Badass females? the same ones who think words are violence and always vote left-wing, sure. Thank God Trump won China and Russia don't respect you soft silly little lefties.
@@yelnek4548 I actually wouldn't argue with that assessment. Although women like Linda Perry, Alanis Morrisette, and Melissa Ethridge have carried the torch pretty well.
Britt Psychedelic aka Acid Dropper) LSD Rock Hence Line pill Makes you Bigger and one Makes You Small the ones Mama gives you Don't Do Anything at all +(Mom Protects us so they arent going to Give you Drugs the Pills Mom Gives you are Vitamins which seems to Do Nothing)
The lyrics to White Rabbit are a reference to Alice in Wonderland. The White Rabbit is the character Alice follows down the rabbit hole chanting " I'm late, i'm late for a very important date". Inadvertently, he starts Alice's venture into Wonderland which ends up being a harrowing journey she is unprepared for
Name drop alert! I spent considerable time with her in an art business setting (event photographer) around 2011. Her neighbor when she was young raised white rabbits also. She only found out in her teens that he sold them as food! The first thing I ever heard her say was 'Git 'er done"! Lol
yea its a song with double layers too, it references Alice in Wonderland, which in itself is a book describing events while on psychedelic mushroom trips...they are alluding to both in the song
@@imautubertoo My comment is based on what Grace Slick (the author of the song) said in an interview. Your comments on Alice are correct. Grace made the comment that it was hypocrisy for our parents to read that stuff to us and then say don't do drugs. Regardless of the meaning of the lyrics, it's a great song.
The Smothers Brothers show was a groundbreaking comedy/variety show that touched on social issues and pushed the boundaries of what the network found acceptable, ultimately terminating the show. On the music side, the guitar and bass players formed a side project called Hot Tuna and are still playing in one form or another today. Some great traditional blues and blues rock.
Jorma Kaukonen, (he's Finnish) the guitarist, and Jack Cassidy, the bassist, played music together as teenagers before Jefferson Airplane, so they've been together 60 or so years, which is amazing.
Yeah = the "smoking a banana" reference was because in 1967 a rumor went around that you could scrape the inside of a banana peel , dry it out, and then smoke it to get high (it didn't work). The musician Donovan even made a song about it titled "Mellow Yellow".
@timgreeley3570 The false rumor at the time was that Mellow Yellow was about the smoking bananas thing but it actually turns out that Mellow Yellow was the name of an adult toy that was advertised in a British magazine. That’s what the song is really about. Hence the phrase electrical banana. Professor of Rock had a feature about this on his channel.
Bananadine is a fictional psychoactive substance which is supposedly extracted from banana peels. A hoax recipe for its "extraction" from banana peel was originally published in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967.[1] This recipe was itself an excerpt from the upcoming San Francisco Oracle issue, which was likely done in an attempt to give the hoax more validity.
Boomer here, I watched that show when it aired. Smothers Brothers premiered many of the 60s bands on network TV. The Who's appearance on Smothers Brpthers was famous for the blowing up of Keith Moon's drums and Pete Townsend's eardrums (no spoilers) The colorful background was The Magic Light Show. They invented that look, nothing else like that existed at the time. It was a signature of the band's act at the Filmore West in San Fransisco where they shared the stage with the Grateful Dead, Steppenwolf, Janis Joplin and others
Grace Slick is a Rock Icon. Read her bio. She got into this band, because the band payed more, than her modeling gigs. After her music career. She opened an Art Studio. Quite a character.
It was an old rerun of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” It was about the hippest show of that era and would put on controversial acts and were constantly hounded by the clueless censors of the network. The world was tripping on a new awareness of the wonders of our minds.
Grace Slick, razing city blocks with her vibrato since 1965. 😂😂 White Rabbit is based on the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll. Slick remarked that parents shouldn't be surprised their kids used drugs after reading them Alice in Wonderland at bedtime. 😂😂😂
@garyarnett1220 I mean, what do you expect from someone who announced she was going to name her first child God, only to actually name her China? 😂 It was never clear to me whether that was China the country or China the table setting. 😂😂😂
This was on the Smothers Brothers comedy hour in 1967. Woodstock was also in 1967. Now let me give you the clues White Rabbit, Hookah smoking Caterpillar, Chess pieces talking and moving, One pill makes you larger and one makes you small all point to Alice in Wonderland
Woodstock was actually in the summer of 1969, the "Monterrey Pop Festival" was in the summer of 1967, this started the "Summer of Love" movement in 1967.
The Smothers Brothers were a folk music duo. They had a variety show back in the late 1960s. They got in a lot of trouble with the network (CBS) because they were constantly including anti-war material in their show (this was during Vietnam). They looked like a couple of nerdy upper middle-class guys but were very vocal about politics, especially anti-war messaging. Eventually the network canceled their program.
Technically the show wasn't canceled. CBS just decided not to create any more shows while the brothers were still under contract for a specific number of shows. This prevented them from moving to another network without being in violation of contract. Every once in a while CBS would call them back in to do a special which the network had full artistic control over.
