Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My desk today is truly legendary. Great slick Grea. Hello,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask. We're in the hills above Malibu. Where
Speaker 1: were you during the fire? I was right here and
Speaker 1: they said mandatory evacuation. So I went with a friend
Speaker 1: of mine to a hotel in Santa Monica and watch
Speaker 1: what I thought it was my house burning down on television.
Speaker 1: Turns out the property around it it's burned up, but
Speaker 1: not the house. So I'm back where I used to live. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's great. Now. People always think you think of you
Speaker 1: as a North Cow kind of girl, and here we
Speaker 1: are in so cal and there's a really big different mindset. Whatever,
Speaker 1: how'd you end up in so Cal? Um? I moved
Speaker 1: down here. I thought my daughter was down here, so
Speaker 1: I thought, I've always liked l A. Most people from
Speaker 1: San Francisco are real snobby about l A. And I
Speaker 1: want to say to them, how about the movie industry,
Speaker 1: which has influenced your life, whether you think so or not.
Speaker 1: This is a storytelling land and that's been what people
Speaker 1: have done forever, is tell stories either around a fire
Speaker 1: or in a big cinema So what are a couple
Speaker 1: of your favorite movies. Oh, start for starters, the old
Speaker 1: uh Disney stuff, Fantasia, Snow White, and The Seven Dwarves.
Speaker 1: But during the fifties I didn't care for the style
Speaker 1: of drawing that they did with Disney. I liked the
Speaker 1: earlier style, Like you have night on Bald Mountain in
Speaker 1: Fantasia and you see this black mountain and it starts
Speaker 1: opening up and it's this horrible creature with red eyes.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really well done. So I like that
Speaker 1: the red shoes that taught me don't give up. She
Speaker 1: kills herself. Oh, I can't decide whether I want to
Speaker 1: be a ballerina or or be married to this guy.
Speaker 1: How about both? You can't do both? Come on? So
Speaker 1: I wanted at all the kid the man job, and
Speaker 1: it can be done. Something's going to suffer, though, assuming
Speaker 1: looking back to your career from an outside perspective, you've
Speaker 1: achieved all of that more or less. Yeah, you hang
Speaker 1: onto it for a while. I think the person who
Speaker 1: suffered most with this is my daughter because she's all
Speaker 1: sensitive and stuff, which is part of her generation. They
Speaker 1: have like a lot of issues. Okay, let's start to
Speaker 1: you don't have any issues. Oh I probably do. I'm
Speaker 1: just not aware of them because we didn't talk about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to Fantagia. The big thing. Fantagia was
Speaker 1: made in the thirties, big thing in the sixties, came
Speaker 1: back to the theaters and you would go on drugs.
Speaker 1: Did you have that experience too? Sometimes? Yeah, okay, And
Speaker 1: then you're saying, even though looking inward in California is
Speaker 1: really inside seeking, staten't do that. You never went to
Speaker 1: the psychiatrist. Never. I went to a psychiatrist once because
Speaker 1: the left side of my body hurt, and I went
Speaker 1: to heart people know your heart too. I went to
Speaker 1: muscle people. No, maybe it's psychosomatic. Go to psychiatrists not Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't do psychosomatic. That's corny. But I went anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll do what i'm told occasionally. So I went to
Speaker 1: the head of UC Parnassus, and I did four sessions
Speaker 1: with him. And he said, is that your purse? He's
Speaker 1: looking down. I put it on the floor and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: its off the big and he got up, walked over
Speaker 1: and lifted it up. He said, are you right handed?
Speaker 1: I said yeah. He said so you wear this on
Speaker 1: your left shoulder and I said yeah. He said, why
Speaker 1: do you have so much stuff? I said, well, maybe
Speaker 1: I want to go to France tomorrow. So I got
Speaker 1: my passport of toothbrush on your pants. He said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Either I don't load the purse
Speaker 1: or start wearing in the right side for a while.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, he's right, So that's fun. You have to
Speaker 1: go to a psychiatrist for that, for real practical advice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they couldn't figure out what was wrong. It kept
Speaker 1: hurting and they didn't know. So that's that's the only Okay.
Speaker 1: But if we were here alone till midnight, just the
Speaker 1: two of us, would you be plumbing your inner depths
Speaker 1: or will be more talking external stuff? Oh? Sometimes it
Speaker 1: depends on you. In other words, if you I'll talk
Speaker 1: about anything except physics, because I don't know anything about physics.
Speaker 1: I didn't even take physics in high school. After chemistry
Speaker 1: forget it. Yeah, I didn't like algebra. Love geometry because
Speaker 1: that's spatial, but I don't like algebra. And I told
Speaker 1: the algebra teacher, Uh, he said, why are you looking
Speaker 1: out the window? I said, because I don't add letters.
Speaker 1: I add numbers and he said, well, but you have
Speaker 1: to pass the course. I said, in California public school,
Speaker 1: if you show up, you get a D. You can't
Speaker 1: funk if as long as you show up. So I
Speaker 1: showed up. Well, the I D. I ever got. I
Speaker 1: like everything else, but I didn't like algebra. And I said,
Speaker 1: not only that, sir, but I'm never going to have
Speaker 1: to use algebra. And I never have because I knew
Speaker 1: myself well enough at that time to know that's one
Speaker 1: area I'm not going into. No thanks, okay. So Joe
Speaker 1: Walsh says, the challenges is to live not to die young.
Speaker 1: There's this seven club. A lot of rock stars die
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, especially drugs. You've lived through it, and
Speaker 1: since it's totally available on Wikipedia, you're going to be
Speaker 1: eighty in the fall. How do you feel about getting older?
Speaker 1: I'm not really fond of it. But the only the
Speaker 1: only thing that's good that happens unless your brains are fried,
Speaker 1: is you acquire some wisdom and you aren't quite as
Speaker 1: frantic about everything. You realize that there are very few
Speaker 1: things that are that important. Just relax because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: for one thing, I don't have much longer. If you're eighty,
Speaker 1: you don't have a whole hell of a lot of time,
Speaker 1: So just relax and enjoy whatever you got left. There
Speaker 1: was that movie The bucket List, which actually I did
Speaker 1: not see. But at this stage your life, is there
Speaker 1: anything you feel you have to or want to do
Speaker 1: before you pass? No, it's all already gone. In other words,
Speaker 1: I didn't learn how to ride a horse, but now
Speaker 1: every bone in my body break if I tried to
Speaker 1: learn how to ride a horse. I never did. Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendrix and uh Peter O'Toole, But see they're both dead,
Speaker 1: so I can't do them anyway. So everything I have
Speaker 1: on a bucket list is not available. How how old
Speaker 1: were you when you first lost your forginity? You were not?
Speaker 1: Were you the bad girl growing up? Or were you
Speaker 1: sort of a street arrow? I was bad ish, but
Speaker 1: I didn't get in a lot of trouble. Uh. My
Speaker 1: friend and my best friend and I said, I went
Speaker 1: to a private school, Casteleia in Palo Alto for my
Speaker 1: junior and senior year. And uh, we used to the
Speaker 1: girls that talked about who are you going out with
Speaker 1: this weekend? And Pam and I would say, oh, Gordon Gilby.
Speaker 1: My parents drank Gordon's gin. Her parents drank Gilby's gin.
Speaker 1: So she and I'd go out and get to screw
Speaker 1: it up together. But we made it home and we
Speaker 1: didn't get arrested. I didn't start getting arrested until I
Speaker 1: was something. Okay, looking at you right now, it does
Speaker 1: not appear you've any had any cosmetic surgery. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: I did about thirty years ago. But you've got to
Speaker 1: keep it up. It doesn't stay. You've got to keep
Speaker 1: it up once every couple of years. Um, eyelids, the eyelids,
Speaker 1: you have to. I've been told you I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to have the eyelids because they droop and you can't
Speaker 1: have any peripheral vision, so that's necessary. What else did eyelids?
Speaker 1: And uh? Pulled up face stuff? Here? It goes around
Speaker 1: the ears and you can see a scar in the
Speaker 1: back of my head where they did it. But that's
Speaker 1: like thirty five or forty years ago, so it's a
Speaker 1: little bit more crude than it is now. Okay, are
Speaker 1: you happy you did it? Irrelevant? Sure, because I kept
Speaker 1: on for another ten years. Uh in the eighties doing
Speaker 1: I was around forty at the time, which means around.
Speaker 1: And so I had another ten years of being on
Speaker 1: a stage and not looking like a drooping slob. But
Speaker 1: after that, I stopped when I was about fifty. So
Speaker 1: after that there's no point in it's expensive and I
Speaker 1: wasn't on a stage. I don't need to look like anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: So at this stage of your life, do you have
Speaker 1: a love life? You have a significant other for some reason? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I used to be a real horn dog, but
Speaker 1: now it went away about ten years ago. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's hormones. I don't know if it's uh.
