Grace Slick

Slick and Jefferson Airplane achieved significant success and popularity with their 1967 studio album Surrealistic Pillow, which included the top-ten US Billboard hits "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love". She has released four studio albums as an independent artist. Slick retired from music in 1990, but continues to be active in visual arts. In 1996, Slick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Jefferson Airplane.

• Name — Grace Slick • Birth Name — Grace Barnett Wing • Other Names — * Gracie • The Chrome Nun • The Acid Queen • Born — 30 October 1939 • Birthplace — Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. • Occupation — * Painter • musician (retired) • Years Active — 1964–1990 (music career) 1995–present (painting career)

Grace Barnett Wing was born on October 30, 1939, in Chicago, to Ivan Wing, an investment banker, and Virginia Barnett Wing, a retired singer. Her parents met while they were both students at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1949, her younger brother Chris was born. Her father's work required the family to relocate to San Francisco, and then Palo Alto. Wing attended Palo Alto Senior High School, then transferred to Castilleja School, a private all-girls school in Palo Alto. Despite not being academically gifted, she attended Finch College in New York City from 1957 to 1958, and the University of Miami from 1958 to 1959, majoring in art. After graduating, Slick worked as a model at an I. Magnin department store for three years. She also started composing music, including a contribution to a short film by her husband, Jerry Slick.

In late 1966, Jefferson Airplane's singer Signe Toly Anderson decided to leave the band to raise her child, and Jack Casady asked Slick to join them. Slick stated that she joined the Airplane because it was run in a professional manner, unlike the Great Society. With Slick on board, Jefferson Airplane began recording new music, and they turned in a more psychedelic direction than their former folk-rock style. Surrealistic Pillow included new recordings of "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love", both of which became top 10 singles. Jefferson Airplane became one of the most popular bands in the country, and through it Slick rose to a position of prominence among female rock musicians of her time. In 1968, Slick performed "Crown of Creation" on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in blackface and ended the performance with a Black Panther raised fist.

• Illustration — Slick in 1976 After Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen decided to leave Jefferson Airplane to focus on their project Hot Tuna, Slick formed Jefferson Starship with Paul Kantner and other bandmates, and also began a string of solo albums with Manhole, followed by Dreams, Welcome to the Wrecking Ball!, and Software. Manhole also featured keyboardist/bassist Pete Sears, who joined Jefferson Starship in 1974. Sears and Slick penned several early Jefferson Starship songs together, including "Hyperdrive" and "Play On Love". Dreams, which was produced by Ron Frangipane and incorporated many of the ideas Slick encountered attending twelve-step program meetings, is the most personal of her solo albums, and was nominated for a Grammy Award. Slick was nicknamed "The Chrome Nun" by David Crosby, who also used the nickname "Baron von Tollbooth" for Kantner. Their nicknames appear as the title of an album she made in 1973 with bandmates Kantner and David Freiberg: Baron von Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun.

• Illustration — Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas onstage in 1985 During the 1980s, while Slick was the only member remaining from Jefferson Airplane in Starship, the band went on to score three chart-topping successes with "We Built This City", "Sara", and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", which received a big boost from being featured in the movie Mannequin. Despite the success, Slick since has spoken negatively about the experience and the music. In 1987, Slick co-hosted The Legendary Ladies of Rock & Roll, for which she also sang backing vocals on "Be My Baby" and "Da Doo Ron Ron". She left Starship in 1988, shortly after the release of No Protection. In 1989, Slick and her former Jefferson Airplane band members reformed the group. They released a self-titled reunion album, and held a successful tour before disbanding.

• Illustration — Slick (right) in 2010 with author Phil Konstantin Following the Jefferson Airplane reunion, Slick retired from the music business. During a 1998 interview with VH1 on a Behind the Music documentary featuring Jefferson Airplane, Slick, who was never shy about discussing the process of getting old, said that the main reason she retired from the music business was that "all rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire." In a 2007 interview, she reiterated: "You can do jazz, classical, blues, opera, country until you're 150, but rap and rock and roll are really a way for young people to get that anger out", and, "It's silly to perform a song that has no relevance to the present or expresses feelings you no longer have." Despite her retirement, Slick appeared twice with Kantner's revamped version of Jefferson Starship; the first came in 1995 when the band played at Los Angeles's House of Blues, as documented on the live album Deep Space/Virgin Sky. The second was for a post-9/11 gig in late 2001, during which she came on the stage initially covered in black from head to toe in a makeshift burqa. She then removed the burqa to reveal a covering bearing an American flag and the words "Fuck Fear". Her statement to fans on the outfit was: "The outfit is not about Islam, it's about oppression; this flag is not about politics, it's about liberty." She has generally otherwise refrained from engaging in the music business, although she did perform on "Knock Me Out", a track from In Flight, the 1996 solo debut from former 4 Non Blondes singer, and friend of daughter China, Linda Perry. The song was also on the soundtrack to the film The Crow: City of Angels. In 2010, Slick co-wrote "Edge of Madness" with singer Michelle Mangione to raise money for remediation efforts following the BP oil spill. Grace also sang background vocals on the song and is clearly audible in the middle of the song singing, "On the edge of madness." Slick has made sporadic appearances and has done radio interviews. She accepted Jefferson Airplane's Grammy Lifetime Achievement awards in 2016, and made an appearance for the unveiling of the band's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2022.

