September 3, 2017

"A lot of time with acid, you have to be in a good frame of mind and around things and people that you like, as I was fortunate to have, and I never had a freak out."

"Things got real strange [sometimes], and then it goes away in 12 hours or whatever. We had good acid, too — it wasn’t cut with anything and it was made well by chemists from the University of California Berkeley. We got lucky with it. And I got lucky in that it was a time in my life where I was not particularly hampered by any hideous mental existence."

Said Grace Slick, recently. She's 77 these days.

52 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there gas in the car? Yes, there is gas in the car!

mccullough said...

She's older than I thought

William said...

Her age of 77 is like 147 in rock star years. .... Repeated doses of LSD gives you incredible insight into the dynamics of American politics......What a shame that some of the people she encouraged to take drugs didn't have access to high quality LSD and were trying to escape from a shitty reality rather than to amplify the pleasures of an extremely fortunate life.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

*hiccup*

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Not directed at you...

wild chicken said...

She used to say that she was more of an old school drinker than doper, because of her age. She was the oldest member of Airplane, iirc.

traditionalguy said...

So grateful to get a lesson in good LSD Trips.

William said...

I won't be around to see it, but I wonder who will be the longest living major rock star. Considering their lives of wretched excesses, some of them look pretty good.

David53 said...

Only by the grace of God did I survive the drug years.

Heartless Aztec said...

LSD was harsh on the backside of the come down. Purple Barrel, Strawberry Fields, Orange Sunshine, blotter, Gold microdot, Blue Double Dome, etc., ad nauseum, and so on and so forth. Mushrooms were much more gentle being organic. No harsh tweaked burned out feeling for the next couple of days. No redundant tracking and trailing for the next day or so... Much more manageable at 6 hours up and as opposed to acid's 12. Plus it was fun wandering through North Florida cow pastures by the light of a full moon picking God's psychedelic harvest. Surfer hippies trippin' the light fantastic. What an innocent fun life it was 45 years ago now...

Sprezzatura said...

Even though it's lame, someone here is gonna go there....so I'll clear the deck:

Grace approached acid learily.


Sheesh.

Etienne said...

The dumb bitch quotes Bill Maher, promotes illicit drug use, and calls the President a nut-job.

Very good, can she just die of old age now?

Quayle said...

She was a day tripper.

One way ticket,

Yeah.

Michael The Magnificent said...

Dear Grace,

Try living the clean life, like Donald Trump does.

You aren't enlightened, just stoned.

Greg Hlatky said...

As far as I'm concerned all drunk-n-druggie rock stars can die at 27. Anything commercially useful will have been extracted by then.

Earnest Prole said...

Isn’t this the same Grace Slick who pointed a shotgun at the police and lived to tell about it? Why yes, yes it is.

But at least she realized that “if I was black, I would be dead. Because it would not look good in the San Francisco Chronicle if Marin police shoot Grace Slick to death.”

Qwerty Smith said...

Around 1985, I saw a tv interview wherein Grace Slick said her daughter thought Slick was just a typical lame parent, rather than a super cool rock star. She obviously thought this was an amusing reflection on the way teenagers think.

But this was when "We Built This City" was plaguing the airwaves. In this case, the teen clearly understated the case. Nagging your kid to do her homework would have been cooler than Starship.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alex said...

Greg Hlatky said...
As far as I'm concerned all drunk-n-druggie rock stars can die at 27. Anything commercially useful will have been extracted by then.

9/3/17, 11:04 PM


Proggers like Robert Fripp never did drugs & drink and they're still making solid music at 70.

Laslo Spatula said...

"Down Valley Scum said...
"Is there gas in the car? Yes, there is gas in the car!"

I think the people down the hall know who you are.

RIP Becker.

I am Laslo.


Laslo Spatula said...

I remember as a kid hearing "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" from the backseat on the car-radio and not quite getting what was going on: this was the same station that was playing "Waterloo" by Abba and "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace...

It sounded Adult, and was obviously about Adult Things. Was 'Rikki' a boy or a girl? Mail a letter to yourself? What are they talking about...?

And the guitar solo: AM radio didn't play songs with guitar solos, at least not guitar solos like that. And at that age I certainly didn't understand the band name's Burroughs reference...

