Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick on “White Rabbit,” I could have done a better job with those lyrics – 2022 – VIDEO
Applause is interesting, but I’m a monster with or without it. Something is either well written or it isn’t. “White Rabbit” is not well written, and no amount of applause can convince me it is. I could have done a better job with those lyrics. They didn’t say what I wanted.
Jefferson Airplane
“White Rabbit”
Written by Grace Slick
Released on June 24, 1967
LYRICS
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head
“White Rabbit” was written and performed by Grace Slick while she was still with the Great Society. Slick quit them and joined Jefferson Airplane to replace their departing female singer, Signe Toly Anderson, who left the band with the birth of her child.
The first album Slick recorded with Jefferson Airplane was Surrealistic Pillow, and Slick provided two songs from her previous group: her own “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love”, written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick and recorded under the title “Someone to Love” by the Great Society. The Great Society’s version of “White Rabbit” was much longer than the more aggressive version of Jefferson Airplane. Both songs became top-10 hits for Jefferson Airplane and have ever since been associated with that band.
It was released as a single and became the band’s second top 10 success, peaking at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was ranked number 478 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, number 483 in 2010, and number 455 in 2021 and appears on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
I wrote White Rabbit on a red upright piano that cost me about $50. It had eight or 10 keys missing, but that was OK because I could hear in my head the notes that weren’t there.
— Grace Slick (@GraceSlick_JA) September 26, 2022