Alice in wonderland =Go ask Alice When she's ten feet tall, men on the chessboard Get up and tell you where to go, Red Queen's off with her head. dormouse said Feed your head
“White Rabbit” was penned by Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick when she was still a member of the band The Great Society. She borrowed the song’s trippy imagery from Lewis Carroll’s timeless children’s books, Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. “The 1960s resembled Wonderland for me,” Slick told the outlet. “Like Alice, I met all kinds of strange characters, but I was comfortable with it.”The song’s mind-expanding meaning came with the help of mind-expanding substances. “In the 60s, the drugs were not ones like heroin and alcohol that you take to blot out a terrible life, but psychedelics: marijuana, LSD and shroomies,” Slick said. “Psychedelic drugs showed you that there are alternative realities. You open up to things that are unusual and different, and, in realizing that there are alternative ways of looking at things, you become more accepting of things around you.” She admits the tune is darkly tinged. “It’s not saying everything’s going to be wonderful,” she added. “The Red Queen is shouting off with her head and the White Knight is talking backwards. Lewis Carroll was looking at how things are run and the people who rule us.” But the main message comes with the closing line feed your head, wailed in repetition. “[It is] both about reading and psychedelics,” she said of the lyric. “I was talking about feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention.” The song opens in a hazy disjointed death march before an intoxicating guitar riff slithers up through the smoke and into the ear. Slick’s sharp, defiant words pierce the song as she bellows, 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 10 feet tall. While heady, the seemingly out-there lyrics come together to make sense. Like Carroll’s titular character, Alice, who changes size after eating something strange or drinking a peculiar liquid, the song depicts the same feeling of change that comes with drug use. And if you go chasing rabbits / And you know you’re going to fall, the song continues, saying if you follow your curiosities down the rabbit hole, there will be a smoking caterpillar, in a sense, there to guide you through your drug-induced state. When logic and proportion / Have fallen sloppy dead, Slick sings. She warns that things won’t always make sense and that might seem threatening when the White Knight is talking backwards / And the Red Queen’s off with her head. She sings it’s important to Remember what the dormouse said / Feed your head / Feed your head.
one of my best memories aside from hanging at Airplane house when I was a kid a couple of times was an spur of the moment concert. the band played on a balcony above Neda"s flowers over Haight St in 67 or 68.The street filled with people and a blast was had till the cops showed up to clear the street. PS before they were famouse they played at my school in SF.
Wow, I'm so glad you noticed that at the beginning about having a hard time slipping into the rhythm. As a musician of many years and playing in a lot of bands and all that, it's one of my favorite things both to do and execute but also to be subject to while listening, and that is to be ambiguous or even misled as to what the ultimate downbeat will be when things get rolling. Everything about that is so cool. And yeah, I don't remember experiencing that on the studio cut, but at least for this live performance, I had exactly the same feeling as you described It surprised me.
Love your VW Bus comment Britt. Til I was 13, our family car was a VW Bus, not because we were hippies but because it was the only vehicle that could fit a family of 10. Keep up the great work.
They were a comedy act that later got their own show called The smothers Brothers I think it was Dick and Tom Smothers Check it out You might find it funny along with another comedy hour called Laugh-In with Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and many many others Then again you might have had to been born in the '50s to appreciate the '60s lol
I moved into a house that Jefferson Airplane had just moved out of in the late 70s. Shout out to Bolinas, CA. The day I moved in I went to pee and pulled up the toilet seat cover. On the bottom of the cover, the gold record to White Rabbit was glued to the bottom of the cover. I was stolen from me years later. Jefferson Airplane devolved into a 80s hair band playing bland pop music and changed their name a couple of times.
I saw Jefferson Airplane perform these songs live in Ithaca, NY when I was in high school in 1967. There was a large screen backdrop behind them on which they projected swirling colors & shadows. It was all very "trippy" (as in a trip on LSD). It was a great show. These videos came from the Smothers Brothers, a variety show hosted by Dick & Tommy Smothers. They were musicians and comedians. Dick was the straight guy and Tommy was the sidekick. "Mom always liked you best!"
The vocal is by Grace Slick, a voice like none other and if you'll think of Alice in Wonderland it might help you understand it will help. Quite a song.... The group was awesome, check out some of their stuff like their greatest hits and enjoy...
Both of these songs were written by grace slick with her previous band. When she joined Jefferson airplane and brought her songs with her it was magical.
That clip was from the smothers Brothers comedy hour in the '60s that was Tommy talking back then you couldn't say smoke a joint or drop a hit acid and you had the skirt around it in the song.
The original version is the best and listened to with headphones! Close your eyes and listen to her voice, especially the crescendo! Goose bumps every time!
This is from 1967, but whoever posted it on UA-cam took it off an E! Network rerun of the TV show this was part of, probably in the 1990s or early 2000s. The TV show was called "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."
I was lucky enough to meet and hang out with the wonderful Grace Slick some around 2010. She is also a visual artist and I was the event photographer for a gallery that showed her work. My job was to shadow her while she mingled with the patrons and sold her art. She's very funny but all business when it's time for business. She told me she didn't have much range for high notes, but in her range she was extremely powerful. The original hippie chick rock star, along with her friend Janis Joplin.
Grace Slick, the lead singer is one of the most amazing voices in Rock!!! I just always loved this song because of the uniqueness of it and just took it with a grain of salt. The Alice in Wonderland story basically! Then Someone to Love is another classic song!!!! ❤❤❤❤❤
Haven't commented in a bit, but just have to say, your channel is the best. I absolutely love watching you from your era finding music from my era. The last couple of days with Freddie Fender and now Jefferson Airplane puts such a smile on my face. I am so grateful for your channel and that younger people can groove to the music that I did!
