HIT or SHIT (1967 edition)

[loveless]

Oh, yeah, that GS version is a SLOG!

*Grace Slick has alleged of the two GS songs that later became hits for the Airplane that "(Producer) Sly Stone got fed up with us and played everything himself", which...I don't hear it. Darby Slick's explanation makes infinitely more sense.

[Charlie O.]

Well, they didn't do "WR" in the studio. Sly may well have played everything on their single of "Someone [sic] To Love".

[loveless]

Yeah, she definitely seems to give some credence to the hoary old adage about one's ability to remember the sixties...

["BING E BONG"]

Nov 14, 2024 12:32:50 GMT rayge said:

I don't think there will be many dissenters here. 

You were right. Even 'sixties deniers' are on boardE!

[adamcoan]

The vocal alone is enough.

youtu.be/ryYdTbFzTB8?si=d0LkDZDlRAfFE2SU

[quaco]

One afternoon in December or January, while Jerry was out, I started writing a song about Alice and all the drug references in the story. I wrote the lyrics first. As I wrote, I’d read them out loud to be sure my voice could form a cadence [Slick sings slowly to illustrate:] “One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small / And the ones that mother gives you / Don’t do anything at all”.

When the lyrics were done, I took the sheet of paper to the red piano and worked on the chords, writing the names of the ones I liked over the phrases. I wrote the song in F-sharp minor, a key that’s ideal for my voice. Minor chords have a certain darkness and sadness.

The music I came up with was based on a slow Spanish march or bolero that builds in intensity. I’ve always had a thing for Spanish folk music. Back in 1963, Jerry and I were living with Darby and his girlfriend in San Francisco on Potrero Hill. One day we took acid and I put on Miles Davis’s “Sketches of Spain.”

I loved that album and I listened to it over and over for hours, particularly “Concierto de Aranjuez,” which takes up most of the first side. It’s hypnotic. I’ve always been like this. Anything I love I’m going to cram into my ears, nose and mouth until I use it up. “Sketches of Spain” was drilled into my head and came squirting out in various ways as I wrote “White Rabbit.”

With the chorus—the Alice lines, like “Go ask Alice, when she’s 10 feet tall”—I shifted to major chords for a release and to celebrate Alice’s courage following the white rabbit down the hole. Once down there she didn’t have a Prince Charming. She had to save her own ass while going through all the insane hallucinogenic stuff.

I identified with Alice. I was a product of ’50s America in Palo Alto, Calif., where women were housewives with short hair and everything was highly regulated. I went from the planned, bland ’50s to the world of being in a rock band without looking back. It was my Alice moment, heading down the hole. “White Rabbit” seemed like an appropriate title.