"Mary is strapping on a rubber penis. "Steely Dan III from Yokohama," she says, caressing the shaft. Milk spurts across the room.

"Be sure that milk is pasteurized..."

"What happen to Steely Dan I?"

"He was torn in two by a bull dyke. She could cave in a lead pipe."

"And Steely Dan II?"

"Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole. And don't say 'wheeeeeeee!' this time."

I am Laslo.

Dave in Tucson said...

@William said:
> I wonder who will be the longest living major rock star.

Chuck Berry made it to 90, that's gonna be hard to beat.

Although if Little Richard can make it another 6 years...

Kate said...

Laslo, please, PLEASE hijack Mrs. Boo Wheat as a persona.

That just made my morning.

Unknown said...

Anybody else remember that the Airplane did radio spots for Levis, specifically WHITE Levis? Grace was quite the dish back in those days.

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Heartless Aztec said...

Not many late 1960's long haired ex-hippies (using the term liberally) on Althouse threads in 2017. Or anyone that will cop to it anyways. Obviously from my comment up thread I had a good time from about 1967 through 1976. None the worse for wear these days politically or health wise. The main thing was to be "organic" and no needles and no snorting. Cigarettes were thr real deal. Took me 38 years to kicknthat terrible habit. To paraphrase Kieth Richards: "Compared to cigarettes, heroin is silly."

Gordon Scott said...

Grace was a rich kid whose parents paid for art classes back in the day. She is also, if you read her autobiography, a completely unwoke, clueless entitled asshat. She was in town a decade or so back trying to sell her art. We entered the venue, and sure enough, there's this attractive grandmother with a long braid of white hair. Between her and us is a security guard, who tells us that Miz Slick will only talk to those who buy her art. She's ten feet away, hears him telling us this, and studiously pretends we are not there.

She has a degree of talent. You wouldn't buy her stuff if it weren't by Grace Slick, but you can see she has an eye and can apply it. There's a lot of simple lines, well done. There's also portraits of, say, Jerry Garcia, that are not as good as your typical Elvis on black velvet.

As we were leaving, having purchased no art, Miz Slick is being escorted down the wide hallway by her guard toward the restroom. As we pass, my wife says "She may be a snob, but it's still cool to be this close to someone who fucked Jim Morrison." Miz Slick convulses in laughter, but continues down the hallway to her appointment with porcelain without acknowledging us.

Heartless Aztec said...

@Gordon: Tell your wife: CLASSIC!

Bay Area Guy said...

I had a good friend in college (early Reagan years) who dropped acid one weekend. To his credit, he didn't push very hard for me to join him, and I didn't. For the life of me, though, I could not understand why he needed to "escape". We had everything 19 year old kids could want - - sunshine, football games, smart beautiful girls, lotsa friends, laughter, good professors, and all you can eat dorm cafeteria. Frankly, I didn't want to escape. I wanted to bask in it.

He was a great musician, but might have had some personal demons in his home life. The only dude I knew to drop acid and drop out of college. Thankfully, he squared himself away in his mid-30s, but what an unnecessary long strange trip it was.

Laslo Spatula said...

From the internet:

" Although Jim's death was listed officially as "heart
failure", his personal physician, Dr. Derwin, stated to the press
that "Jim Morrison was in excellent health before travelling to
Paris".

This has recently been complicated by "Queen Mu" writing in
the avant garde magazine Mondo 2000 (Summer, 1991). Apparently
Mondo 2000 surfaced a rare medical file regarding Jim Morrison's
various sexual diseases, and the treatments he was undergoing for
them. There was mention of "cancer of the penis...". Queen Mu
reports:

"... Hey! No one wants to be expunged from the Book of
Life. How many medical workers at UCLA knew that Jim
Morrison was being treated for gonorrhea in the Fall of
1970? Knew of the biopsy that confirmed adenoma of the
penile urethra -- often consequence to repeated gonorrhea?
This is a particularly swift form of cancer whose only
alternative may have been radical castration..."
-- Queen Mu, pp. 131

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

In other words: it is not implausible that Grace Slick gave Jim Morrison dick cancer.

In case no one connected those dots.

I am Laslo.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Like so many other things in life, if you're rich and well connected, you can dabble in dangerous things without much consequence.

Most people just wind up like the people on COPS.