The Smothers Brothers Show is what you're watching. The Smothers Brothers [their real name, they WERE real brothers] were the funniest duo of the 1960's and 70's and beyond. ..they could sing nd play music well, but they were comedians, and controversial...it's hard to explain here but the younger one, Dick Smothers, you see here, played the straight man perfectly to his older brother Tommy's quirky mischievous dumb guy persona. I saw them in concert once, the made us laugh so hard, we were still laughing all 100 miles riding home!! Check them out. I guarantee you'll be on the floor.
I guess Alice is now officially dead and forgotten. RIP. I wouldn't be surprised if all of Lewis Carroll's classics are banned or burned within the next four years.
Obviously you have never read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (also known as Alice in Wonderland) an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. Every bizarre character and substance you heard in the song is taken directly from the book.
White Rabbit is a psychedelic trip that follows Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland) storyline. They are playing on the Smother's Brother's variety show, an edgy (for the time) comedy show that regularly pushed against 60's TV censor's with its underlying and usually thinly disguised anti-war/anti-establishment political tone.
Yes psychedelic rock was a thing and Grace Slick/Jefferson Airplane were some of the pioneers. As everyone has said, White Rabbit was a reference to Alice In Wonderland and back in those days we all understand what that was and the chemicals references you noticed. Welcome to the late '60s Britt, definitely a different time with different priorities.
The Smothers Brothers … Tom and Dick are real brothers. Musicians and comedians. Tom is older and plays a little dim witted character who happens to be an expert with the Yo-Yo. Dick plays the straight man who is “superior” to his brother. Their humor tended to be politically controversial in the late 1960’s, mostly propelled by Tommy. They really pushed the limits for television at the time. Eventually getting them fired. However their show introduced many tremendous musicians. Every one of which you should listen to.
I expected the comments to be about psychedelic era with nothing about the Smothers brothers. But the comments are the opposite. The Smothers brothers played a folk rock duo who could never get through a song without bickering. Their tag line was "Mother loves you best". But underneath it they were very political and got kicked off the air for their attacks on the Viet Nam war. Dick Smothers actually got in a fist fight at a party with Bill Cosby because he thought Cosby was wasting his fame in being apolitical. The psychedelic era was basically 1967 (the summer of love) and 1968. It had a British version, like early Pink Floyd, and an American version with Jefferson Airplane probably the most famous. Additionally they had a place in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco which became the home of the movement. Crosby, Stills, and Nash formed at a party they threw. But there were more out there groups like the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the 13th Floor Elevator. Sometimes all of the music of that era gets categorized as psychedelic which seems to stretch the term a bit. But it was musically and politically a big deal.
girl, i was looking for this two songs for deacades, especialy the "white rabbit" .... had them in my brain, never knew was the "jeferson airplaines" ... thumb up for revealing the mistery ❤
There is actually a ton of nuance to the meaning of this that worked as social messaging colored in the world of Alice In Wonderland and current social and music trends in the counterculture. It was also revolutionary because she was another of the handful of young women who were starting to rise and come into their own in the mostly male-dominated rock scene at the time. Leslie, they're just kick ass songs, lol. ❤
The intro was by Tommy Smothers, who was in a comedy duo with his brother Dick, often involving music. Tommy was the one with a ditzy persona. A friend (now sadly deceased) who was a stand-up comic worked with them once, and liked Tommy but said Dick was a dick.
For lyrics, Grace drew inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. In her memoir Somebody to Love, Grace recalls: "the lyrics allude to the hypocrisy of the older generation swilling one of the hardest drugs (alcohol) known to man, but telling us not to use psychedelics." Seeking to remind her parents' generation that they were the ones who had filled the minds of hers with children's stories that glamorized "fun with chemicals," Grace then leads listeners through a few examples: In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her entourage get high on poppies, Peter Pan sprinkles fairy dust on everyone to make them able to fly, and finally leads us to, as Grace herself puts it, "the biggest druggie of them all, Alice."
Grace Slick was with another San Francisco group called The Great Society when she wrote these two songs. She left them and joined Jefferson Airplane, which was looking for a lead vocalist after Signe Andersen left, and brought the two songs with her. They both became huge hits.
The rhythm is a rock version of Bolero by French composer Maurice Ravel and it is a march. The topic is of course, Alice in Wonderland. And Grace wrote both of these songs.
Donovan (British Singer) made fun of a hippie myth that people could get high if they smoked a banana peel. He called it "mellow yellow'. Funny reference by the Smothers brothers.
White Rabbit was written in 1967 at the height of the so called "Counter Culture" sweeping America. This was the worst year for casualties from the Vietnam War, it was the year that haight ashbury was in every head line. The TV show was The Smother's Brothers Comedy Hour.
One of my top 10 songs. Always loved the Jefferson Airplane and also being on the Smothers Brothers show. They were a huge deal in the 60's show. They had 2 lead singers. I do believe it was Austin Powers.
Read Alice in Wonderland, a childrens' book, authored by Englishman Lewis Carroll, & published in 1865. This song (released in 1967) brings in the psychedelic element over 100 years after the book was published. ******* It was the sixties!
"Somebody To Love" has been used in movies and tv shows such as; St. Vincent (w/Bill Murray), Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (w/Johnny Depp, among others), Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks), and A Serious Man (critically acclaimed, mostly B-List actors)
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was originally on CBS in the late ‘60s. E didn’t appear until the lare ‘80s, I think, and focused on show business news.
