c
Sat 14 March 2026 20:00, UK
Grace Slick, as well as being the acid queen that defined the psychedelic realm of 1960s counterculture, also boasts one of the strangest career progressions in music history, going from creating the cultural revolution of ‘White Rabbit’ to shilling out for corporate pop rock only a few decades later.
Her unmistakable tones booming across the rolling hills of Woodstock, Slick captured the spirit of the 1960s better than most. In every aspect of her being, the vocalist seemed to typify the attitude, fashion, and lifestyle of the hippie generation, spending more time in the outer-cosmos than most astronauts. Still, a lifestyle so dependent on youth on LSD can only last for so long – a fact that was well-represented in Slick’s close comrade, Jim Morrison.
Hippiedom, for its colossal impact on the cultural realm, only lasted for a handful of years before, as Hunter S Thompson so eloquently put it, the wave finally broke and rolled back. Suddenly, the architects of that wannabe revolution were forced to grow up, and that included Grace Slick. It is no surprise, then, that Jefferson Airplane could only keep the group going for a few more years before throwing in the towel in 1973.
While anybody else would have witnessed the demise of Jefferson Airplane and taken it as their cue to take a break from the music industry, and perhaps even clean up their act, Slick wasted no time in co-forming Jefferson Starship.
By the time the mid-1980s rolled around, though, that well-meaning outfit had morphed into Starship – a sign of just how far Slick had fallen since her hippie heyday.
Even if you haven’t knowingly heard Starship, you are undoubtedly aware of their incessant earworm, ‘We Built This City’. A colossal fall from grace for the acid queen who once tried to dose Richard Nixon with LSD, the 1985 track is about as rebellious as Disneyland. To make matters worse, Slick herself openly despised the song.
Namely, the vocalist couldn’t make sense of the lyrics. “I thought they were ridiculous,” she once told The Guardian. “There isn’t a city built on rock ’n’ roll! Los Angeles was built on oil and oranges and the movie business.”
She also added that Bernie Taupin, one of the song’s writers, was British, “and London obviously isn’t built on rock ’n’ roll.” Although, to be fair, Taupin is actually from Sleaford in Lincolnshire.
Regardless of the exact location of this mystical rock and roll city, Slick declared that ‘We Built This City’ was a “Stupid song”. Yet, it was a stupid song that topped the US singles charts, falling in line with the brightly-coloured, overtly American optimism that exuded from the pop charts of the 1980s like a disease.
Perhaps as a result of the song, Grace Slick retired from music entirely a few years later, in 1990. In the years that have followed, the vocalist has never made any qualms about her utter hatred of the song, despite it being her biggest hit. Nevertheless, it remains a rare blot on the discography of one of America’s most revolutionary voices, seeing her trade acid hippiedom for corporate American pop.