex somehow punches buttons, which is again another opportunity to learn. When you're miserable you don't think of it as an opportunity. You think, "This is the pits." But if you hate something in somebody else, it is because it is an aspect of yourself that you have not forgiven within yourself. I was hassling China about money the other day. Two or three hours later I realized the reason that is such a strong issue with me is that right now I don't know how to handle money at all, at least in the se

The Shinto religion has a mirror as part of its altar. If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, you work on it. If you like what you see and it's absolutely perfect, you're probably enlightened.

MB: To me what you've just said in a way encapsulates the pathway to enlightenment. Do you think you would have come to that pathway regardless of the particulars of your life?

GS: Oh, sure. Everybody does sooner or later. I mean, that's what everybody is doing. There are some very new souls and some very old souls. Every soul gets a set of parents. One kid is just like this old guru hanging out and the other kid's like a Neanderthal. And you think, "God, these are my kids. What the hell is going on here?" You think they're yours so you get angry at the one who is Neanderthal and pat the other one on the head. Or vice versa; maybe you're a football coach and you love the Neande

MB: You seem like you're content and you're serene with what's happening, that you're involved in the process of discovery. For the most part, Grace, would you say that that's the case?

GS: Yeah. I mean, I've still got a whole lot of stuff to work on. But I guess even being able to see that is a step forward. I tend to view other viewpoints as dogma, for instance, but I'm working on that It's not so much arrogance as it is just that I am so focused that other things get excluded.

MB: Can you see your focus shifting back to music in the future?

GS: I'm not really clear about that myself. The choices seem to be clear when they need to be made. I think it was Ram Dass who says he gets a lot of mail asking for money. Every day I get at least 15 different pieces of mail saying, "We need." Hospitals, mental health agencies, animal groups -- whatever. And since you can't feed all of them, you have to make some choice on some level. I don't make those kinds of decisions from the mind anymore. I try to make them based on how it feels to me.

And it's the same thing with the music business; I have to look at it and make a choice from some level that's more from the heart than from the mind.

For quite some time I wasn't aware of these two parts of myself; I was only aware of the one -- what my mind says ought to happen. (Now I'm aware that there are many more than two.) The mind is the same organ that tells you "Let's have a piece of cake," and five minutes after you've eaten it, it say, "Why did you have that, you fat slob?" So if you trust your mind, you're probably going to run into a wall. But if you trust only your heart, you're also going to run into a wall, because the heart will give

I have no idea what the future holds for me. In six months it may occur to me to go to India and become an English teacher.

MB: It sounds to me like you're open to the flow.

GS: I wouldn't say "open to the flow" because it's been said so much. But it is a matter of opening on a routine basis, rather than feeling open once a year and maybe doing something unusual then. I'm opening to the fact that today it's probably going to rain and there's not much wind, so that's good; the raccoons don't like wind. If it's nice weather, it's a zoo out there. It looks like some kind of party; they're out there eating and chatting and barking and screwing. But if it's bad weather they go to

(Unfortunately, the copy of the interview I was sent got cut at this point. If anyone has the full interview, I'd be interested in hearing from you.)

Last Updated: 11 October 2000