Regarding the introductory comments about bananas, the hippies in the sixties put out a troll to trick the man and the establishment fell for it hook, line, and sinker, judging from the Time Magazine article from 1967 raising alarms over kids smoking banana peels. [snip] Delicious Legality. The kick is known to hippies as “electrical bananas” or “mellow yellow.”* Banana-heads scrape the white fibers from the inside of the peels, boil the scrapings into a paste, which is then baked. The dark brown ash that results is smoked in hand-rolled cigarette “joints” or in pipes, tastes vaguely like a burning compost heap. Most people who have tried mellow yellow do not try it again. The reason is simple: lots of work for little, if any, high. But banana-heads find the craze appealing, largely because of its delicious legality. Already they have taken to wearing T shirts emblazoned with a blue United Fruit Co. seal. Sales of bananas at Harvard Square groceries have tripled in the past week. Highlight of Manhattan’s Easter Sunday “bein” in Central Park was a raggle-taggle mob brandishing a giant 3-ft.-long mock banana and chanting “Banana! Banana! Ba-nan-a!” as they snake-danced through the bemused multitude, cheered on by girls wearing banana crowns, while one student, dressed in a yellow slicker, tried to pass himself off as the biggest banana of all. State of Mind. In San Francisco’s psychedelphic Haight-Ashbury section, Top Banana Larry Starin, 26, has even opened the Mellow Yellow Co. to sell half-ounce portions of baked banana scrapings-enough, he says, for 35 to 40 joints-for $5 (the cost to Starin: less than 5¢ for each half-ounce). Starin plans to give away the “worthless” banana meat to underfed Haight hippies. [/snip]
The opening line, "One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small" is an innocent reference to Alice in Wonderland, for sure. But it's probably a reference to the hallucinogens that were becoming very popular at the time as well. With the line, "But the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all" might confirm that if we're certain mothers passed out aspirin rather than LSD in those days. I know mine did.
In the 60s the word "head" was a popular word for "stoner". "Feed your head" makes sense when you understand the reference. A hookah is a smoking device with water that cools off the harshness of what is being smoked. The hookah is being smoked by a caterpillar and, of course, caterpillars transform into something new and beautiful. Alice in Wonderland is a perfect story (platform) for a song about the evolving drug culture of the 1960s.
My favorites are after they changed their name to Jefferson Starship (and Marty Balin led songs). "Miracles", "count on me", "run away", "with your love". All beautiful songs.
Grace Slick is the original badass female vocalist!🎤🤘
:🔥🔥
Big Mama Thronton might be.
Badass females? the same ones who think words are violence and always vote left-wing, sure. Thank God Trump won China and Russia don't respect you soft silly little lefties.
Her and Ann Wilson had the most powerful vocals in rock.
@@yelnek4548 I actually wouldn't argue with that assessment. Although women like Linda Perry, Alanis Morrisette, and Melissa Ethridge have carried the torch pretty well.
Clue, Think Alice in Wonderland.....
👍So true, but it also pulls me into the Matrix😉. Love both of these songs. 🖖❤
So many people wanted to set her straight. Then they saw your comment and all they had to do is hit the like button lol
Apparently totally unfamiliar with the tale. There are so many references dotted along....
Britt Psychedelic aka Acid Dropper) LSD Rock Hence Line pill Makes you Bigger and one Makes You Small the ones Mama gives you Don't Do Anything at all +(Mom Protects us so they arent going to Give you Drugs the Pills Mom Gives you are Vitamins which seems to Do Nothing)
Sampled in Movies😂
The lyrics to White Rabbit are a reference to Alice in Wonderland. The White Rabbit is the character Alice follows down the rabbit hole chanting " I'm late, i'm late for a very important date". Inadvertently, he starts Alice's venture into Wonderland which ends up being a harrowing journey she is unprepared for
Name drop alert!
I spent considerable time with her in an art business setting (event photographer) around 2011.
Her neighbor when she was young raised white rabbits also. She only found out in her teens that he sold them as food!
The first thing I ever heard her say was 'Git 'er done"! Lol
People used to instantly recognize the "Alice In Wonderland" references, but unfortunately people don't get into literature all that much these days.
And that is what she meant by "feed your head"...READ.
yea its a song with double layers too, it references Alice in Wonderland, which in itself is a book describing events while on psychedelic mushroom trips...they are alluding to both in the song
@@imautubertoo My comment is based on what Grace Slick (the author of the song) said in an interview. Your comments on Alice are correct. Grace made the comment that it was hypocrisy for our parents to read that stuff to us and then say don't do drugs. Regardless of the meaning of the lyrics, it's a great song.
This was from the Smothers Brothers show on CBS, 1967. White Rabbit gets its inspiration from Alice in Wonderland
I remember seeing this on our Black and White TV. Oh Crap, I'm Old! 🤣 ✌
They had their show cancelled for making jokes barely more risque than the banana one. They did their best.
Ive heard that one reason their show was canceled was because they were getting what the network thought was too political.
@@pjg58xExactly.
The Smothers Brothers show was a groundbreaking comedy/variety show that touched on social issues and pushed the boundaries of what the network found acceptable, ultimately terminating the show. On the music side, the guitar and bass players formed a side project called Hot Tuna and are still playing in one form or another today. Some great traditional blues and blues rock.
Jorma Kaukonen, (he's Finnish) the guitarist, and Jack Cassidy, the bassist, played music together as teenagers before Jefferson Airplane, so they've been together 60 or so years, which is amazing.