Slick was married to cinematographer and drummer Gerald "Jerry" Slick from 1961 to 1971, then to lighting designer Skip Johnson from 1976 to 1994. She has a daughter, actress China Wing Kantner, born January 25, 1971. China's father is Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner, with whom Slick had a relationship from 1969 to 1975. In 1971, Slick was severely injured when she crashed a car into the inside of a tunnel in San Francisco. This happened while she and Jorma Kaukonen were drag racing and both were driving over 100 mph. Slick has publicly acknowledged her alcoholism and use of substances including LSD (for which she got the nickname The Acid Queen) and marijuana. By the age of 15 she was drinking heavily, disguising screwdrivers as orange juice at school and stealing gin from her parents. She has discussed her drug dependency and rehabilitation experiences in her autobiography, various interviews, and several published celebrity addiction and recovery books. The latter include The Courage to Change by Dennis Wholey and The Harder They Fall by Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill. Her alcoholism became a problem for the band during Jefferson Starship's 1978 European tour. The group had to cancel the first performance night in Germany because she was too intoxicated to perform, causing the audience to riot. She performed the next night with the band but was so inebriated that she could not sing properly. She also attacked the audience, mocking Germany for losing World War II and groping both female audience members and bandmates. She left the group the next day. The same year, she was "dragged off" the stage of a local San Francisco game show for abusing the contestants. She was admitted to a detoxification facility at least twice, once during the 1970s at Duffy's in Napa Valley, and once in the 1990s with daughter China. In 2006, Slick suffered from diverticulitis. After initial surgery, she had a relapse requiring further surgery and a tracheotomy. She was placed in an induced coma for two months and then had to learn to walk again. Also in 2006, Slick gave a speech at the inauguration of the new Virgin America airline, which named their first aircraft Jefferson Airplane.

President Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia and Slick are both alumnae of Finch College, and Slick was invited to a tea party for the alumnae at the White House in April 1970. She invited anarchist Abbie Hoffman to be her escort and planned to spike President Nixon's tea with 600 micrograms of LSD, but the party had been billed as an "all ladies" event. Hoffman's presence in the waiting line immediately aroused the suspicions of White House security personnel. He claimed to be Slick's "bodyguard and escort", which failed to convince the security personnel, who told him that the event was "strictly for females". Hoffman then took out a black flag with a multicolored marijuana leaf and hung it on the White House gate. Slick declined to attend once Hoffman was denied entry, and the two ran across the street to a waiting car. Slick later speculated that she received the invitation only because it was addressed to "Grace Wing" (her maiden name), and that she never would have been invited if the Nixons had known that she was Grace Slick. Slick was arrested at least four times for what she has referred to as "TUI" ("talking under the influence") and "drunk mouth". One incident occurred when a police officer encountered her sitting against a tree trunk in the backwoods of Marin County, California, drinking wine, eating bread, and reading poetry. The officer asked what she was doing; she gave a sarcastic response and was arrested and jailed. She was arrested in 1994 for assault with a deadly weapon after pointing an unloaded gun at a police officer. She alleged that the officer had come onto her property without explanation.

• Title — Album details — Peak chart positions • US — AUS — NLD — NOR — UK • Manhole — * Released: January 4, 1974 * Label: Grunt/RCA — 127 — — — — — — — — • Dreams — * Released: March 18, 1980 * Label: RCA — 32 — 46 — 39 — 22 — 28 • Welcome to the Wrecking Ball! — * Released: January 28, 1981 * Label: RCA — 48 — — — — — 33 — — • Software — * Released: January 30, 1984 * Label: RCA — — — — — — — — — —

• Title — Album details — Peak chart positions • US — AUS • Sunfighter (with Paul Kantner) — * Released: November 1971 * Label: Grunt/RCA — 89 — 45 • Baron von Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun (with Paul Kantner and David Freiberg) — * Released: May 1973 * Label: Grunt/RCA — 120 — —

• Year — Work — Collaborator — Comment • 1971 — If I Could Only Remember My Name — David Crosby — backing vocals on "What Are Their Names" • Papa John Creach — Papa John Creach — vocals on "The Janitor Drives a Cadillac" • 1972 — Rolling Thunder — Mickey Hart — piano, backing vocals • 1975 — Seastones — Ned Lagin — voice • 1981 — Kent State soundtrack — Various artists — co-writer & vocals on "Dance Around the Sun" vocals on "They All Look the Same" • 1982 — Throwin' Down — Rick James — backing vocals • 1985 — Heart — Heart — backing vocals on "What About Love" • 1988 — Back to Avalon — Kenny Loggins — backing vocals • 1995 — Deep Space/Virgin Sky — Jefferson Starship — guest vocalist • 1996 — In Flight — Linda Perry — co-writer & backing vocals on "Knock Me Out" • 1998 — The Best of Hot Tuna — Hot Tuna — cover illustration • 1999 — Windows of Heaven — Jefferson Starship — vocals on "I'm On Fire" • The Best of Grace Slick — Grace Slick — "Do You Remember Me?" (previously unreleased) • 2001 — Across the Sea of Suns — Jefferson Starship — liner notes • 2007 — Life Beneath the Sun — Michelle Mangione — cover illustration • 2008 — Jefferson's Tree of Liberty — Jefferson Starship — vocals on bonus track • 2009 — What Is a Saint — Michelle Mangione — co-writer of "What Is a Saint" & "Love Disappears" • 2010 — Ponies — co-writer & backing vocals on "The Edge of Madness" • 2023 — "Lahaina Shine" — co-writer