Last night we watched an episode set in Chattanooga. A youngish mother called the police because her husband had started cooking meth in their trailer. Heartbreaking: her tear-stained, completely hopeless face as the cops explained to her that everything in her trailer was contaminated and would have to be disposed of. The pictures of her kids she'd carefully hung on the walls, her young daughter's butterfly posters, her son's Legos. All of it, and also the trailer itself.

But yeah! Woo hoo! Party! Berkeley acid! Mushrooms! Fun times! Drugs are awesome!

Anonymous said...

surfed said...
@Gordon: Tell your wife: CLASSIC!


Isn't that standard a bit broad? Like saying it was cool to be close to someone who fucked Magic Johnson? Neither were Monks after all.

On a different note. I saw Joan Baez in concert last Nov. She doesn't have a high range anymore, but still has a sweet voice and looks very good for what was then 75.

Laslo Spatula said...

From the internet:

The Doors even covered bluesy-rock classics like “Back Door Man” (which was originally written by Willie Dixon and performed by Howlin’ Wolf) and Jim Morrison, being a huge fan of blues, implemented an intended but subliminal sexual double entendre in the song because of his affinity for the female derriere and thus anal sex. The song wasn’t written about anal sex. Originally, a “Back Door Man” is a man who’s having an affair with a married woman… and when her husband comes home, the man leaves via the back door.

Morrison took that meaning and combined it with a raunchy undertone. If you listen to and watch the performances of the Doors on YouTube, you’ll notice Morrison’s sexual grunts, exaggerations of the lyrics “The men don’t know, but the little girls understand, now don’tcha darlin’… allllll right, YEAH!”

In the Doors’ performances of “When the Music’s Over”, Jim would yell, “Alllllll right now, fuck her in the ass!” after the first couple of lines of the song before the band commenced a thunderous jam of music that reverberated beautifully throughout arenas.

I am Laslo.

wild chicken said...

Dear surfed, not all of us like to boast about those days.

Ann Althouse said...

"Laslo, please, PLEASE hijack Mrs. Boo Wheat as a persona."

I've already deleted that spam, but like you I found the name very funny, like a combination of Buckwheat and Boo Radley, but female.

MaxedOutMama said...

Every time one of these idiots speak, another kid goes down. Pyschedelics are now being sold to the masses as the cure for everything, the door to mental balance.

But for many, they are the door to hell. Here's one of the latest casualties:
http://ktla.com/2017/06/26/teen-high-on-mushrooms-arrested-after-allegedly-running-over-killing-best-friend-in-missouri-police/

One of the son's of my father's best friend never recovered from LSD - never stopped having flashbacks. Eventually committed suicide in his 40s. A very brilliant student, once.

A kid in my town got hopped up on drugs and killed a girl. He was 16 at the time. The girl was 15. They were friends. The next day, when he sobered up, he approached the cops and told them that he wasn't sure, but he thought he might have killed someone. He had.

A classmate of my brother's and a family friend got stoned and drunk and killed a woman in his 20s. He was the nicest guy. It was a hideous murder. He also sobered up and confessed to the cops.

This doesn't cover the accidents and accidental overdoses. The effects of this shit are extremely unpredictable. It makes mental dysfunction worse, not better. Those of you who did it and survived and did well in life are the exceptions, not the rule, and in general do come from a higher socio-economic level. For some people with an inborn tendency, they will flip into psychosis. Even pot will do that to some people.

I wish you druggies would grow up finally and think about what you are doing. People smoke cigarettes for 40 years and don't get cancer. That doesn't change the fact that smoking predisposes you to a range of nasty diseases.

MaxedOutMama said...

The best part of Mrs. Boo Wheat is that she was also a father of three kids. I was touched and heartened not only by her commercial success, but by her embrace of her gender non-conformity.

Heartless Aztec said...

@wildchicken? Who's boasting? I'm just reporting from 50 years down the time line. Just like Grace I had a lot of fun a long time ago. If I could go back in time and change any one thing it would be to have never picked up the addiction of nicotine.

Heartless Aztec said...

Addendum: nicotine free for 15 years now.

Tank said...