Excellent comment with an understanding of music history!
Alice in wonderland was a story about a psychedelic trip! The one we all are living now!
😂😂😂👍🏻
Yeah = the "smoking a banana" reference was because in 1967 a rumor went around that you could scrape the inside of a banana peel , dry it out, and then smoke it to get high (it didn't work). The musician Donovan even made a song about it titled "Mellow Yellow".
It was a hippy prank to freak out the Man.
@timgreeley3570 The false rumor at the time was that Mellow Yellow was about the smoking bananas thing but it actually turns out that Mellow Yellow was the name of an adult toy that was advertised in a British magazine. That’s what the song is really about. Hence the phrase electrical banana. Professor of Rock had a feature about this on his channel.
I actually tried smoking a banana peel back in the day, I can can attest it didn't work at all! True story!
Bananadine is a fictional psychoactive substance which is supposedly extracted from banana peels. A hoax recipe for its "extraction" from banana peel was originally published in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967.[1] This recipe was itself an excerpt from the upcoming San Francisco Oracle issue, which was likely done in an attempt to give the hoax more validity.
@@pjg58x "Electrical banana, soon to be a national craze!".
1960s they played at Woodstock. Classic for the 60s and 70s music.
Boomer here, I watched that show when it aired. Smothers Brothers premiered many of the 60s bands on network TV. The Who's appearance on Smothers Brpthers was famous for the blowing up of Keith Moon's drums and Pete Townsend's eardrums (no spoilers)
The colorful background was The Magic Light Show. They invented that look, nothing else like that existed at the time. It was a signature of the band's act at the Filmore West in San Fransisco where they shared the stage with the Grateful Dead, Steppenwolf, Janis Joplin and others
They went from Jefferson airplane to Jefferson starship to Starship & this is the 50th anniversary of touring this year.
I never liked the guy who replaced Grace Slick as lead singer.
Sadly their music got worse and worse over time. Except for Ride the Tiger. That song kicks ass.
Intro...Bolero! Lyrics...Alice In Wonderland!!! Hey Britt, feed your head! lol
yes absolutely builds like Bolero
Grace Slick is a Rock Icon. Read her bio. She got into this band, because the band payed more, than her modeling gigs. After her music career. She opened an Art Studio. Quite a character.
It was an old rerun of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” It was about the hippest show of that era and would put on controversial acts and were constantly hounded by the clueless censors of the network. The world was tripping on a new awareness of the wonders of our minds.
Grace Slick, razing city blocks with her vibrato since 1965. 😂😂
White Rabbit is based on the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll. Slick remarked that parents shouldn't be surprised their kids used drugs after reading them Alice in Wonderland at bedtime. 😂😂😂
LMBO, yup, That sounds like something Grace would say
@garyarnett1220 I mean, what do you expect from someone who announced she was going to name her first child God, only to actually name her China? 😂 It was never clear to me whether that was China the country or China the table setting. 😂😂😂
Grace Slick was amazing in her prime!
p.s. Grace is alive today and 85 years old.
This was on the Smothers Brothers comedy hour in 1967. Woodstock was also in 1967. Now let me give you the clues White Rabbit, Hookah smoking Caterpillar, Chess pieces talking and moving, One pill makes you larger and one makes you small all point to Alice in Wonderland
Well, Woodstock was in 1969, but I otherwise am right there with you.
1967 was the Monterey Pop Festival
Woodstock was actually in the summer of 1969, the "Monterrey Pop Festival" was in the summer of 1967, this started the "Summer of Love" movement in 1967.
This also refers to LSD and mind-altering substances from that era.
@@ZulcanPrime Almost like something can have two meanings at the same time.
The Smothers Brothers were a folk music duo. They had a variety show back in the late 1960s. They got in a lot of trouble with the network (CBS) because they were constantly including anti-war material in their show (this was during Vietnam). They looked like a couple of nerdy upper middle-class guys but were very vocal about politics, especially anti-war messaging. Eventually the network canceled their program.
Technically the show wasn't canceled. CBS just decided not to create any more shows while the brothers were still under contract for a specific number of shows. This prevented them from moving to another network without being in violation of contract. Every once in a while CBS would call them back in to do a special which the network had full artistic control over.
Alice in wonderland =Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall, men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go, Red Queen's off with her head. dormouse said
Feed your head
“White Rabbit” was penned by Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick when she was still a member of the band The Great Society. She borrowed the song’s trippy imagery from Lewis Carroll’s timeless children’s books, Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. “The 1960s resembled Wonderland for me,” Slick told the outlet. “Like Alice, I met all kinds of strange characters, but I was comfortable with it.”The song’s mind-expanding meaning came with the help of mind-expanding substances. “In the 60s, the drugs were not ones like heroin and alcohol that you take to blot out a terrible life, but psychedelics: marijuana, LSD and shroomies,” Slick said. “Psychedelic drugs showed you that there are alternative realities. You open up to things that are unusual and different, and, in realizing that there are alternative ways of looking at things, you become more accepting of things around you.”
She admits the tune is darkly tinged. “It’s not saying everything’s going to be wonderful,” she added. “The Red Queen is shouting off with her head and the White Knight is talking backwards. Lewis Carroll was looking at how things are run and the people who rule us.”