Speaker 1: Other medical things that I have, one is the ethro melalgoe,
Speaker 1: which is very rare. It is if my feet get
Speaker 1: over about fifty sixty two degrees fahrenheit, feels like somebody
Speaker 1: poured boiling water into But it's so rare they don't
Speaker 1: study it because it's called up. They wouldn't make any
Speaker 1: money off it, so they don't know what causes it.
Speaker 1: They don't know how to care it. It's not people
Speaker 1: who smoke. It's not people who don't smoke. It's not
Speaker 1: people who do. It's not young, it's not all that.
Speaker 1: It's all over the map. Demographically, so they don't know
Speaker 1: anything about it. So I have two pots that I
Speaker 1: keep on either side of the chair where I sit
Speaker 1: and paint, and about four times a day pull the
Speaker 1: pots out, put ice in the pots, put my feet
Speaker 1: in the pots, and that solve the problem, Yes, it does.
Speaker 1: And any other health problems, yeah hard. I've had two
Speaker 1: heart stints, i have Type two diabetes. I had high
Speaker 1: blood pressure. I think it's gone down a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I'm a mess of stuff. I've got really good
Speaker 1: doctors though. Uh, so they keep throwing medication at it
Speaker 1: and then pulling this one out for a period of
Speaker 1: time and then putting that. So I'm my pile of
Speaker 1: non fun drugs. Uh. Do you do still partake of
Speaker 1: drugs that might change your viewpoint? Shall we say no?
Speaker 1: Because uh, people have often said, let's say your drug
Speaker 1: of choice is speed. So they said, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: to any speed anymore, but I do drink. Uh my opinion,
Speaker 1: and it's only my opinion, And as opinion is that
Speaker 1: you can do some other drug that was not your
Speaker 1: drug of choice for a certain period of time. Eventually
Speaker 1: you're gonna wind yourself back to whatever was your drug
Speaker 1: of choice. So I don't do any so called fun
Speaker 1: drugs at all. When did you stop twenty three years ago? Okay,
Speaker 1: do you you went to a A Yeah? And do
Speaker 1: you still go to meetings or not? Yeah? You're not
Speaker 1: supposed to be talking about it though, neither mind, but
Speaker 1: I can talk about you kept talking. But uh, People
Speaker 1: Magazine broke my nanimity about forty years ago anyway, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Well, it's just you brought up the
Speaker 1: program otherwise, know either, like I've had my anonymity broken.
Speaker 1: But I don't care because either you want to get sober,
Speaker 1: you don't what motivated you to get sober? The look
Speaker 1: on my daughter's face, and I thought, I can't keep
Speaker 1: punishing my body this way. I'm too I'm getting too
Speaker 1: old for this, like Danny Glover said, I'm getting too
Speaker 1: old for this ship. And uh, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: Like if I were to get as loaded as I
Speaker 1: did a long time ago, I'd probably kill myself in
Speaker 1: one night because I'm too old. And your drug was alcohol. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: both my sponsor in a whom I've had for a
Speaker 1: long time, and I said, if Roar, which is a
Speaker 1: company German, did they make sobers whatever? If they make
Speaker 1: coludes again seven fourteens and they've been in a dark
Speaker 1: bottle in an ice box somewhere unopened, say for thirty years.
Speaker 1: I did this just to be funny. When my sponsor,
Speaker 1: I said, uh, what would you do, she said, I'd
Speaker 1: ask you to share. You know, this comes up. Everybody
Speaker 1: was in the early seventies. Howard Stern was talking about
Speaker 1: that being soapers. They thought, you know, queyludes were the
Speaker 1: best drug. So uh, at this point in time, I
Speaker 1: know that you go on the road with your art,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about your art. Leader not anymore. You can't
Speaker 1: do it because my feet. Okay, so when did you stop? Uh?
Speaker 1: Five six years ago something like that. Okay, So were
Speaker 1: you more of a homebody or O? Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. The only place I go is to a
Speaker 1: grocery store because it's cold. You know, they keep them
Speaker 1: cold to keep their food fresh. So my feet don't
Speaker 1: mind a grocery store. My feet don't mind a car
Speaker 1: because there is the little thing on they are conditioning
Speaker 1: that points to the feet. So if there's a foot situation,
Speaker 1: I'm good. But most places don't have that. Once every
Speaker 1: six months I'll go to an actual movie, and it's
Speaker 1: something that usually draws my attention so heavily that it
Speaker 1: doesn't my feet. I know they're hurting, but if your
Speaker 1: attention is drawn away enough, then it's okay. So how
Speaker 1: long did the foot things start to happen? When I
Speaker 1: was about fifty three and I moved down here from
Speaker 1: San Francisco, And at first I thought it was Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just because it only happened maybe once
Speaker 1: every two weeks for a short period of time, and
Speaker 1: I went to podiatrists, I went to oriental stuff, and
Speaker 1: nobody can figure out what it was because it's so rare.
Speaker 1: But a friend of mine's brother is a doctor, and
Speaker 1: he found it on of some obscure medical book and
Speaker 1: he called me up from he lives in Ohio, I
Speaker 1: think or somewhere, called me out and said, how does
Speaker 1: this sound? And he read the uh indications what happens
Speaker 1: uh with this saying? And I said, that's it. What's
Speaker 1: the name of etro me all allergy? And I said, oh, yeah, right, whatever,
Speaker 1: but that's what it is. And then you do it.
Speaker 1: The doctors about it looking for answers, yeah, but they
Speaker 1: don't have any because no he studies it. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're a home body, are you tend to be alone
Speaker 1: or people stop by or what? Well? I have friends
Speaker 1: and my ex husband stays here for a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks every month or so, and yeah, okay, so you're
Speaker 1: still friendly with him. Uh, he's my good bunny and boy.
Speaker 1: He came here after the fire, uh and just went
Speaker 1: around fixing everything. I mean, pulled up floors and put
Speaker 1: him went in to home deep and putting new floors.
Speaker 1: He'd uh go over the paint that there'd be a
Speaker 1: crack in the wall and you'd go over with this
Speaker 1: white stuff that you do before you paint. And then
Speaker 1: he painted and he'd climb up on roofs. Induced I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just unbelievable. And what does he do when he's
Speaker 1: not here? He's a production guy. He no, he's lives
Speaker 1: in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Oh. Production road production in Lidditz
Speaker 1: and everything where all the companies are. He does. Uh,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff can be rock and roll or
Speaker 1: he's doing. I think the next thing is Rick Wakeman,
Speaker 1: who is both a musician and a comedian, which sounds
Speaker 1: hard to do, but apparently he pulls it off. And
Speaker 1: he's done Bett Midler, and he's done Us, and he's
Speaker 1: done the Who, and he's done Kiss and he's done
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. So he started cleaning toilets and
Speaker 1: filled at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and worked his way
Speaker 1: up to being a lighting guy and then worked his
Speaker 1: way out to being a production Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning. So your father did what for a living?
Speaker 1: Investment banker and you today an investment banker makes tons
Speaker 1: of money. Back then it was upper middle class. What
Speaker 1: was the upper middle class? Yeah, he didn't make tons,
Speaker 1: but he made enough. And I've had more or less
Speaker 1: the same amount of money because I made about the
Speaker 1: same amount he did. So I've been on uh, kind
Speaker 1: of the same path, except for when I first got
Speaker 1: married a Jerry Slick. He was going to San Francisco
Speaker 1: State and I was modeling at I Magnuts in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So with two people in an apartment, and uh, I'd
Speaker 1: take a car to the train station, train station into
Speaker 1: San Francisco, a bus to I Magnets and then do
Speaker 1: the reverse back home at night. And we lived in
Speaker 1: a house. Uh I remember we were there when Kennedy
Speaker 1: was killed it was ninety dollars a month for how
Speaker 1: Wow in Petrero Hill. So you see how old I am.
