Today is Grace Slick's big birthday.

Singer Grace Slick then and now.

I wasn't completely up on all her doings when I was young. I just thought Grey Slick was yet another rock and roll band back then,

White Rabbit...…...

Grace's isolated vocal track on White Rabbit is pretty impressive.

Grace Slick was beautiful and had a beautiful powerful voice, but not much charisma when compared with Janis Joplin. Still, I think Surrealistic Pillow is one of the best albums of its era, although the Airplane's subsequent iterations never did much for me. Given her rock and roll lifestyle--including spiking the punch bowl with LSD during a Nixon White House affair with Tricia--her longevity and sobriety are amazing.

I liked everything they did up to Volunteers, After Bathing at Baxter's is one of my favorites, and I really like their Bless Its Pointed Little head live album. I love the creepiness of Bear Melt.

Grace Slick sang at Woodstock with the Jefferson Airplane.

Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock. They were one of the first acts to sing up for the legendary event.

To understand the difference between the 60s and the 80s, just listen to "Somebody to Love" and "We Built this City" side-by-side. Depressing, isn't it?

R1 That pic is a few years old. This is what she looks like now, the poor dear.

Yep they’re all getting ready to turn 80, the Beatles, Stones, Who, all of them. The Stones’ Bill Wyman is 83. Ringo Starr is 79. Yikes.

Haunting voice. She really slummed it in the 80's with Starship.

Does she have a biography? Would love to read it. Any reviews?

FUCK ME PINK!

FUCK ME PINK!

Happy Birthday from the cable guy.

I think she’s great. I just wish she didn’t believe that just because you’re older you should stop performing. I would love to see her and Starship get together one last time since I was too young to see them when they were originally together.

R13 Her memoir was published in 1998. It's called Somebody To Love - I have it and it's excellent!

R16 He did an excellent male impersonation of her voice. Over the top but very good.

In 1987 Grace did lead vocals on Starship's big #1 hit, Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. Great song!

Still has the long hair.

I love her voice and her 60s airplane music. Some of the starship songs are actually quite good. I dont know why they get such a bad rap.

She’s reappeared recently after falling off the radar for a few years. She had an art show here in WeHo last week. She also appeared on a podcast recently that was really, really good. I wasn’t terribly familiar with her life story and this podcast goes through her life and career chronologically. The interviewer is very good and Grace is totally open and sharp as a tack. I really enjoyed it.

She paints now. Here’s a recent painting.

Probably her best 80s hit:

I’ve always loved this song.

R25, NO! That song is on par with "We Built This City".

R27 BOTH are excellent songs and went to #1. You can't argue with success!

I love the painting at R24

❤️

I saw them in their Airplane days up in NYC. She was a great rock singer and very cool to this then 14 yr old

R30 Great article!

Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now is so catchy and fun. I dont get why Grace hates it so much. I tr s nowhere near as bad as We Built this City.

I think she runs down Starship to protect her legacy, to keep her cool cred and because maybe she's a bit ashamed of her commercial businesswoman instincts as the godmother of the 60s counter culture. She's interviewed mostly by straight music journalists who want her to hate Starship and those songs. At the time though she was clear with her producers that she wanted to make money above all else so she could retire and be comfortable. Her Airplane bandmate and father of her child, Paul Kanter, had money problems at the end of his life and was never able to retire. Grace has a great house in Malibu and no money worries so I don't think she should be ashamed of her 80s output but I can see why she feels she has to be.

I love the tales from her drunk days by the way. My favorite is that she was drunk and disorderly in a Toronto hotel and held 3 security guards at bay with karate moves. Another favorite is the time she pulled a gun on cops who responded to a domestic at her house. The cop body rolled her onto the ground to disarm her and she complimented him on his moves- karate aficionado that she was lol.

She didn't write Somebody To Love - her ex brother in law did. Her autobiography is a riot. Best I've ever read from a 60's rock star. As for her charisma compared to Joplin - Grace survived.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Nothing's gonna stop her now.

Here's her memoir: Somebody To Love. Great read.

I love Grace

I was obsessed with this video growing up. Love Grace.