But the main message comes with the closing line feed your head, wailed in repetition. “[It is] both about reading and psychedelics,” she said of the lyric. “I was talking about feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention.” The song opens in a hazy disjointed death march before an intoxicating guitar riff slithers up through the smoke and into the ear. Slick’s sharp, defiant words pierce the song as she bellows, 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 10 feet tall.
While heady, the seemingly out-there lyrics come together to make sense. Like Carroll’s titular character, Alice, who changes size after eating something strange or drinking a peculiar liquid, the song depicts the same feeling of change that comes with drug use.
And if you go chasing rabbits / And you know you’re going to fall, the song continues, saying if you follow your curiosities down the rabbit hole, there will be a smoking caterpillar, in a sense, there to guide you through your drug-induced state.
When logic and proportion / Have fallen sloppy dead, Slick sings. She warns that things won’t always make sense and that might seem threatening when the White Knight is talking backwards / And the Red Queen’s off with her head. She sings it’s important to Remember what the dormouse said / Feed your head / Feed your head.
one of my best memories aside from hanging at Airplane house when I was a kid a couple of times was an spur of the moment concert. the band played on a balcony above Neda"s flowers over Haight St in 67 or 68.The street filled with people and a blast was had till the cops showed up to clear the street. PS before they were famouse they played at my school in SF.
Wow, I'm so glad you noticed that at the beginning about having a hard time slipping into the rhythm. As a musician of many years and playing in a lot of bands and all that, it's one of my favorite things both to do and execute but also to be subject to while listening, and that is to be ambiguous or even misled as to what the ultimate downbeat will be when things get rolling. Everything about that is so cool. And yeah, I don't remember experiencing that on the studio cut, but at least for this live performance, I had exactly the same feeling as you described It surprised me.
Grace Slick is an icon
a friend of mine smoked a joint with her back in the day
Agreed
My favorite song is after the Airplane turned into the Jefferson Starship and did "Miracles"
Love your VW Bus comment Britt. Til I was 13, our family car was a VW Bus, not because we were hippies but because it was the only vehicle that could fit a family of 10.
Keep up the great work.
They were a comedy act that later got their own show called The smothers Brothers I think it was Dick and Tom Smothers Check it out You might find it funny along with another comedy hour called Laugh-In with Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and many many others Then again you might have had to been born in the '50s to appreciate the '60s lol
Grace Slick once quipped that she didn't have a voice for lullabies - she can truly belt it out!
Of course, its not true........she sang
"Lather" on SURREALISTIC PILLOW
I moved into a house that Jefferson Airplane had just moved out of in the late 70s. Shout out to Bolinas, CA. The day I moved in I went to pee and pulled up the toilet seat cover. On the bottom of the cover, the gold record to White Rabbit was glued to the bottom of the cover. I was stolen from me years later. Jefferson Airplane devolved into a 80s hair band playing bland pop music and changed their name a couple of times.
I saw Jefferson Airplane perform these songs live in Ithaca, NY when I was in high school in 1967. There was a large screen backdrop behind them on which they projected swirling colors & shadows. It was all very "trippy" (as in a trip on LSD). It was a great show. These videos came from the Smothers Brothers, a variety show hosted by Dick & Tommy Smothers. They were musicians and comedians. Dick was the straight guy and Tommy was the sidekick. "Mom always liked you best!"
6:26
Alice’s adventures in wonderland…
Through the looking glass?
The vocal is by Grace Slick, a voice like none other and if you'll think of Alice in Wonderland it might help you understand it will help. Quite a song.... The group was awesome, check out some of their stuff like their greatest hits and enjoy...
Grace Slick one of the great women rock singers of that time (my time) love both songs
Both of these songs were written by grace slick with her previous band. When she joined Jefferson airplane and brought her songs with her it was magical.
"The Great Society"?
Actually Somebody to Love was written by Grace’s brother in law, Darby Slick, who was also a member of The Great Society.
@@pjg58x Very cool! I didn't know that much about them.
That clip was from the smothers Brothers comedy hour in the '60s that was Tommy talking back then you couldn't say smoke a joint or drop a hit acid and you had the skirt around it in the song.
But banana???
The original version is the best and listened to with headphones! Close your eyes and listen to her voice, especially the crescendo! Goose bumps every time!
This is from 1967, but whoever posted it on UA-cam took it off an E! Network rerun of the TV show this was part of, probably in the 1990s or early 2000s. The TV show was called "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour."
I was lucky enough to meet and hang out with the wonderful Grace Slick some around 2010.
She is also a visual artist and I was the event photographer for a gallery that showed her work. My job was to shadow her while she mingled with the patrons and sold her art. She's very funny but all business when it's time for business.
She told me she didn't have much range for high notes, but in her range she was extremely powerful.
The original hippie chick rock star, along with her friend Janis Joplin.
Grace Slick, the lead singer is one of the most amazing voices in Rock!!! I just always loved this song because of the uniqueness of it and just took it with a grain of salt. The Alice in Wonderland story basically! Then Someone to Love is another classic song!!!! ❤❤❤❤❤
I was pretty young in the sixties, but if I had to pick one song to represent that decade, it would likely be this one. Great song.
Haven't commented in a bit, but just have to say, your channel is the best. I absolutely love watching you from your era finding music from my era. The last couple of days with Freddie Fender and now Jefferson Airplane puts such a smile on my face. I am so grateful for your channel and that younger people can groove to the music that I did!
Welcome back! Thank you so much !