Speaker 1: It's been a while. Okay, Um today, do you have
Speaker 1: enough money today? Yes? I'm not rolling around in money,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm good. And is that primarily from music
Speaker 1: or from mart music? Yeah? Definitely from music royalties coming
Speaker 1: and investments, because both my accountant and my ex husband
Speaker 1: manage whatever money is coming through to me. And is
Speaker 1: there any income left from music? Oh? Yeah, okay. And
Speaker 1: then Jefferson Airplane had this famous battle with your manager,
Speaker 1: Matthew Kates. Okay, Now it ends up being a big
Speaker 1: legal case, and I'm a lawyer in a previous lifetime
Speaker 1: having to do with whether you can be both the
Speaker 1: manager in the agent getting digs whatever in the middle
Speaker 1: of that, because supposedly he held all the money. What
Speaker 1: was your perspective? I wasn't with the band when he
Speaker 1: was the manager. So this was before when I was
Speaker 1: a great society and I went to party and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: look there's our new manager Airplane guys, and I looked
Speaker 1: across the room. He's signaling what he is. He had
Speaker 1: on black cape with red line. I said, you're kidding me,
Speaker 1: come on, and sure enough he screwed him over. And
Speaker 1: but it's I was only involved after I joined the
Speaker 1: band because Paul Kantner was with Matthew Cats because of
Speaker 1: the situation with airplane. But Paul was very generous. We're publishing,
Speaker 1: so if you gave him one word, he would put
Speaker 1: you in publishing. But then you're also Matthew So it
Speaker 1: was tricky for years. It may still be going on.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I think it finally ended. It
Speaker 1: certainly went off for decades. It was crazy. Okay, so
Speaker 1: your father was an investment banker and you first grow
Speaker 1: start growing up where Uh let's see, I was born
Speaker 1: in Chicago, came out to l A when US three,
Speaker 1: lived here for a year, moved to San Francisco, lived
Speaker 1: there for about seven years, moved to Palo Alto, lived
Speaker 1: there for another seven years. I went to college in
Speaker 1: New York for a year, then the next year went
Speaker 1: to college in Miami and Florida. Then came back to
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and it's it was starting to happen. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to when you're you know, you're living
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, You're going to school Were you a
Speaker 1: popular girl in school? Oh, I don't know. It's a
Speaker 1: grammar school and we didn't have high school high school,
Speaker 1: uh more or less? Yeah, but I am very, very sarcastic.
Speaker 1: So I got kicked out of the gang. There was
Speaker 1: a gang of girls that were the popular girls, and
Speaker 1: I was sort of in that. But I'm number two.
Speaker 1: Number one was, of course, and she's still a friend.
Speaker 1: One blonde, big boobs. I had dark, kinky hair and
Speaker 1: no boobs and short legs. Otherwise I was great, but
Speaker 1: I got kicked out for being sarcastic, and uh, they
Speaker 1: that's reasonable. Okay. So you were always going your own way? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I was going my own way
Speaker 1: because I liked hanging out with people. Uh, but I
Speaker 1: have a difficult personality and if you pour alcohol on it,
Speaker 1: it's really difficult. Okay. So when did you start pouring
Speaker 1: alcohol on it about? Okay? And you know this about yourself.
Speaker 1: Did you have your this insight back then or only
Speaker 1: as a result of hindsight. No, it's pretty much hindsight
Speaker 1: because we just thought, oh boy, we're getting away with it,
Speaker 1: and isn't this fun? And it was fun for a
Speaker 1: long time. You usually don't repeat stuff that isn't fun
Speaker 1: the first time around. Oddly enough, Paul Kantner uh never
Speaker 1: drank when I lived with him, and I said, why
Speaker 1: don't you drink? He said, well, I tried it in
Speaker 1: high school and made me throw up. I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: made me throw up to it. Who cares? But he
Speaker 1: eventually got into al ca hal unfortunately that's what took
Speaker 1: him out. But uh, you know, it's everybody has a
Speaker 1: different storyline and different reasons for why they do or
Speaker 1: don't do whatever it is they're doing, or there's no reason,
Speaker 1: it's just fun. Okay, So you're in high school. How
Speaker 1: does your father or your parents decided to send you
Speaker 1: from the public to the private high school? That was
Speaker 1: my idea because my friend, uh Judy Levidis was going
Speaker 1: to Castle Out, which is private, and I was in
Speaker 1: public school, pal Wata High School, so I thought that'd
Speaker 1: be fun to go over there because a couple of
Speaker 1: my friends were in private school. So I went asked
Speaker 1: was it different from public school? Well, you wear uniforms
Speaker 1: and there are no boys, which for learning is probably better.
Speaker 1: So you graduate from high school, did you want to
Speaker 1: go to college or that's just what you did. How
Speaker 1: did you end up going to college? And I think
Speaker 1: I was influenced by the Times. Everybody, you go to college,
Speaker 1: that's what you do, you know. So I went to
Speaker 1: probably the easiest college in the world. It's a dip
Speaker 1: ship college in New York that teaches you how to
Speaker 1: go out with Princeton boys, which fork to use speech classes.
Speaker 1: Tricia Nixon went there, that's a well known story. No,
Speaker 1: she's ten years younger than I am, okay, but she
Speaker 1: u When she got to the White House with her father,
Speaker 1: she decided to have a t and invite all the alumni.
Speaker 1: It's real small school, so you can't do that of
Speaker 1: French college. My name was Grace Wing at the time.
Speaker 1: That's my maiden name, so she didn't know. You know,
Speaker 1: if it said Grace Slick, maybe they would have thought twice.
Speaker 1: But so I got an invitation and I went, oh yes.
Speaker 1: And so I had about six seven hundred mics of
Speaker 1: acid in my pocket and a very long pinky fingernail
Speaker 1: for cocaine dip that into a little thing. So I
Speaker 1: figured I'm an entertainer and we gesture a lot. And
Speaker 1: I knew about teas because I've been talked about teas
Speaker 1: at Finch, you stand. You don't sit at a t
Speaker 1: You stand. There are two urns on either side of
Speaker 1: a long table. That's the way they kind of always are,
Speaker 1: and you stand with your cup and you talk to
Speaker 1: where you're talking to. I'm deciding that I'm talking to
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon and the stuff is tasteless, but I get
Speaker 1: a little bit of an in my fair nail out
Speaker 1: of my pocket and just I'm gesturing, I'm talking over
Speaker 1: his cup and he'd be loaded in forty five minutes
Speaker 1: or a half an hour, just the idea of him
Speaker 1: on the acid. But what I learned later on was
Speaker 1: that the guy was nuts. Any we'd go around talking
Speaker 1: to the pictures, you know, so we didn't have to
Speaker 1: do that. But we were standing in line ready to
Speaker 1: go in, and their security on the way, and I
Speaker 1: took Abby Hoffman as my so called husband or partner.
Speaker 1: You know, you can bring somebody, bring one person, and
Speaker 1: we dressed Abbie Hoffman up so he wouldn't know he
Speaker 1: looked like a mob boss, uh in a suit because
Speaker 1: he had the black hair, black eyelasher. And they came
Speaker 1: up and told me, they said, I'm sorry, you can't
Speaker 1: go in. You're a security risk, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I said, I've gotten invitation, yes, but we know who
Speaker 1: you are and you're a security risk. They didn't say
Speaker 1: anything to Abby, not one word, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: just a rock and roll singer. You know. I didn't
Speaker 1: say it, but I wanted to say, you know who
Speaker 1: this is, and so they wouldn't let me in. But
Speaker 1: it's just as well, because that's rude to dose people.
Speaker 1: I'm been dosed, and it's you know, ascid's good if
Speaker 1: you know where you're taking. But being dosed is not
Speaker 1: all Thatwhoever, being the president of the White House and
Speaker 1: the era, you know, what was going on in the
Speaker 1: country isn't like today. Although I was in your bathroom
Speaker 1: and I did see the Trump toilet paper, which yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh it would be fun to dose him. Oh lord god,
Speaker 1: that would be fun if I could stay around and watch. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you so, Finch sounds like a finishing school. It is.
Speaker 1: And if you how long is ro Could you have
Speaker 1: gone for four years if you wanted to? Yeah? But
Speaker 1: you then how did you decide to leave there? I
Speaker 1: went with a friend of mine from Finch on the
Speaker 1: Easter vaccasion. We went to Nassau, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this is fantastic. So University of Miami's real close to Nassau.
Speaker 1: So next year I went to university and I'm a
Speaker 1: screw off. I'm not this big academic. I just went
Speaker 1: as you're supposed to go to college, and why not?
Speaker 1: It was fun. And so then after University of Miami,
Speaker 1: you went to another college? Right? No, then I went
Speaker 1: I went home to in the summer, to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: But San Francisco was starting to have all this stuff happening,
Speaker 1: and I thought, this is way better. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: never graduated from college and your daughter did you care
Speaker 1: if she went to college? No, she can do whatever
Speaker 1: she wants. Okay. Now she was famously on TV at
Speaker 1: age sixteen on MTV. Yeah, you think that was a
Speaker 1: good or a bad thing. I think it was good.
Speaker 1: I just wish she had kept You have to maintain
Speaker 1: uh stuff in jobs, whether you're a dentist or your
Speaker 1: work at a grocery store or your rock and roll.
