(Credits: Far Out / Noord-Hollands Archief / Fotoburo de Boer)
Mon 19 January 2026 21:00, UK
Back in 1969, The Beatles emerged into the cold breeze of London’s rooftops to play an impromptu set, which not only became their first public performance in three years but also became the lasting image of the legendary outfit before they went their separate ways a few months later.
Not only was that rooftop concert one of the defining moments of the Fab Four, but it is inarguably among the most iconic moments in the entire history of rock and roll. Playing a little over 40 minutes before the local bobbies shut things down, the show became a fitting farewell for the beloved band, who would split up the following year. As it turns out, though, The Beatles weren’t the first band to take their performance to those dizzying heights.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, away from the mop-top hairdos of the Apple Corps offices, America’s rock and roll rebels were growing out their hair and attempting to revolt against the mechanics of the music industry. Although hippiedom soon descended into little more than a fashion sense, with anybody wearing flared trousers and long hair put in the same camp as Abbie Hoffman, the true spirit of the subculture was rooted in grassroots politics and DIY music.
Namely, groups like Jefferson Airplane aimed to bring their music to the people, without shilling out or selling their souls to the industry. Bizarrely, though, the band managed to strike a deal with, of all labels, RCA Victor, giving their grassroots rebellion a rather impressive budget, and allowing the psychedelic rockers to live a wild life of rock and roll excess.
You could fill multiple volumes with the tripped-out, utterly unbelievable anecdotes that Jefferson Airplane amassed during their heyday, from Grace Slick’s plan to dose President Nixon with LSD to the West German riot which resulted in multiple arrests during their days as Jefferson Starship. In fact, the Airplane were such a chaotic band that the fact they performed on a New York rooftop back in 1968 is little more than a footnote.
Months before The Beatles convinced George Harrison to drag himself up on the roof of Apple Corps, Slick and the gang took to the skies above Manhattan, bringing their acid-dripped hippie rock to the rooftop of the Schuyler Hotel. In the end, though, that impromptu performance only lasted for the duration of one full song, ‘The House at Pooneil Corners’, before the NYPD came to crack down on the public concert.
“We were the first to disturb an entire neighbourhood of office workers on a rooftop,” Grace Slick later laughed, per All About Jazz. “We performed two songs, loud, at midday. No one knew where the music was coming from or why.” If the history of Jefferson Airplane is anything to go by, the band didn’t particularly need a ‘why’, but in this case, their inspiration came from the architect of French New Wave cinema, Jean-Luc Godard.
As the vocalist recalled, “Godard put us up there and filmed us from across the street as well as people looking up.” The shot was a planned segment for the director’s documentary One AM, but that film never materialised, with Godard soon shifting his attention to The Rolling Stones for his film Sympathy For The Devil.
In the end, though, the performance saw the light of day within DA Pennebaker’s One PM, by which time it had already been overshadowed by a rather more chilled-out rooftop gig in London.
Grace Slick, though, does not hold any grudges, fondly remembering that 1968 trip up to the roof. “It was way cool until the cops showed up,” he remembered, concluding, “No one went to jail, though,” which should probably give you a good indication of just how wild the rest of Slick’s stories are.
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