The Jefferson Airplane was at the for front of Acid Rock along with such bands as Iron Butterfly, Stephen Wolf and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Are you experienced? I aaammmm!
@Howie-du7ov I was a frequent flyer. Frog, widow pain, barrel, and yes Purple Haze. Spent 3 years in San Francisco 73-76.
Gracie Slick, One of the best ever.Thx Britt
Grace Slick. That is a voice that launched a thousand trips. 😊
The Smothers Brothers Show is what you're watching. The Smothers Brothers [their real name, they WERE real brothers] were the funniest duo of the 1960's and 70's and beyond. ..they could sing nd play music well, but they were comedians, and controversial...it's hard to explain here but the younger one, Dick Smothers, you see here, played the straight man perfectly to his older brother Tommy's quirky mischievous dumb guy persona. I saw them in concert once, the made us laugh so hard, we were still laughing all 100 miles riding home!! Check them out. I guarantee you'll be on the floor.
I guess Alice is now officially dead and forgotten. RIP. I wouldn't be surprised if all of Lewis Carroll's classics are banned or burned within the next four years.
Sad but true. 😥
The Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" is the ultimate psychedelic song.
Simply the greatest psychedelic rock song of all time, although Jim Morrison and Pink Floyd might have some to say about that...
Obviously you have never read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (also known as Alice in Wonderland) an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. Every bizarre character and substance you heard in the song is taken directly from the book.
White Rabbit is a psychedelic trip that follows Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland) storyline. They are playing on the Smother's Brother's variety show, an edgy (for the time) comedy show that regularly pushed against 60's TV censor's with its underlying and usually thinly disguised anti-war/anti-establishment political tone.
That's a concert I will never forget, at least the parts that are not too foggy.
I was in love with Grace Slick's voice.
Yes psychedelic rock was a thing and Grace Slick/Jefferson Airplane were some of the pioneers. As everyone has said, White Rabbit was a reference to Alice In Wonderland and back in those days we all understand what that was and the chemicals references you noticed. Welcome to the late '60s Britt, definitely a different time with different priorities.
The song is Alice in Wonderland story to music.
The Smothers Brothers … Tom and Dick are real brothers. Musicians and comedians. Tom is older and plays a little dim witted character who happens to be an expert with the Yo-Yo. Dick plays the straight man who is “superior” to his brother. Their humor tended to be politically controversial in the late 1960’s, mostly propelled by Tommy. They really pushed the limits for television at the time. Eventually getting them fired. However their show introduced many tremendous musicians. Every one of which you should listen to.
Their mom always liked Dicky more than Tommy.
I expected the comments to be about psychedelic era with nothing about the Smothers brothers. But the comments are the opposite. The Smothers brothers played a folk rock duo who could never get through a song without bickering. Their tag line was "Mother loves you best". But underneath it they were very political and got kicked off the air for their attacks on the Viet Nam war. Dick Smothers actually got in a fist fight at a party with Bill Cosby because he thought Cosby was wasting his fame in being apolitical.
The psychedelic era was basically 1967 (the summer of love) and 1968. It had a British version, like early Pink Floyd, and an American version with Jefferson Airplane probably the most famous. Additionally they had a place in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco which became the home of the movement. Crosby, Stills, and Nash formed at a party they threw. But there were more out there groups like the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the 13th Floor Elevator. Sometimes all of the music of that era gets categorized as psychedelic which seems to stretch the term a bit. But it was musically and politically a big deal.
I would say that it was more 65 -68
It,s a sixties thing Britt. Don't worry about it.
girl, i was looking for this two songs for deacades, especialy the "white rabbit" .... had them in my brain, never knew was the "jeferson airplaines" ... thumb up for revealing the mistery ❤
Grace Slick: the voice that launched a thousand trips. I saw them do both these songs at the Fillmore West around 1968. I was in the Navy at the time
0:18 ooohhh gurl ... Welcome to the psychedelic vibe of the 60s 70s 😂 if I recall they sang this at Woodstock
The way you were looking at the camera with the side eye was perfect timing !! Lol
yes, based on Alice in Wonderland, also they were on a psychedelic trip
Grace Slick: The Voice that Launched a Thousand Trips.
Another San Francisco 60's band. They were great. Saw them at a free concert they put on in Golden Gate Park.
There is actually a ton of nuance to the meaning of this that worked as social messaging colored in the world of Alice In Wonderland and current social and music trends in the counterculture.
It was also revolutionary because she was another of the handful of young women who were starting to rise and come into their own in the mostly male-dominated rock scene at the time.
Leslie, they're just kick ass songs, lol. ❤
Yeah, if you're not familiar with Alice in wonderland, this song is going to go right over your head, lol
The intro was by Tommy Smothers, who was in a comedy duo with his brother Dick, often involving music. Tommy was the one with a ditzy persona. A friend (now sadly deceased) who was a stand-up comic worked with them once, and liked Tommy but said Dick was a dick.
The lightshow crew that travelled with them were called "The Headlights"
White Rabbit is about Alice in wonderland
For lyrics, Grace drew inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. In her memoir Somebody to Love, Grace recalls: "the lyrics allude to the hypocrisy of the older generation swilling one of the hardest drugs (alcohol) known to man, but telling us not to use psychedelics." Seeking to remind her parents' generation that they were the ones who had filled the minds of hers with children's stories that glamorized "fun with chemicals," Grace then leads listeners through a few examples: In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her entourage get high on poppies, Peter Pan sprinkles fairy dust on everyone to make them able to fly, and finally leads us to, as Grace herself puts it, "the biggest druggie of them all, Alice."
