GRACE SLICK
with
NEVA
CHONIN
September
1998
UNCUT
In a jeep parked outside an Italian
restaurant in Malibu, Grace Slick, in black from her eyeliner to
her platform sandals, is chain-smoking and pondering the cosmos.
`Charles Manson has almost the same birth sign as me. He has
about five signs in Scorpio and I have about four,'' she says,
flicking a quivering ash out the window. ``So I'm real close to
being Charles. Except I can't think of anybody I care enough
about to kill. I'd rather keep them alive and torture them. Call
them every morning at 4 a.m. for the rest of their lives.''
``L.A. is full of freaks,'' she concludes. Grinding her cigarette
into the ashtray, she unsnaps her seat belt. ``Let's eat.''
Slick, 58, has never qualified as a freak herself (though she
would probably contest that), but her life has often resembled a
sideshow populated by geniuses, aristocrats, psychopaths, drug
addicts, gurus, artists, rock stars, radicals and any number of
edgy outsiders.
As singer for the Jefferson Airplane, Slick spearheaded a
psychedelic scene that grew from a San Francisco phenomenon into
an international movement. She took Abbie Hoffman as her date to
a White House tea and plotted to dose Richard Nixon with LSD.
Then she became one of the few '60s stars to weather the
dissolute '70s by helping transform Jefferson Airplane into the
sleeker (and more banal) Jefferson Starship.
Most remarkable of all, she's lived to tell the story in a casual
and often hilarious autobiography, ``Somebody to Love?,''
published this month by Warner Books. Written with Slick's friend
Andrea Cagan, the book is a conversational, languidly outrageous
document of one of the best and worst times in American history.
It's also a compendium of backstage gossip and loopy psychedelic
philosophy. Slick will say anything, and does.
She admits, though, that the whole literary venture wasn't her
idea. ``I didn't want to write a book. They made me do it,'' she
says. ``About two years ago my lawyer told me, `You ought to be
doing something.' I said, `I am doing something. I'm drawing and
painting.' He said, `You ought to write a book.' I said, `I don't
want to write a book.' But he gave me the name of an agent friend
of his anyway. She talked my ear off for nine hours about how
fabulous it would be. So I finally gave in.''
In person, the singer amiably holds court on anything from the
Spice Girls (``I'm waiting for Porno Spice; they can just use
Monica Lewinsky'') to neighborhood architecture (``Look at that
house. I hate that house. I'd like to blow it up. I'd like to
spray paint it with graffiti'').
Her striking and still beautiful face offers a study in
animation: The famous cobalt eyes jump from a squint to a glare
when emphasizing a point; the deeply tanned and remarkably
unlined face moves with elastic expression as its owner bellows,
whispers and laughs. In sum, Slick is as comfortable in her body
as any middle-aged L.A. celebrity without a face-lift can be.
After an evening spent discussing decomposition and leprosy over
plates of cannelloni, Slick navigates back to her home in the
Malibu hills. The house is as idiosyncratic as Slick herself,
with architecture landing somewhere between Spanish and
Greco-Californian and decor that gives new meaning to the term
``Animal House.''
Stuffed toys line the floor and cover every flat surface: Perky
toy raccoons perch atop the wide-screen TVs; bunnies, rats and
moles wearing shoes and jackets cavort along a stucco mantel;
muskrats and pigs nestle in the comfortable neo-Renaissance
furniture. A giant panda sits at the head of the dining-room
table, facing a picture window with a panoramic ocean view. \par
In the bedroom, Slick's drawings share wall space with pictures
of white rats in pink dresses. In the elegantly functional
kitchen, the refrigerator boasts photos of possums and a
newspaper clipping that warns, ``Age spots on your skin signal
that a brown slime is forming on your brain.'' In the midst of
all the fluff, the revolver on the coffee table sticks out like .
. . well, like a revolver on a coffee table. ``It was just
getting too cute in here,'' Slick explains breezily. ``I thought
a gun would balance things out a little.''
Using a gun to balance things out has landed Slick in trouble
more than once. The most famous incident, in 1994, involved
waving a shotgun at police who appeared at the door of her
Tiburon home with her delirious, handcuffed boyfriend, Ira Lee,
who was screaming for them to shoot him. ``They said, `Put
the shotgun down, Grace.' I told them, `Not until I know what's
going on.' So one of them did a body roll and knocked me down. It
was a good move.''
Was she drunk when all this happened?
Slick chuckles. ``Of course.''
Though the singer has delved into every controlled substance in
the book except heroin (``too much work''), liquor has been her
greatest pleasure and worst handicap.
``I can't drink anymore because I'm so bad at it,'' she admits.
``If I had continued I'd be dead by now. There isn't any other
drug that can turn you into an ass in just three hours. I love
it. It's fabulous. But I just can't do it.''