Speaker 1: To stop working and then try to pick it up
Speaker 1: later and then stop where you can't do that, you
Speaker 1: have to maintain. So if she had maintained, she got
Speaker 1: job on the number one show at the time, which
Speaker 1: is Home Improvement. So but she said she couldn't really
Speaker 1: handle it because it was too much stress and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And to be an actor actress, she really
Speaker 1: do have to be dedicated, she said, I'm not dedicated enough. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you moved back to if you can remember what
Speaker 1: you already moved back to San Francisco. Uh do you
Speaker 1: mean from college? That would be fifty nine or sixty.
Speaker 1: I'm younger than you, and I remember the everybody is
Speaker 1: not everybody, but a lot of people. I remember the
Speaker 1: sixties being explosive. What were the fifties like? Uh, leave
Speaker 1: it to Beaver? So it was really like that, Yeah, Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: leave it to Beaver. And Uh, A lot of us
Speaker 1: people my age went to a certain amount of school
Speaker 1: either to were four years of college usually. And if
Speaker 1: you read you read say about Turn of the Century
Speaker 1: in Paris, Alice b Chkalis, uh Daga Lev, the dancer, Picasso,
Speaker 1: all those people turned the art world on its head.
Speaker 1: And they were sitting around having a pot brownies that
Speaker 1: Alice would make. They were accepting of her being a
Speaker 1: lesbian with Gertrude Stein, and we read about that. Did
Speaker 1: that look like way better than leave it to beaver.
Speaker 1: Of course it did. So that made a lot of
Speaker 1: us open up and very liberal, which I am to
Speaker 1: this day. The Republican Party has a list of people
Speaker 1: where they live and how much money they make, so
Speaker 1: they have for years called here or written here, and
Speaker 1: I just laugh. I said, look, I am a socialist Democrat,
Speaker 1: so you're calling the wrong person. And I've been that
Speaker 1: for since I was about twenty two or three. Maybe. Okay,
Speaker 1: so who's your candidate in the election. I'm a Democratic side. Well,
Speaker 1: my friend and I kind of argue about this because
Speaker 1: and I think she may be right. She said the
Speaker 1: deal is to beat Trump, of course, and she said
Speaker 1: Biden is the only one who can do that. But
Speaker 1: I like, uh, Biden's Now I shouldn't say this because
Speaker 1: he's probably younger than I am, but he's old like
Speaker 1: he was. He's been stumped a couple of times. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have that fast reaction. I like Conala Harris. She's
Speaker 1: from California. She's real sharp, she knows how to come back,
Speaker 1: and she will come back at you. Budaja amazing mind.
Speaker 1: Rhodes scholar done a military time. The guy's amazing and
Speaker 1: Warren's got good plans. So all three of them. But
Speaker 1: in order to beat uh Trump, it might have to
Speaker 1: be Biden because people like who they're familiar with. About
Speaker 1: Bernie and Bernie, I think he's too far left for
Speaker 1: most people. No, he's not too far left for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the sixties. So you go back
Speaker 1: in fifty nine San Francisco. Is it palpable? I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was living on the East Coast where it's uptight.
Speaker 1: It was palpable. Something was going on. No, not. In
Speaker 1: fifty nine, the shift was going between beat nick and hippie.
Speaker 1: Now I hate to use those they're kind of silly words,
Speaker 1: but they do disparaging whatever they do describe a certain
Speaker 1: way of thinking or mail you or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it. So is shifting from the Beatni thing
Speaker 1: up at North Beach to hippie and it was you
Speaker 1: could tell that things were kind of shifting. Wasn't there yet,
Speaker 1: but you could tell you could feel it. So you
Speaker 1: go back to Berry and you're doing what every day?
Speaker 1: I'm a model because I have no skills. Okay, how
Speaker 1: do you feel as someone who's intelligent and outspoken being
Speaker 1: paid for your looks. I thought it was very strange
Speaker 1: because I have short legs, kinky dark hair, and no tits.
Speaker 1: Now no tits is good for a model, but short
Speaker 1: legs and kinky dark hair is not good. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I would straighten my hair by wrapping it around my
Speaker 1: head after I washed it. That's a big roller which
Speaker 1: will straighten out your hair without ruining it. A lot
Speaker 1: of people ironed their hair. That's stupid, you ruin your hair. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the long legs. At the time that I was modeling, uh,
Speaker 1: skirts came down below the knee anyway, so nobody knew
Speaker 1: how short my lower legs were the only thing they
Speaker 1: didn't like about me was that it's I have a
Speaker 1: big head, apparently, and it was very hard to get hats.
Speaker 1: What happens is when you are going on a runway,
Speaker 1: you come up to just before you're about ready to
Speaker 1: go on, they give you gloves and hat and jewelry,
Speaker 1: and they give me the gloves, fine hat. Uh, no good.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get the cat on my head because my
Speaker 1: head's too big. But they were fairly nice about everything.
Speaker 1: I worked for uh Madam Moon, who was couterier department
Speaker 1: at i'magnets. She was actually French, and she the only
Speaker 1: reason she liked me is because I can look French
Speaker 1: because of the dark hair and pointing face and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. In those days, bottling was a
Speaker 1: lucrative correct well, it's not look at it for a
Speaker 1: person who's only five seven, but it worked for floor modeling,
Speaker 1: which is what I was doing. What I had to
Speaker 1: do was change my clothes every ten minutes. And I
Speaker 1: was working in the criterier department, so I had some
Speaker 1: beautiful stuff to wear. But you change your clothes every
Speaker 1: ten minutes. You wander around and all these old, fat,
Speaker 1: rich ladies who look like I do now would come
Speaker 1: up and feel the material, and you know, do that
Speaker 1: and that's what you do all day. Really, what did
Speaker 1: you end up with any of those clothes? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: they were like ten tho dollars a suit. Are you
Speaker 1: kidding something? No? Okay, So how do you meet Jerry Slick?
Speaker 1: Jerry Slick his mother was my mother's best friend. And
Speaker 1: it's very fifties if you look at it, Uh, sideways,
Speaker 1: And I do like Jerry Slick. He's very bright and
Speaker 1: he's funny, and uh, I've known him damn, since I
Speaker 1: was about ten. Really, we didn't go together. He went
Speaker 1: with my friend Asia. Her name was Darlene at the time,
Speaker 1: she changed it to Asia. Um, he went with her
Speaker 1: for a while. Uh, but I didn't. I didn't go
Speaker 1: out with him until I was older. The whole when
Speaker 1: you first started to go out with Okay, So you
Speaker 1: say you lost your virginity at seventeen, was that to
Speaker 1: a boyfriend or you just wanted to lose your virginity? No,
Speaker 1: Dave Hunter, he's my boyfriend, and uh I ran into
Speaker 1: him about thirty years later. He was selling furniture at
Speaker 1: a department store and I looked at him and I thought, God,
Speaker 1: he looks familiar. Dave. Yeah, it's me Dave. Okay, So
Speaker 1: before you meet Jerry, before you start up with Jerry,
Speaker 1: had you played the field. I don't know if we Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe we called it that. I don't know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's see, before Jerry, I was going out with Stanford
Speaker 1: Boys because I was at Castella, So, uh, I would
Speaker 1: go out with the Delta cap As song. My father
Speaker 1: was in that fraternity, and I thought, well, that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. They're also big drinkers, so am I so
Speaker 1: you were a big drinker at that age, well, seventeen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I started it at fifteen, but not on a regular basis. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I went to college in the Hindu Lands and Vermont
Speaker 1: in the Old Asian before the Internet, etcetera. And then
Speaker 1: you end up drinking a lot. Nothing. Drinking was taboo
Speaker 1: in my life because my father owned a liquor store.
Speaker 1: But I got to the point where I didn't drink
Speaker 1: every night. But if you wanted you to have the
Speaker 1: best night your like, call me. Okay. I tried, but
Speaker 1: then you realize, you know, the best night of your
Speaker 1: life is rare, you know, and you're you know, getting drunk.
Speaker 1: I end up getting I won't tell the story of
Speaker 1: how I ended up giving up drinking. That's for another time.
Speaker 1: But okay, with these boys, you said earlier, a horn dog.
Speaker 1: Is there sex with these fraternity boys? Uh, let's see.
Speaker 1: Not no, because I didn't lose my virginity until I
Speaker 1: was seventeen, and that was graduation night. Graduation night, and
Speaker 1: that was not a Stanford boy. Was their furniture sissument?
