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October 19th, 2026 · 10:45pm BST
While psychedelic bands were ten-a-penny in the late 1960s, with the style having become the flavour of the moment, only a small handful of acts were ever going to be able to find success in the charts, and it was going to take something special to topple the pop acts who had been so dominant throughout the early part of the decade.
Despite its widespread popularity, psychedelia wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that was guaranteed mainstream attention due to its controversial promotion of drug use, experimental sound, and deliberate attempts to be part of a counterculture movement that actively avoided association with the mainstream.
That said, if a song had potential to grab the attention of the masses, it would find a way, and given how the two songs that launched the career of Jefferson Airplane weren’t just examples of great psychedelic songs, but examples of incredible pop songwriting and impeccable performance, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they were an instant hit.
However, a large part of why ‘Somebody to Love’ and ‘White Rabbit’, the band’s first two charting singles, proved to be so successful was because of Grace Slick and her unique vocal style. In fact, you could argue that the band would never have taken off had it not been for their choosing to recruit her, and that they would have remained an obscure band consigned to being a footnote in the history of the genre.
Prior to joining the band, Slick had fronted a band called The Great Society, an early acid rock outfit from the Bay Area of San Francisco. They only existed for around a year and therefore garnered little attention, especially because of how ahead of the curve they were artistically, but they had more than just one special thing about them that would eventually become beneficial to their contemporaries.
Around the same time, Jefferson Airplane were parting ways with their original vocalist, Signe Toly Anderson, and the members of the group collectively knew that Slick would be the perfect option to serve as her replacement, particularly because they’d seen what she was capable of bringing to the table.
In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, Slick explained that the band approached her while she was still active in her old group based on the strength of a song that would eventually be repurposed as a Jefferson Airplane song.
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“I was performing ‘White Rabbit’ with The Great Society and Jefferson Airplane asked me to join the band,” she recalled. “I said ‘you betcha’ because I really liked Jack Casady’s playing.”
Of course, Slick was aware of what Jefferson Airplane were capable of, and noted how they had more potential to take off. Bringing her old band’s then-unreleased song with her, as well as ‘Somebody to Love’, she was instantly integrated into the group, and they found themselves giving both tracks a new lick of paint.
“The sound of his bass just knocked my socks off,” she added. “The song is in F sharp, which is difficult for guitar players as it requires some intricate fingering, but Jorma [Kaukonen] and Jack are very good musicians so they were able to adapt to it and do it very well.”
In essence, these songs were too good to fail, and the fact that they were given a second chance and ultimately placed in the hands of a better group of musicians who could give Slick the backing she needed meant that Jefferson Airplane could soar to unprecedented heights and end up being at the forefront of the psychedelic rock movement.
