Reviewed by Catherine Molanphy
It's been 18 years since the Barbara Rowes biography of Grace was published, which is a long time to wait to hear Grace tell the story of her life in her own words. Thankfully, in this book, Grace's co-author Andrea Cagan intrudes very little on Grace's often funny and ironic musings on the events of her life.
And yet, the picture we get of Grace-the-person in her auto-bio is still an abbreviated one; for Grace shares with all artists of fierce talent and charisma the flaw of myopically limited self-knowledge. She sees herself only as a smart-mouthed oddball with a rebellious streak and an affinity for the perverse, who happened to be in the right place at the right time (those being San Francisco and the birth of a rock'n'roll revolution in the mid- to late-60's.)
But that is only part of the story that is Grace Slick, only part of what her fans (this writer definitely included) have always admired about her. She either fails to appreciate or glosses over her brilliance as an artist--as a singer of unparalleled originality and an ingenious ability to improvise counterpoint harmony. With a voice that was always maniacally straddling her head and chest, but rarely succumbing to either one, never sacrificing pitch in the struggle. What she did end up sacrificing was her throat apparatus-- (she's had several throat node operations) so unrelenting was she in her vocal gymnastics that she paid no heed to the damage she was doing until much later in her career. When speaking of her node operations, Grace has commented, "I have a stupid throat." No, I don't think Grace has a stupid throat-- it's just that she always gave all of herself to the music, and there are not many throats that would have stood up to the kind of abuse she subjected hers to. The aural legacy she has left on record proves her dedication.
Among other talents she fails to acknowledge in herself are her compelling songwriting and her magnificent creativity in stage costumes and fashion in general. She truly helped define the look of the times--never being just a hippie, but a regal hippie. Whether adorned as Maid Marion at the Monterey Pop Festival; belting "Feed your head!!" in a queenly caftan on the Smothers Brothers show; or boogying to "Volunteers" on the Dick Cavett Show in a see-through ultra micro-mini dress with a priest's maniple dangling from her neck; she always showed a flair for dress which contributed to the visual pageantry and mystique of the band called Jefferson Airplane. (To her credit, Grace does mention her unusual and expansive wardrobe in Chapter 14, but attributes it to the idiosyncrasies of the times: "...the sudden, yet natural shift from the rigid dress codes of the fifties to the if-it-feels-right-wear-it free forms of the sixties didn't give me a moment's pause.")
This is all in the way of saying that the life we hear about in Somebody To Love? may not jibe very well with the sounds and images we have heard and seen of Grace Slick over the years on our stereos and television screens, but it is a funny and interesting story, told in a style that only Grace herself could employ, which makes this book all the more precious.
The most enjoyable parts of the narrative for me were not the tales of "prurient sex in the sixties" (her words) or of psychedelic debauchery, which comprise the sweet, sticky filling of the book (bits of which are quoted on the dust jacket to seduce the average fluff-loving reader), but rather the "bread" parts of the book-sandwich, the beginning and end where she talks about the segments of her life not spent in the public eye. Her descriptions of her childhood, in particular, are awash in frankness and humor. She recalls her dubious introductions to the world of sex, notably her misconception as a little girl as to the make-up of male genitalia: "I was lying in bed at about 3:00 A.M. one night, ...when my father got up to go to the bathroom. He had to pass by my room to get there, and since my door was open and he was wearing only his pajama top I got a shadowy glimpse of his privates. I wasn't aware of the one penis/two balls setup, and it looked to me like he had a crotch full of swaying thumbs." (p.35) Accompanying this anecdote is her uproarious little drawing of a male nude sporting a set of privates sprung straight from her childhood imagination. I laughed out loud when I read this, partially because my own conception at that age of what the male organ looked like was not too far removed from young Grace's "all thumbs" scenario.
Upon reflection, I think it is Grace's matter-of-fact reflections on being a woman that I enjoyed most in this book, and which caused me to empathize with her more as a human being rather than worship her as a pop-culture goddess as I have always done in the past. Her observations on sexism are always dead-on, but never whiny or submissive, as so many feminist authors' laments are prone to being. Grace comes off in this book, as indeed she has in her public life, as being a woman who always took the equality of the sexes for granted and acted accordingly; and if anyone responded to her behavior with sexist misconceptions, she regarded them with calm bemusement rather than indignation. Such was her reaction when she and a friend from Finch College went off on a weekend to Princeton and scandalized the frat boys by performing a little ditty written on the spot by Grace, containing (admittedly) some of the nastiest lyrics I have ever heard, especially considering that this was happening in the early sixties. (See, now you gotta go out and buy the book to find out what all the dirty words are!) Grace's comment on the debacle: "If one of their male college buddies had offered up that song, they would have just thought it was kind of stupid, but would they have asked him to leave and never come back? Puh-leeze." (p.57)
There are lots of other fetching little nuggets like the above two scattered throughout the book which make it a really fun read. In comparison, I found her outlining of her relationships and marriages over the years to be somewhat tedious, although I suppose it's a necessary element of an autobiography. Again, most interesting are her descriptions of her teenage boyfriends with all their oddities and awkwardness, as opposed to the rehashing of her adult romances, essentially Jerry-Spencer-Paul-Skip. Any obsessive Grace fan like myself has heard all of that before and will not really garner any startling revelations from this book on that front.
Another disappointment was the pictures, or the lack thereof. Being the proprietress of a website dedicated to pictures of Grace, I'm something of an image hound; and so the paucity of new (so to speak) Airplane-era photos was a bummer for me. There are a few nice pics of Grace as a child and teenager that I'd never seen before, and interspersed throughout are Grace's drawings, which are very cool and clever. I have yet to scan them in to my site.... but I promise I will. In the center there is a glossy color section dedicated to her paintings of the era's luminaries: Garcia, Joplin, etc. It's nice to see her art, but I wish some of the glossies had been given up to fab vintage photos of her in all her psychedelic glory. What can I say? Grace's image appeals to me as much as her words and her singing... I'm an unapologetic visuals junkie.
But, on the whole, this book was satisfying and fun... it did not appeal so much to my Jefferson-obsessed sensibilities--which would have delighted in loads of in-depth discussions about all her Plane-era song lyrics--but to my more well-rounded half, which will occasionally take pleasure in just hearing a funny account of an interesting life. That the life I was reading about just happened to be my beloved Grace's only made it a quicker read.
Catherine Molanphy
Staten Island, NY