Speaker 1: Was that a good experience? I don't know, because I
Speaker 1: blacked out. They probably call that rape today. Both me
Speaker 1: and my friend who was in the next bedroom with
Speaker 1: her date. But both of us lost the same night,
Speaker 1: and we both in the morning looked at each other
Speaker 1: and went, uh, because we couldn't remember. Now, that's what
Speaker 1: drinking I'll do for you. Your first time supposed to
Speaker 1: be magical on everything, I can't remember. Okay. So when
Speaker 1: you meet Jerry, had you had sex with a lot
Speaker 1: of guys before that? Uh? No, not really? Okay, So
Speaker 1: you meet Jerry, how do you decide to marry Jerry?
Speaker 1: I don't know. We just started going out and it
Speaker 1: seemed like a natural thing to do. And it's also
Speaker 1: very there's a fifties hangover in it in that. Oh
Speaker 1: here's mother's my mother's best friend. We both come from
Speaker 1: Palo Alto, we're both the same age, we both so
Speaker 1: there's there's a little fifth hangover. Okay, but you're a
Speaker 1: very atypical woman, and it seems like you're a typical
Speaker 1: from day one. No, you were not. No, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: standard up to about age twenty three, four four, I
Speaker 1: start getting weird. Okay, before you get weird. When you
Speaker 1: marry Jerry, do you think it's gonna be forever? I
Speaker 1: assume so yeah, I got married in the uh big
Speaker 1: cathedral in San Francisco called Grace Cathedral, which I told
Speaker 1: my parents when I was four. I said I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get married there, and I did because I'm stubborn and
Speaker 1: uh but so it was. You can see from this
Speaker 1: I'm pretty standard for a long time. Let's clean up
Speaker 1: the thing for one second. You have siblings, Yes, I
Speaker 1: have a brother and brother younger younger. He lives in
Speaker 1: a park in a sleeping bag and has for as
Speaker 1: long as I can remember. He's paranoid, schizophrenic and slightly retarded,
Speaker 1: and he's very sweet. He doesn't hurt anybody. He lives
Speaker 1: right next to the police station because he's paranoid. But
Speaker 1: that's a perfect place for somebody like him to live
Speaker 1: because nobody will hassle him. And he is one of
Speaker 1: the town uh eccentrics, you know that every town has him.
Speaker 1: Lives in Palato, and because he's uh paranoid, he won't
Speaker 1: leave Palato. Now was he ever institutionalized? Only once? About
Speaker 1: forty years ago. He pushed the girl off her bicycle
Speaker 1: and they said why, and they said, because the wheels
Speaker 1: were talking to me. Then he went to a mental
Speaker 1: institution for I don't know, six months. But he's never
Speaker 1: been in a hospital either. No, because he uh doesn't
Speaker 1: carry a card. He doesn't know where and if you
Speaker 1: tell him, he forgets it. Where the s S I
Speaker 1: is to collect money. So my parents left a trust
Speaker 1: for him, which lasted up to about five years ago.
Speaker 1: Now I'm supporting him and I send him actual money
Speaker 1: because he can't cash a check because he can't prove
Speaker 1: who he is to him. I send it in uh
Speaker 1: envelopes so he could go to the post office. I
Speaker 1: have a post office box in Palato because obviously he
Speaker 1: can't get one. I have one. I send it to
Speaker 1: myself and then uh, he gets some money that way.
Speaker 1: And how long has he been homeless? He has been
Speaker 1: uh Skip and Eye my ex husband Skip and I
Speaker 1: tried to get him an apartment a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but he makes him kind of crazy because he's it's
Speaker 1: too claustrophobic for him, so he'd prefer to sleep outside.
Speaker 1: He's not doing it because there's no money. He just
Speaker 1: doesn't like being I don't know. I guess he wanders around,
Speaker 1: you know, and looks at stuff, and he eats because
Speaker 1: he has enough money to eat and uh goes two movies,
Speaker 1: I imagine, I don't know. And was this heart break
Speaker 1: for your parents? Well? Yeah, I think so because he
Speaker 1: was kind of he would be occasionally verbally kind of
Speaker 1: violent with them. He's never done it with me, but uh,
Speaker 1: it's unpleasant. It is sad to have a kid who's
Speaker 1: screwed up and there's nothing you can do about it. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: start to get weird? What does that look like? I
Speaker 1: will take whatever drugs I want, I will have sex
Speaker 1: or whoever I want. I will stop working as a
Speaker 1: model and form a rock and roll band with Jerry
Speaker 1: Slick and Darby Slick and a couple other guys. Uh. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Jerry, he graduates from school. What do you once
Speaker 1: you quit modeling? What are you doing for money? Uh?
Speaker 1: Then we started, uh a rock and roll band called
Speaker 1: Great Society, and that progressively made more money. Yes, not
Speaker 1: a monster amount, but more money. And uh, Jerry Slick
Speaker 1: is I think still a cinematographer. That's what he was
Speaker 1: going to San Francisco State four. Do you have no
Speaker 1: contact with him? Sometimes? Yeah? Sometimes I talked to him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you start the band in what year? Good question?
Speaker 1: Sixty five four. Okay, Now, what does Jerry think about
Speaker 1: you sleeping with whomever you want and taking whatever drugs
Speaker 1: you want. I'm not sure how aware he was of it,
Speaker 1: because I didn't flaunt this stuff in front of him.
Speaker 1: But he played drums in the Great Society. His brother
Speaker 1: played guitar. And then we had other friends David Minor
Speaker 1: and uh Dutch name Van something really anyway, Uh we
Speaker 1: made some money with that man. And then the oddly
Speaker 1: enough dark haired Norse which is what I am Norwegian Swedish,
Speaker 1: uh the and s she Sydney Anderson. But before we
Speaker 1: get there, okay, how did you side to be a
Speaker 1: musician to be a singer? Because I went to see
Speaker 1: Jefferson Airplane play at a uh nightclus small club called
Speaker 1: the Matrix, and I looked up and I said, that
Speaker 1: looks like more fun than modeling. My mother was a singer.
Speaker 1: I can do that. Because you're young and stupid, you know,
Speaker 1: you figure, Yeah, okay, okay, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties in Los Angeles. Now at that
Speaker 1: time in you talk about in the fifties hangover, you
Speaker 1: get married, etcetera. It's not because they talk sixty seven
Speaker 1: is the summer of love? What is going on in
Speaker 1: San Francisco? When does it start to change? I'd say
Speaker 1: around sixty four ish. I wouldn't want to bet on it,
Speaker 1: but I think it's around sixty four ish. Uh, because
Speaker 1: probably of Beatles and some folk guys. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: called Jefferson Airplane. Before where I was in it was
Speaker 1: called folk rock, and it was still some folk rock,
Speaker 1: but it got a little harder, got into hard rock.
Speaker 1: But people started forming bands because it looked like more
Speaker 1: fun than what they were doing at the time. For
Speaker 1: those people who didn't do that. The heat Ashbury aware
Speaker 1: of that whole scene, and uh, some people were making
Speaker 1: clothes for instance. Some people were uh making music. Some
Speaker 1: people were having uh medical you set up medical thing,
Speaker 1: help for people with no money. Some people were making newspapers,
Speaker 1: the oraticle. Some people were getting into politics as much
Speaker 1: as they could. You know, everybody was doing stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Emmett Grogan. Did you know him?
Speaker 1: I met Emmett, but now I didn't know him. He
Speaker 1: wrote a famous book called Ringle Leavio. We talked about
Speaker 1: He had a freak chen, but he actually stole all
Speaker 1: the food. Was interesting what happens. So you're with great Society.
Speaker 1: Great society makes a record, right sort of? Yeah, who
Speaker 1: pays for that? Let's see. I think it was offered
Speaker 1: Big Daddy Tom Donohue DJ heard us and he offered
Speaker 1: he had a Sun Studios I think that was the
Speaker 1: name of it um and he got sly Stone to
Speaker 1: come and help us. Now we were really pretty lame musicians.
Speaker 1: I mean what we did was Jerry had a set
Speaker 1: of drums, so you're the drummer. You have a guitar,
Speaker 1: so you're the guitar, you know, and uh, but sly
Speaker 1: Stone could play any instrument you hand him. Well, so
Speaker 1: he helped us and at one point he just stopped
Speaker 1: the thing and said, look, I'll do this and he
Speaker 1: would run played all thing. Now he can't sing because
Speaker 1: it if he sang, and they said that's great, Like
Speaker 1: so I had I did sing, but it was never
Speaker 1: a record until after White Rabbit and Somebody Love came out.