I like her. She was hot. She had a great voice for rock, and used it well. She participated in some great music and events. And, even thought we don't agree at all politically, she has a certain common sense about some things. A few years back when she was selling her art in our area, she was interviewed and, when asked why she did not continue to perform, she said, at her age, wouldn't that be ridiculous? And, obviously, for her, it would. And she was right about LSD. From what I saw of her art, it wasn't bad.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

LOL! You missed the best part of her interview - Question #2:

There is the famous story of you wanting to dose Nixon when you got invited to the White House. What would you slip Trump to mellow him out?

"Acid, because I don’t think he’d too well with that. It’s an ego-destroying thing where you are not in control. You’ve got to know what you’re doing with it. You’ve got to have somebody who is not high to make sure you don’t decide you’re a raven and fly off the roof. There are all kinds of things about it that are tricky. … We’ve got a president who is orange — everybody’s least favorite color. Bill Maher said never underestimate the stupidity of the American public, and, at this point in time, he is right. But I realized what a patriot I was when he got elected [because] it made me so sad thinking about how there were 12 or 15 guys who, now 240 years ago, started an entire country. Although they may not have practiced all their ideas — they had slaves and were talking about how all men were free — some in the Constitution are still used. And they were wonderful ideas as far as how to treat each other and yourself. Then you get this nut-job goofball as our president, and it’s embarrassing. He shouldn’t be running a country. Guy is a mess."


Perfectly stated.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mrs. Bear said...

In answer to William many comments back, my best guess as to which major rock star will live the longest is Ringo Starr.

donald said...

I threw a fishing rod in a lake once doing acid and DESTROYED my brother and a couple of his high school team mates playing basketball on mushrooms. I was literally seeing everything two steps ahead and just kept driving my 140lb skinny junky ass to the hole. They couldn't stop me. These were badass kids too. Never happened Like that again. I liked mushrooms. Probably did em 30-40 Odd times. We would drive to to Atlanta Motor Speedway and pick em right after the rains in the pasture on the south side. Garbage bags full. It was crazy.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

She has no standing in society, or authority in which to judge political leaders. She is a perfectly stated scoundrel. As perfectly stated as Charles Manson being against the death penalty.

Uh, she's a citizen, legally allowed (as any should be) to vote, and never convicted of anything to do with harming or depriving the liberty of others.* So that gives her just as much a right to say what she wants about the subject as anyone else. And you have no more right than anyone else to deem her "authoritative" enough to do so. That's a matter of personal opinion.

*But I understand that in your Republicrony mind, that makes her the perfect target for you to seek her disenfranchisement - as you seek to disenfranchise so many citizens - however ordinary or how much celebrity - that are a threat to your one-party vision.

And how proud you must be to seek some kind of moral lesson to be learned in favor of exterminating the Native Americans and breaking our treaties with them. No wonder you xenophobic racists and authoritarians can barely manage to get a president of your loud and proud fold elected more than once every three or four generations.

People like you exemplify why white Americans are dying off faster and faster. Just can't get along with anyone without finding a way to feel superior to them. It's like a lesson in Darwinian evolution unfolding right before my very eyes. And doesn't seem like it can happen soon enough.

Enjoy your decline.

ccscientist said...

In senior year of high school my friend vanished. They found him several days later. He had taken acid and gone up on Stone Mountain, Georgia--fell off and died. Another friend was drunk and dancing on a high wall on college campus (2 stories up)--fell and died. Getting "high"--not always a good idea.

donald said...

The things I've done at Stone Mountain...

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

At least I know I'm a peasant.

A fact that your president revels in greatly.

Fabi said...

"Like so many other things in life, if you're rich and well connected, you can dabble in dangerous things without much consequence.

But yeah! Woo hoo! Party! Berkeley acid! Mushrooms! Fun times! Drugs are awesome!"


You say that like it's a bad thing.

Heartless Aztec said...

And now after all those fun drugs and fun concerts 50 yearscm ago I'm a military historian and I do historical art work for museums and private clients specializing in historic sailing ships: USS Constitution, HMS Java, CSS Alabama & USS Kearsarge, etc., but I've done everything from British Centurion tanks for a retired IDF tanker, F6F Hellcats, P-51's for WWII pilots now passed on, even a BF-109 for a Luftwaffe pilot (now an American citizen). If you like to see my art drop me a line at surfed256@hotmail.com. I'll forward some pics of the USS Colorado 1862 that I just finished for a client. What a long strange trip it's been.