In 1994, after several more alcohol-related incidents and the
surreal experience of watching her Marin County house burn to the
ground, ignited by sparks from county workers welding a ``Danger:
Fire Area'' sign, Slick decided to leave the Bay Area. She took
her money from her settlement with the county, dumped her
boyfriend, divorced her husband and moved to Los Angeles, where
her daughter, China Kantner, now nearly 28, was working as an
actress.
Now clean and sober, Slick fesses up to retaining only one
addiction. ``I smoke every minute that I'm awake and have since I
was 15,'' she says, glaring at the cigarette in her hand. ``It's
so stupid; it doesn't even get me high. Which is just as well, I
suppose. My mind's been altered enough.'' \par Ironically, some
of the most entertaining passages in ``Somebody to Love?'' have
nothing to do with Slick's colorful chemical escapades, but her
early years as an upper-class, bra-stuffing Palo Alto teenager.
Her childhood, she writes, was blissfully free of ``parental
aberrations,'' which also meant it was a little dull for a girl
already simmering with latent rebellion. Life as a preppie
college student in Florida was only marginally better. It wasn't
until Slick stumbled across a copy of a Lenny Bruce record that
she began discovering the ``counter'' part of culture; when a
friend invited her back to San Francisco to witness the growing
hippie phenomenon in the early '60s, her destiny was sealed.
Slick's knockout looks and powerful vocals -- first heard in the
Great Society, then the Jefferson Airplane -- soon won her the
title of babe of the revolution. Not surprisingly, she had a bevy
of friends, fans and lovers, including two husbands (Skip
Johnson, to whom she remained married for 17 years, and her first
husband, Jerry Slick). And though her most famous partnering was
with fellow Airplane member Paul Kantner, it didn't match the
drama of life with the manic-depressive boyfriend who set her bed
on fire (1993), or the surreal passion of a one-nighter with Jim
Morrison during a Doors-Airplane tour.
Recalling the latter liaison, former Doors keyboardist Ray
Manzarek confesses, ``I was incredibly jealous because Grace was
so cute. Onstage she was an absolutely gorgeous siren with a
great body and a magic voice. Those piercing blue eyes were
mesmerizing. She was a powerful woman.''
Thirty years later, Slick is still a powerhouse but figures she's
earned a little peace and quiet. Her daily routine has been pared
down to drawing, making jewelry, hanging out by the pool with
friends and meditating. And though she looks to be in great
shape, she insists she never exercises. ``I'm basically made of
Jell-O. The only thing I do is jump up and down on a trampoline
to keep my metabolism up.
``I'm really enjoying living alone,'' she continues. ``I can do
what I want to do when I want to do it. I can fart in bed. No man
wants to fuck an old woman, so I'm celibate. If I were gay, life
would be a lot simpler. I'm kind of annoyed that I'm not.''
For all the mercurial ups and downs of her romantic
relationships, Slick remains close to most of her former lovers.
Ex-husband Skip Johnson recently spent a week with her in Malibu,
and she talks to Paul Kantner (father of her daughter, China),
several times a week.
Unlike many women in rock 'n' roll, Slick insists her sex has
never been an issue. She credits her parents for going out of
their way to raise her with a gender-free sense of power.
``Apart from lifting heavy furniture, it never occurred to me
that I couldn't do anything I wanted to,'' she says. ``It just
depended upon my own level of desire and talent. I stick to what
I'm good at, and it doesn't have anything to do with whether I'm
a woman or a man.''
She does admit that girls are better off now when it comes to
role models, however. ``Mick Jagger was my idol in the '60s
because there were no women rock singers to look up to back then.
These days I admire Courtney Love. With rock 'n' roll there's
always more going on than music -- it leans heavily on persona,
and she has a great persona.''
Nine years ago, after the Starship's breakup and a lackluster
solo career, Slick decided to retire from music. She was tired of
being a '60s icon, she says. ``People wanted to hear the songs
they knew, and I didn't want to do that. If I go onstage it's got
to be all new material. It's not interesting to me to repeat
myself, but it's not fair to the audience not to. Besides, I'd
feel stupid on a stage now. Rock 'n' roll is, and should be, a
young person's medium.''
But she looks so young: Has she had any plastic surgery?
Slick jumps forward and shoves her face to within inches of her
inquisitor. ``Take a look,'' she barks. ``You think my eyelids
would be resting on top of my eyelashes if I'd had any work
done?'' Then she relaxes. ``I'd love to have stuff done,
actually. I'd like to have liposuction. I'd like to have a whole
head transplant, and I'd do it in a New York second if they could
promise me there'd be no pain. I hate physical pain. I've become
a chicken in my old age.''
Retreating to an armchair by the window, she flops down and puts
her feet up. ``I've been fortunate in that I've really enjoyed my
life up to this point,'' she says. ``They say that when you grow
old it's not what you've done that you regret, but what you
didn't do.''
She smiles. ``And, of course, there's very little that I've said
no to.''