Speaker 1: We got pretty famous and uh, and then they went
Speaker 1: back and researched. You know, can we okay with sly
Speaker 1: Stone because now he seems like, you know, off off
Speaker 1: the grid mentally? Was he on it? Then he's on
Speaker 1: he was right here. Okay, so now you're saying you're
Speaker 1: in the Great Society and you hear about Sydney. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bass player who That's one of the things I
Speaker 1: liked the most about Airplane is Jack Castie's bass playing.
Speaker 1: He was a lead guitar player before, so the way
Speaker 1: he played bass wasn't just doom doom doom. It was
Speaker 1: all over the place, and this sustained notes that were
Speaker 1: just beautiful. He came up and asked if I wanted
Speaker 1: to join a band. Two of the members of Great Society.
Speaker 1: We're going to India because it was popular at the time,
Speaker 1: study sitar and his lead singer Sidney Anderson was going
Speaker 1: to Oregon to have babies and be married. Do you
Speaker 1: want to join the band? Oh? Yes, I do. Now
Speaker 1: doesn't this leave Jerry out? Yeah? But Jerry's going to
Speaker 1: film school. He's not a like a guy who's sitting
Speaker 1: around saying all I want to do is play the drums.
Speaker 1: He's more of a cinematonity. But you're still together then yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: So you go to the Airplane and famously you bring
Speaker 1: Somebody to Love and White Rabbit. How developed were those
Speaker 1: successful songs for the Great Society when you played live
Speaker 1: with those your key songs. Uh, I guess so we
Speaker 1: had we wrote our own songs. I think the only
Speaker 1: thing I did that was somebody else's was uh some
Speaker 1: Sally go around the Roses. I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: wrote songs. Father Bruce was about Lenny Bruce. Uh. Okay?
Speaker 1: Was there a dream to become internationally famous or you know?
Speaker 1: I was just doing it because it was fun and
Speaker 1: I could. You know, It's the same reason people climb
Speaker 1: efforts because I can. Okay, So you joined the Airplane,
Speaker 1: which already has a record contract and it always has
Speaker 1: already put an album out, Yes, and you immediately start
Speaker 1: to gig with them, right, yeah? And then when does
Speaker 1: it come up with the idea to make an album
Speaker 1: with you in the band? About two minutes because we
Speaker 1: had played uh to the album only took a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. H surrealistic pillow because we had played all
Speaker 1: those songs live, so it wasn't hard to get them right.
Speaker 1: We've already done it. Who is the producer of that record?
Speaker 1: Rick d starts with a d Okay, I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but he didn't really. He was kind of just in
Speaker 1: the room uh, uh, Schmidt did Al Schmidt did most
Speaker 1: of the production because the director or producer or whatever
Speaker 1: you call him, God love him. What's mostly having some alcohol?
Speaker 1: And uh, you're working for R C A Records. It's
Speaker 1: not known as a strong label. But how controlling of
Speaker 1: they of you were? They? They were fantastic with freedom,
Speaker 1: artistic freedom. They're not so good with promotion. I kept
Speaker 1: badgering them. I said, you've got to put this in
Speaker 1: People magazine. Oh, we have a full page in in Billboard.
Speaker 1: Everybody in Billboard gets the album for what Billboard? Who
Speaker 1: cares you know? So he got a badroom. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you weld if you're involved in marketing and business from
Speaker 1: day one. M h, just the stuff. I was aware
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, So you make the album, are you
Speaker 1: aware when it's done, before it's release, that it's going
Speaker 1: to be a legendary smash? No, we thought I would
Speaker 1: do okay, but no, I had no idea. Okay, and
Speaker 1: then when when did you realize something was starting to happen?
Speaker 1: Take Away went on the road. We would have been
Speaker 1: paying more attention to that. Then record sales, I can't
Speaker 1: remember you heard your song on the radio. That must
Speaker 1: have been a thrill. Everybody said it was a thrill. No,
Speaker 1: I can't remember the first time I heard it, but
Speaker 1: I can remember hearing the Beach Boys. She's given me
Speaker 1: good violent. That was a stunning piece of work. That's
Speaker 1: an amazing song. I remember where I was. I was
Speaker 1: on sunset, I was headed west and I was just
Speaker 1: stopped me in my tracks. But I can't remember where
Speaker 1: I was when I heard my own soul. Okay, but
Speaker 1: overnight you become a long baby with Janis Joplin. But
Speaker 1: she was, You were considered beautiful, and that was her
Speaker 1: beauty was not something that translated to the world at large.
Speaker 1: What was it like to become an overnight icon? I
Speaker 1: didn't really know I was an overnight icon. I was
Speaker 1: I was a singer. I knew we were doing well,
Speaker 1: but it's a hell band and there are a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other bands doing well. It was a group,
Speaker 1: seemed like a group, huge group of people more or
Speaker 1: less the same age, saying the same thing. Uh, And
Speaker 1: so I didn't single myself out of that large group.
Speaker 1: That's the Rolling Stones, the Beetles, uh, Momas and Papas
Speaker 1: you know across the Stones, Nash and young Janis. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know the British groups could change all those you
Speaker 1: know from the outside, all those groups are happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're the most famous woman in rock and roll.
Speaker 1: You must go places and people say, you know, there
Speaker 1: must be opportunities, people must be coming onto you. That
Speaker 1: must happen relatively rapidly. The only person came on or
Speaker 1: did anything it was David Anderley. He came up and
Speaker 1: he wanted to take me out of airplane and do
Speaker 1: start doing solo stuff. And I know what that is
Speaker 1: that somebody else wants to program my ship. No, thank you.
Speaker 1: I prefer being with people of like mind. And uh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be a solo artist. Apart from Marty, you know. I
Speaker 1: like the input Jack and Yarma blues. Marty sings love songs.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of sarcastic political and Paul has lets everybody
Speaker 1: go into the moon, uh space guy. So I like
Speaker 1: the fact that it was a smartest board. Did everybody
Speaker 1: get along at that point? At that point? Yeah, But then,
Speaker 1: as often happens in groups, everything so well, my stuff
Speaker 1: is better than your stuff or our stuff is all equal.
Speaker 1: But I want to go off and do my stuff.
Speaker 1: So that happens at all all not really know. It's
Speaker 1: driven by Jack and Yorma are more blues oriented and
Speaker 1: they really hate all the publicity of posing and having
Speaker 1: We did two weeks of nothing but publicity at one
Speaker 1: time in New York and we were staying at Chelsea
Speaker 1: and uh, Jorma wrote a song called third Week at
Speaker 1: Chelsea that is his statement about this is stupid. We're
Speaker 1: not doing music, we're posing, you know. So they don't
Speaker 1: like that. Uh, Marty was okay with it. I think
Speaker 1: Marty at one point wanted to be more kind of
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley ish type of deal. And Uh, Paul likes
Speaker 1: the group arrangement to he he enjoyed that, so he
Speaker 1: didn't want to split split it up. And Jack and
Speaker 1: you Harmer took a off to go speed skating in
Speaker 1: I think Finland or somewhere, but we didn't know which
Speaker 1: country they were in. They were gone for a year.
Speaker 1: So Paul and I just started making music together. Okay,
Speaker 1: before we get to that second album. After Bathing at Baxters,
Speaker 1: we had a number of radio successes on it. Surrealistic Pillow,
Speaker 1: did you consciously try to make a radio success on
Speaker 1: the next record. We we made what we wanted to make,
Speaker 1: and port Rcia was still paying for studio time. And
Speaker 1: it took after being battors because we hadn't practiced any
Speaker 1: of those they were new songs. It took a long
Speaker 1: time to make it, and because the UH instruments were
Speaker 1: a lot of that electronic stuff was new coming out,
Speaker 1: so he tested out and so let's see if this works,
Speaker 1: and well, no, we have to run it through that
Speaker 1: board or something. So it took a while to make.
Speaker 1: Now San Francisco sounds a week. You were the first
Speaker 1: act that made it. There isn't any San Francisco sound.
Speaker 1: I don't understand. This is what labeled by the society,
Speaker 1: by the press, by Sanrancisco seen, but not sound. So
Speaker 1: there's the Dead, there's Quicksilver, there are other charge Yeah.
Speaker 1: Are you friends with all those people? Yeah? Asa cops.
Speaker 1: We didn't see him on a regular basis because we
Speaker 1: have to work. And after the records came out Janesis
Speaker 1: and I Think and big Brotherren and our first record,
Speaker 1: then the record company puts you on the road to
Speaker 1: sell a thing. So then I didn't see anybody because
Speaker 1: I was always on the road, did you or did
Speaker 1: you like being on the road. Yeah, it's okay. My
Speaker 1: favorite part though, is creating a song in the studio.