Was she bipolar or just someone who did not take well to alcohol because her drunken behavior is so far removed form her sober personality. She seems so calm and intelligent and thoughtful when she's sober, it's hard to imagine that woman going totally insane and getting violent, wrecking her cars, getting what she called a TUI 'Talking Under the Influence'.

I'm surprised to see that she had a very long marriage. She must have been a nightmare to live with when she was drinking.

She just licensed a song to Chik-Fil-A and will donate all the proceeds to an LGBT cause. I think that's very responsible and kind.

In her better moments, like in the interview at r41, she was pretty good looking

Grace did not write "Somebody To Love."

This is my favorite Grace Slick song:

From 1984, my second favorite Grace Slick song:

My favorite song written by her is 'Fast Buck Freddy' then 'Eskimo Blue Day'

"Seasons" from 1980.

Long but good article

From 1981, Grace trying to be Hard Rock:

She probably made a fair amount of money from writing White Rabbit.

Heureuse Anniversaire, ma petite!

I’m jealous of the brother in law who write Somebidy To Love. Grace said when they went in to cut a demo the guys in the band were not good enough to play on the tracks. So the BIL, write this song even though he wasn’t talented enough at the time to really play at a professional level. Then he faded off into civilian life again with buckets of money coming in for the rest of his life. If I’m not mistaken the Slick family were well to do also. So was Grace’s family, her dad was an investment banker. It was their background that allowed them to go start a band and mess about rather than her jobs.

On a sadder note Grace’s only brother is mentally ill and voluntarily homeless. He lives in a park in Palo Alto and Grace sends up cash to a post office box to support him. What a tough situation for the family.

Yes R52 I remember the plot of an episode of Absolutely Fabulous was Eddie carrying around a recorder trying desperately to come up with a catchy song so she could live it up on the royalties forever more. It really would be a dream life. White Rabbit is on a Carnival Cruise Line commercial at the moment.

The Lefsetz podcast is very good even if Lefsetz isn't that great an interviewer.

Her 80s stuff sucked. She knew it and had enough $ that she didn't have to perform it. Her father was an investment banker and she learned how to save, early on and had him to invest.

Now there’s someone who’s had a great life

During her drug/drink years she was also compulsively spending. She said in the 70s she blew 10K in one shopping trip. She may have needed the 80s money to be comfortabley retired. The trust her parents left to her brother has now run out so the parents were not filthy rich in the way we think of investment bankers today.

Her daughter lives over her garage and is some sort of priest or pastor.

She must be as stunned as the rest of us that she’s still alive!

Sometime in the mid 80's the police were responding to a noise complaint at her house and Grace opened the door, shotgun in hand and told them, "Get the fuck off my property."

She always seemed like an ass. She was a real druggie. She was going to name her daughter with Paul Kantner "god" with a small g, but reconsidered, thinking it a wee bit much, and named her China. After Janis Joplin died she said "if somebody died in a car accident it doesn't make me stop driving." At Altamont, when the Hell's Angels were beating the crap out of each other she said" People, let's not be laying our bodies on each other unless we intend love." Yeah, I'm sure the Hell's Angels really took THAT advice to heart. Anyway, she always seemed to me to be a very unpleasant, unlikable woman.

R58 You really don't understand Grace Slick - she went against the grain of society and was the real deal. A gem and a jewel and has been blessed to see 80 years.

"A gem and a jewel?" A drug addicted slut is more like it.

Grace Slick was the one and only and a law unto herself.

People can mock Starship’s 80’s output, but there’s a reason their biggest hits came during that decade. The songs were really good. I still love “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and “Sara.”

always thought she was a natural beauty but some pics I saw of her in high school show her nose to be larger and more witch-like so it appears that she had a nose job? will post pics if I can figure out how to.

she was unrecognizable imo

Gracie lives to wear caftans now to cover her bulk. She has also had more than one nose job. But lots of people have a second nose job to “refine” the original work.

Fat old bitch

I love her. A wonderful artist.

She's ready for her close up.