Part of the soundtrack of my misspent youth.😇
Grace Slick was with another San Francisco group called The Great Society when she wrote these two songs. She left them and joined Jefferson Airplane, which was looking for a lead vocalist after Signe Andersen left, and brought the two songs with her. They both became huge hits.
Read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and this song will make sense.
Thinking back Alice in Wonderland may have had a hidden message!
The rhythm is a rock version of Bolero by French composer Maurice Ravel and it is a march.
The topic is of course, Alice in Wonderland. And Grace wrote both of these songs.
So fun to see Britt gettin' DOWN in her chair on this one!
Feed your head love it!
Its about Alice in Wonderland. Mind opening novel and matching music.
This performance was on "The Smothers Brothers" TV program.
I saw them live in Houston Texas in the late sixties. She is referring to dropping Acid and referring to Alice in Wonderland.
Donovan (British Singer) made fun of a hippie myth that people could get high if they smoked a banana peel. He called it "mellow yellow'. Funny reference by the Smothers brothers.
White Rabbit was written in 1967 at the height of the so called "Counter Culture" sweeping America. This was the worst year for casualties from the Vietnam War, it was the year that haight ashbury was in every head line. The TV show was The Smother's Brothers Comedy Hour.
One of my top 10 songs. Always loved the Jefferson Airplane and also being on the Smothers Brothers show. They were a huge deal in the 60's show. They had 2 lead singers. I do believe it was Austin Powers.
Their later stuff as Jefferson Starship is more melodic and Grace Slick's voice only ever gets better ❤ like "We Built This City"
I think the flower Child days back in San Francisco when drugs we’re passed around freely!!!
"The ones that mother gives you/don't do anything at all" - sorta like prayer, no amount of kneeling will get you "off".
I saw Jefferson Airplane in concert in 1969 and 1970. They were my favorite live band.
The 'gunny guy' was one of the Smothers Brothers. You might want to check out some of their comedy bits. They were classic!
this is a clip from the Smothers Brothers Show. it was a great show back in the day.
Read Alice in Wonderland, a childrens' book, authored by Englishman Lewis Carroll, & published in 1865. This song (released in 1967) brings in the psychedelic element over 100 years after the book was published.
*******
It was the sixties!
"Somebody To Love" has been used in movies and tv shows such as; St. Vincent (w/Bill Murray), Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (w/Johnny Depp, among others), Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks), and A Serious Man (critically acclaimed, mostly B-List actors)
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was originally on CBS in the late ‘60s. E didn’t appear until the lare ‘80s, I think, and focused on show business news.
Alice in wonderland was written in 1865.
Did you not get the "Alice in Wonderland" references?
She did not.
Regarding the introductory comments about bananas, the hippies in the sixties put out a troll to trick the man and the establishment fell for it hook, line, and sinker, judging from the Time Magazine article from 1967 raising alarms over kids smoking banana peels.
[snip]
Delicious Legality. The kick is known to hippies as “electrical bananas” or “mellow yellow.”* Banana-heads scrape the white fibers from the inside of the peels, boil the scrapings into a paste, which is then baked. The dark brown ash that results is smoked in hand-rolled cigarette “joints” or in pipes, tastes vaguely like a burning compost heap.
Most people who have tried mellow yellow do not try it again. The reason is simple: lots of work for little, if any, high. But banana-heads find the craze appealing, largely because of its delicious legality. Already they have taken to wearing T shirts emblazoned with a blue United Fruit Co. seal. Sales of bananas at Harvard Square groceries have tripled in the past week. Highlight of Manhattan’s Easter Sunday “bein” in Central Park was a raggle-taggle mob brandishing a giant 3-ft.-long mock banana and chanting “Banana! Banana! Ba-nan-a!” as they snake-danced through the bemused multitude, cheered on by girls wearing banana crowns, while one student, dressed in a yellow slicker, tried to pass himself off as the biggest banana of all.
State of Mind. In San Francisco’s psychedelphic Haight-Ashbury section, Top Banana Larry Starin, 26, has even opened the Mellow Yellow Co. to sell half-ounce portions of baked banana scrapings-enough, he says, for 35 to 40 joints-for $5 (the cost to Starin: less than 5¢ for each half-ounce). Starin plans to give away the “worthless” banana meat to underfed Haight hippies.
[/snip]
The opening line, "One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small" is an innocent reference to Alice in Wonderland, for sure. But it's probably a reference to the hallucinogens that were becoming very popular at the time as well. With the line, "But the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all" might confirm that if we're certain mothers passed out aspirin rather than LSD in those days. I know mine did.
Alice through the looking glass
The original rabbit hole ... full of mystery and adventure.
In the 60s the word "head" was a popular word for "stoner". "Feed your head" makes sense when you understand the reference. A hookah is a smoking device with water that cools off the harshness of what is being smoked. The hookah is being smoked by a caterpillar and, of course, caterpillars transform into something new and beautiful. Alice in Wonderland is a perfect story (platform) for a song about the evolving drug culture of the 1960s.
Some of those ‘60’s ones were a little different. Think Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. “Look at all the pretty colors!” 🫨
White rabbit is Alice in wonderland
My favorites are after they changed their name to Jefferson Starship (and Marty Balin led songs). "Miracles", "count on me", "run away", "with your love". All beautiful songs.