Speaker 1: I love that. That's my favorite. But yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: okay on the road. And at the time, you were
Speaker 1: going by what kind of vehicle? Airplanes? Sometimes when we
Speaker 1: first started, it was cars. And that was the only
Speaker 1: time I've ever had penis envy. And it's because you
Speaker 1: didn't have to stop for a guy if he had
Speaker 1: to go to the bath There's a lot of cars.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of cars. You know, there's equipment in
Speaker 1: this car and to three of us in that car,
Speaker 1: and for so the whole thing has to stop if
Speaker 1: I have to go to the bathroom, because I can't
Speaker 1: just hang it out the window. So I thought, damn,
Speaker 1: this is inconvenient. Um, But you have cars, trucks, airplanes, buses, anything.
Speaker 1: So when you would get to a town, because you'd
Speaker 1: go on to Finch and you had some sophistication. Would
Speaker 1: you ever partake of the culture in the sound No,
Speaker 1: because we didn't have enough time. Really, the guys would
Speaker 1: sometimes after a job, they'd go to a late night
Speaker 1: club and play, but that's mostly blues and I'm not
Speaker 1: really a blues person because I prefer to sing about
Speaker 1: what I know and what I've lived rather than And
Speaker 1: I may be negative about it, but I understand it.
Speaker 1: But for me to try and act like I'm black
Speaker 1: seems stupid. Let's stop on something you said. You said
Speaker 1: you may be negative. It sounds like you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of criticism in your life for being negative. Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: this one I'm I'm talking about. I may be negative
Speaker 1: on purpose about aspects of the fifties. Oh, I got it,
Speaker 1: so or something I don't like in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: some politicians, some way of conducting yourself, some something. So
Speaker 1: my stuff is like, okay, sun cuts loose from the
Speaker 1: frozen until it joins with the African sea. In moving
Speaker 1: it changes it's cold and its name and it does
Speaker 1: it means shipped to a tree and you're you're good.
Speaker 1: R c A. Let me do it. They were very
Speaker 1: good with art. I remember that was one of the
Speaker 1: first records that and ultimately m C five that got
Speaker 1: censored where there was actually profanity. Yeah, so up against
Speaker 1: the wall, motherfucker. Yeah that's Paul. Yeah, and he got
Speaker 1: away with that. The only time that we were questioned
Speaker 1: was when Paul insinuated that Jesus and Mary Magdalen had
Speaker 1: a thing going on. And the president of our ci
Speaker 1: A at that time was Catholic. So they argued every day,
Speaker 1: and Paul had the tapes of it. I don't know
Speaker 1: where those tapes aren't today, but Paul tapes from them
Speaker 1: arguing back and forth. Uh, really, come on, you let
Speaker 1: me say, I don't mean shied to a tree and
Speaker 1: up against the woman and you're worried about whether he
Speaker 1: insinuated that. Come on. So that was the only time
Speaker 1: they've ever stopped us. Okay, Now, what was it like
Speaker 1: being the only woman on the road amongst a group
Speaker 1: of guys? Nice well experiand upon that. I pretty much
Speaker 1: loved it because they're musicians. Most of them are funny,
Speaker 1: so they're fun to be around. And uh, it's always
Speaker 1: good if you are walking around with Uh not only that,
Speaker 1: because you've got the crew and you know, walking around
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of guys around you, you don't get accosted. Right,
Speaker 1: But to what degree now you're famous, are people recognizing
Speaker 1: you and wanting something? It was I cannot remember it
Speaker 1: being really difficult now I'm sure, uh, Taylor Swift or
Speaker 1: whoever has to have a whole bunch of goons around her.
Speaker 1: But at the time, we just you handle it and
Speaker 1: you learn to handle it. In other word, Jannis knew
Speaker 1: how to handle it. If I was alone, I didn't
Speaker 1: like you. You knew about it. Okay, you decide to
Speaker 1: cut volunteers. Did you say to yourself, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make a big statement or we're just making another album. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's making another album. But we didn't get together
Speaker 1: as a group and say, okay, let's all say this.
Speaker 1: It still was Armor rights certain amount of music. Paul
Speaker 1: writes a certain amount, I write a certain amount. Marty right,
Speaker 1: certain amount. Jack didn right and didn't. Spencer didn't really right.
Speaker 1: So it was the four of us. The album was
Speaker 1: seemed to speak to the uh goings on in the
Speaker 1: nation and preach some sort of action revolution or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, because that's our experience at that time.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about our own experience. Okay. So Bill Graham,
Speaker 1: who became your manager for a period, he said that
Speaker 1: as soon as you the group got any money, they
Speaker 1: want to go back to the home and get stoned
Speaker 1: and wouldn't work again until they ran out of money
Speaker 1: or drugs. Is that an accurate representation? No? But I
Speaker 1: do like Bill Graham and he's uh, he was not
Speaker 1: interested in getting loaded. He was a little bit older
Speaker 1: than we were, but he's real good promoter. And uh,
Speaker 1: I think the whole San Francisco thing, I don't know
Speaker 1: about New York that's uh velvet underground and whatever. But
Speaker 1: I think he didn't like it because it's not business
Speaker 1: like and it doesn't get anything done, you know. But no,
Speaker 1: we we kept writing. I mean, we didn't stop. We
Speaker 1: didn't stop working here. And why did you let go?
Speaker 1: Let Bill Graham go? Well, he had us playing at
Speaker 1: one point three different towns in one day. You get
Speaker 1: an airplane, you go you play here, you get an airplane,
Speaker 1: you go to the I'm sorry, we didn't want to die.
Speaker 1: You know. That's that's pushing it too much. Let's do
Speaker 1: it normally, like you play maybe five jobs a week,
Speaker 1: and you take off one day in the middle of
Speaker 1: that and then another day in the three days or
Speaker 1: something so you can wash your clothes, so you can regroup.
Speaker 1: You don't push it like that, you know. So didn't
Speaker 1: he say he was willing to work with you and
Speaker 1: have you work less. No, he wants to push it.
Speaker 1: So we got which was a mistake because he's a
Speaker 1: sweet man, but not a businessman. A friend of Marty's
Speaker 1: who was a copy boy at the San Francisco Chronicle
Speaker 1: and he was our UH tour manager early on UH
Speaker 1: and he was promoted to manager. But boy, in the
Speaker 1: music business, you've got to have a little shrewd going
Speaker 1: on in there and a little bit of killer too,
Speaker 1: you've gotta you know. And he was the guys at
Speaker 1: the record company loved him. Everybody loved him because he's
Speaker 1: fun to hang out with. Yeah, sweet man. Just I
Speaker 1: can't say enough good stuff about him, except that he
Speaker 1: was in a position that he was not suited for. Okay,
Speaker 1: how did you all decide to live in one house?
Speaker 1: We didn't all live anywhere. The house that was our
Speaker 1: office occasionally. Yeah, it's a five story Victorian, so occasionally
Speaker 1: if somebody's having a fight with their girlfriend, they'd stay
Speaker 1: there or something. And Paul I think lived there for
Speaker 1: about six months. But we didn't all live in that house. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're still living with Jerry part of the time.
Speaker 1: Then I started hanging out with and lived with Spencer Dryden. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what did Jerry say about that I had gone?
Speaker 1: I just went on the road and never came back
Speaker 1: one of the road trips, and I forget which one
Speaker 1: it was. And he didn't try to get you back.
Speaker 1: He did, wasn't unhappened? No, he he probably thought the
Speaker 1: hell with her? Uh, for good reason. I think I
Speaker 1: got a letter in the mail about six months after
Speaker 1: China was born, where when I was living in Bellinas,
Speaker 1: one that said, you're divorced? Is that easy? And neither
Speaker 1: he or Skip Johnson went for the fifty fifty California
Speaker 1: law thing. Both very upstanding human beings. Speaking to which
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people in the airplane, six people whatever.
Speaker 1: Was there enough money to do? What? Well? He kept
Speaker 1: the engine going, Yeah, could you bank anybody? Yes? And
Speaker 1: I did. My father is a concern, was conservative Republican
Speaker 1: investment banker. But I figured he knows more about banking
Speaker 1: than I do. So he said, I know you don't
Speaker 1: care about business and numbers and all that, but I'll
Speaker 1: tell you it's something that's easy. One third one third
Speaker 1: and one third one third, you save one third, you
Speaker 1: pay all your bills and the last goes between having
Speaker 1: fun and maybe extra payments on something. So if you
Speaker 1: do that, you'll be okay. So I've done that ever since. Okay,
Speaker 1: so over sixty seventy years. So you end up playing Monterey.
Speaker 1: Oh that was wonderful. Wonderful because it was well planned.