Grace retired from the music business in the late 80s because she said she felt embarrassed being a middle-aged person on a rock and roll stage. She felt it was time to leave because she was too old to keep working in such a youth-oriented business, and it was beginning to feel really stupid to sing about sex and drugs at her age . She stuck to her convictions and has been retired from music ever since. I respect that tremendously. Instead of hanging on long past her prime (like so many other artists) Grace was able to be done with it and walk away and start a whole second career as a visual artist. Good for her.

Great, strong, powerful voice. Grace Slick, the legend.

A fabulous picture of Grace at Woodstock.

Grace fucked everybody in Jefferson Airplane except for Marty Balin. She said Jack Casady had a huge dick.

R72 In her memoir she stated that she also fucked Jim Morrison and he had a nice sized cock, especially when erect. But she said that he probably wouldn't even remember it the next morning because he was so high on drugs.

R72 Jack Casady from Jefferson Airplane.

China

Grace, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady are the surviving members of Jefferson Airplane. Spencer Dryden died of cancer some years ago. Marty Balin died of heart problems last year, and Paul Kantner died of alcohol-related problems in 2016.

Grace finally quit drinking for good in the late 90s. She still smokes cigs. She's probably more surprised than anyone that she's made it to 80.

She’s ugly on a stick

R77 No she isn't. She was very pretty and appealing. And had lots of men!

She modeled for a few years before her music career.

Habits...

Puke 🤮

She's really lovely in those modeling pics.

I really feel that the Jefferson Starship ballads are the songs that have aged the best and are the best artistically speaking, too: "Miracles," "With Your Love," "Runaway," etc. Slick's voice was *extremely* strident and IMO she was a lot easier to take when dueting with or providing backup for Balin. Honestly, I have no interest in hearing her sing lead on anything.

And that comment in Rolling Stone about how she wished she'd been the one to sing "You Light Up My Life"? Well, that tells you all you need to know about her taste in music, and is another reason why Balin was a necessity, however much of an asshole he might have been. (And this is the part where someone posts that she was "just joking" because "that was Grace." No... She was serious.)

I remember some article in a music magazine about some concert Jefferson Starship was doing in Germany, I think. Slick was not in good shape; a heavy drug user, she had medical issues because of it. She was unable to perform. Paul Kantner decided to cancel the concert saying to play without her would "be like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger." Well, when the fans, who had been standing outside in poor weather for some time, were notified of that they rioted. They stormed the stage, smashed and set fire to the musical equipment, some of which was irreplaceable to the musicians who owned it. It was an utter disaster, a fiasco. Most people said Kantner was an absolute dick for making that decision, but he stood by it. Well, he WAS a big idiot. They could have performed just as well without Slick. But I guess he was still besotted with her. Anyway, both Slick and Kantner seem like assholes who deserved each other.

I think the "nose job" speculation that a couple upthread have mentioned are probably the result of a total rebuild of her nose from the twenty miles of coke she snorted in the '70s. She's fabulous and I love her. She would fit right in here at the data lounges with her caftans, Chik Fil A hate (and doing something about it!) and ribald story telling.

Grace Slick IS rock and roll.

R86 Yup!!

Grace had a great figure back then.

Grace and Paul sort of stole Marty's band from him. She got the ink for being outrageous. When they needed Starship to make big they needed Marty. I don't blame HIM for being an asshole towards them. And I like them all.

Marty was insanely jealous of Grace. Grace always said about all of the attention she got: "If there are five cows and one pig, you're going to look at the pig."

grace slick in high school- i was really surprised to see this bc this looks nothing like how she did as an adult (which makes me think she had some work done as a young woman).

another picture of her, which looks like a completely different person than the one that become famous (imo).

Grace was very pretty in her youth.

Love this photo of Janis and Grace.

Starship's 80s stuff always gets maligned, but Grace knew exactly what she was doing. She was in her 40s at the time and she knew her days as a commercial artist who got Top 40 radio play and could sell a lot of records was almost over, and she decided she was going to take advantage of the limited time that was left to make as much money as possible. She wanted to make a few more hits then cash out and retire, and that's exactly what she did. She's lived a very comfortable life in Malibu for the past 30 years because of those 80s Starship songs, so I think it was definitely worth it.