Don't You Want Somebody to Love - Darby Slick
Reflections on the San Francisco Sound
SLG Books, Berkeley, 1991, 132 pp.
ISBN 0-943389-08-9
Darby Slick, lead
guitarist for the Great Society and brother-in-law of Grace Slick, has
written an autobiographical account of the rise of the 'San Francisco Sound'.
Writing only from memory, Slick has produced a distinctly personal perspective
on that time and place. Part self deprecating, part self aggrandizing,
this account of those times, written in an authentic voice by an actual
participant, is priceless. Like all autobiography, accounts of past events
may have been twisted by faulty memory and subconscious self-interest.
But that's what's so much fun - reading someone's subjective impressions
about what happened long ago is always more interesting than a pseudo-objective
observer piecing together an account from a compilation of old magazine
pieces.
Darby grew up in Palo Alto ("...next door to me lived a fat
little girl with buck teeth and a foul mouth named Grace Wing."),
and it seems his family were well off (domestics, Hawaiian vacations, beach
homes), but he doesn't say much about his parents, other than that they
"drank alcoholically". A little family history would have helped to place
his life in context - and help the reader imagine how his parents reacted
to the non-standard course his life was taking. Much of the text concerns
Darby's views on the development of the 1960's scene in San Francisco,
and on the rise of the counter-culture in the USA in general, about which
he often provides thoughtful commentary. There are times when his prose
is riveting. His vivid account of a guitar slinging session with Jerry
Garcia in a packed loft brings to mind those rare, life-affirming moments
when you experience life with an effortless joy, from which the clarity
of memory never diminishes.
There's also plenty of stuff on the music of
the Great Society - how they rehearsed, how and when songs were written,
and who played what, on which song. Darby offers another take on the breakup
of the Great Society and Grace's subsequent flight to Jefferson Airplane.
Everyone who has told that story has a subtly different version. Yeah,
he had been talking about splitting to India to study sarode, but it was
just talk. He felt betrayed by Grace, and harbored resentment against her
for the next twenty years.
The story ends abruptly, with Darby jetting
back from India to enjoy the success of "Somebody to Love". I
would have liked a little more detail on his life to the present time,
particularly on how well a monster hit song provided for him financially.
Darby never thought much of Jefferson Airplane, he thought they were a
bit too eager for commercial success, and that they were a bit too self
absorbed - "Perhaps the Airplane people, particularly Marty and Paul,
were early leaders of the self-esteem movement." He didn't think much
of them musically, either.
Darby appears to be pretty open about the events
in his life, except for one omission. Since the book was published in 1991,
he has been quoted as saying he was shooting heroin by the time the Great
Society disintegrated - but there's no mention of heroin use here. Omitting
such a significant detail reduces the credibility of the book. The decision
not to research any of the events in the book (especially when memory proved
faulty) also reduces the value of this book as an historical source. For
instance, what was Oscar's last name? And was it Van Gelder, or Vandergelder?
I suspect that instead of setting out to write a book, Darby might have
begun these memoirs as therapy for his oft-mentioned recovery from substance
abuse.
The writing style is a little rough-edged - Darby's use of commas
lends a cadence to the text that jars my ear - but who knows, maybe that's
how he talks. The text could have used another go-over by a proofreader.
There are many misspellings, and the use of "it's" and "its" is consistently
confused. There are also many occasions when sentences will abruptly stop
in the middle of the page, and continue on the next line.
The packaging
of the book is very well done. There's a great Stanley Mouse cover, a bunch
of reproductions of Great Society concert posters, and a decent, if somewhat
random, selection of black and white photographs.
reprinted from: Journal of Trionic Physics, No. 3, August 1996.