Speaker 1: The weather was good. You could get to a toilet
Speaker 1: within about four minutes. All the acts were good, the
Speaker 1: audience was happy. The stuff that they sold on the
Speaker 1: outer around the edge of the where it was we're
Speaker 1: all handmade stuff, and uh, the little newspapers. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just and we saw people that we've never seen.
Speaker 1: We'd heard them, like I'd heard Jimmy hendrickson record, I'd
Speaker 1: heard the Who on record. I'd heard Robbie Shankar, but
Speaker 1: I've never seen him. So we were just as odd
Speaker 1: as like, uh, Mama Cass's face when she saw Janice
Speaker 1: Choplin is a real good example of what was going
Speaker 1: on there with the musicians and the audience. Just wow.
Speaker 1: So you were sitting in attendance, you performed, but also
Speaker 1: you checked every act out. Oh yeah, okay, and did
Speaker 1: you realize acts like uh, Laura Nero and Hendrix and
Speaker 1: who would blow up after that? Uh well Hendrix we
Speaker 1: knew was go to the Moon and who uh Laura
Speaker 1: near are not so much? Uh this is my opinion,
Speaker 1: of course, only not anybody else's. And Robbie Sharenka was
Speaker 1: already uh genius, so uh but yeah, we watched each
Speaker 1: other even when they weren't performing, Like Brian Jones was
Speaker 1: there backstage. Backstage was fun. There was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So uh, the whole experience of that was fantastic. And
Speaker 1: wood Stock is the one that gets the most pressed.
Speaker 1: But wood Stock was a mess. Well I think the
Speaker 1: problem was the Woodstock movie came out first and the
Speaker 1: Battery Pop Move film came after that, so it didn't
Speaker 1: really get the legend. So what was it like being
Speaker 1: at wood Stock? A mess? In other words, what we
Speaker 1: couldn't see anybody because of the weather. We stayed in
Speaker 1: a motel and half an hour before we're supposed to
Speaker 1: go on, a helicopter would come pick us up, drop
Speaker 1: us off backstage, You walk up the stairs, you go,
Speaker 1: do your set, you walk back, the helicopter takes you
Speaker 1: back to the hotel and gets next whatever their next
Speaker 1: deal is. But something went wrong with the equipment so
Speaker 1: they took us up. We're supposed to play at around
Speaker 1: nine o'clock at night. We were on stage, backstage all
Speaker 1: night and we played at six o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: or if you don't think rock and roll is weird
Speaker 1: at five thirty in the morning. But uh so, and
Speaker 1: the people in the audience or half a million of them,
Speaker 1: are wet, it's raining. You can't get to a bathroom
Speaker 1: for about a week. I mean, it was just you could.
Speaker 1: We couldn't watch anybody. Were you going to stand? So
Speaker 1: it was not good. So it was just big, is
Speaker 1: all it was. Okay, So it wasn't a good experience
Speaker 1: from your view, boys, Okay, then you also Jeffer's a
Speaker 1: Airplane played Altimont and that was really not good. You
Speaker 1: know that we're playing an airplane was on and uh
Speaker 1: I didn't wear my contact lenses that day, and I
Speaker 1: can sort of see without him, and I saw, I
Speaker 1: sort of saw this scuffling going on, and I thought
Speaker 1: that's Marty. And I went back to Spencer and I
Speaker 1: said the drummer, he said, what's going on with Marty?
Speaker 1: He said, the healthy angels are beating him up? And
Speaker 1: oh good, So that started, Uh, and they punched him
Speaker 1: and he fell down on the stage floor and the
Speaker 1: guy said, never say fuck you to a Hell's Angel.
Speaker 1: Sobarty says it again and our crew had to come
Speaker 1: and get the health angel. And were you afraid at all? No,
Speaker 1: because I'm too stupid to be afraid. There's something about
Speaker 1: me that all kinds of you of use of things
Speaker 1: are going on, and I'm just kind of either observing
Speaker 1: it or being part of it. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: Later on I looked back and go, jeez, what a fool.
Speaker 1: But at the time, I I just think everything's going
Speaker 1: to turn out. Okay, I'm kind of dip dip shot. Okay.
Speaker 1: About a year later, Uh, you get the Blows Against
Speaker 1: the Empire album. Yeah, how did that come together? That's pauls.
Speaker 1: But you were involved, right? Yeah? I was involved, But
Speaker 1: so was Jack Cassidy, David Crosby, Graham Nesh, you know,
Speaker 1: Jerry Garcia, everybody was involved. But you and you were
Speaker 1: also involved on Sunfighter, right. Oh. And at this point
Speaker 1: do you think the band's ever going to come back together?
Speaker 1: I have no idea because we don't even know where
Speaker 1: Jacking are. We know they're in in Uh one of
Speaker 1: the Scandinavian countries. We don't we don't know which one.
Speaker 1: They're speed skating there and they come back together. You
Speaker 1: come back together with Bark. Do you think the band
Speaker 1: is going to go? Are you feeling while we're on
Speaker 1: fumes at this point, yeah, Bark. You could tell we
Speaker 1: didn't say anything publicly, but you could tell that Bark
Speaker 1: is not quite as marvelous as it should be. And
Speaker 1: then long John Silver, Yeah, I mean that from a
Speaker 1: consumer point, I bought a great packaging, but not a
Speaker 1: great record. No, Okay, So at this point you think
Speaker 1: you're done or in the back of your mind you're
Speaker 1: morphing into Jefferson Starship with Paul. Well, it already Paul
Speaker 1: and I had already done that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't worried about having a job. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I figured I could do that for another
Speaker 1: ten years or something, So I wasn't really worried about that.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was too bad that we sounded
Speaker 1: poorly on those records, Okay, on which records? Mark long time? Okay,
Speaker 1: So you say you're in the band, you have a
Speaker 1: relationship with a drummer, Spencer Dryden, Then how do you
Speaker 1: end up being with Paul who's been in with the
Speaker 1: band for years? Um, Spencer and I uh split up
Speaker 1: and Spencer started going with my friend UM Sally, who
Speaker 1: I'm so friends with. She lives in Houston, Texas, that's
Speaker 1: where she's from, and so Spencer went with Sally and
Speaker 1: I didn't go with anybody. But eventually Paul and I
Speaker 1: got together. I mean, did you always want a child?
Speaker 1: Was it premeditated? No? I just said we were in
Speaker 1: the Shatton and I think in New York. I said
Speaker 1: to Paul. Because he's so different from me, I thought
Speaker 1: that that would be interesting, both mentally and physically. He
Speaker 1: likes to run ship. I don't I want you to
Speaker 1: do your job. I'll do my job. I don't want
Speaker 1: to tell you what to do. You don't tell me,
Speaker 1: you know so, But he's just fine telling everybody what
Speaker 1: to do. And I thought, well that's good. He's a
Speaker 1: good management for the band and uh, physically different too,
Speaker 1: So I thought, I said, I'd like to have your child,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to worry about it because I'll
Speaker 1: support it, you know, as a as a child, I'll
Speaker 1: support the child. So he was pleased with that. He
Speaker 1: likes children until they develop a sense of logic. Then
Speaker 1: they're in trouble because he's keeping getting real nasty if
Speaker 1: you have your own opinion, and that happens when you're
Speaker 1: six seven something like that. But he's real good with
Speaker 1: children that are younger than So after China hits six
Speaker 1: or seven, then it started getting early. Was he still
Speaker 1: hands on or did he distanced himself. Yeah, no, he'll
Speaker 1: be hands on and he is not physically violent with anybody,
Speaker 1: but verbally yeah. And then when does it end with
Speaker 1: Paul must be seventy three? Does an end on its own?
Speaker 1: Or it's because it's because Skips in the picture. Skip
Speaker 1: was in the picture, but I don't think Paul knew
Speaker 1: about it because Skip, at one point, about a year before,
Speaker 1: we were in the Midwest in the bar on the
Speaker 1: main floor of the hotel. There's a lot of Midwest
Speaker 1: turners around. Skip came downstairs to hang out with us
Speaker 1: in my red dress, harry legs, one dollar socks. You know,
Speaker 1: dumb shoes, mustache, hair, need end, act any different. He
Speaker 1: didn't try to come on like he just acted like Skip,
Speaker 1: straight feet, no, nothing. But Paul thought that any man
Speaker 1: who put her dress on was probably gay, even if
Speaker 1: he was trying to be funny, because Paul couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: wearing a dress. So I got away with hanging out
Speaker 1: with Skiff for about a year because Paul thought he
Speaker 1: was gay. So, oh, that's nice. That's what happened there.
Speaker 1: And then one day I just uh called up our
Speaker 1: truck driver who drove our equipment around and said, come
Speaker 1: on over, I'm going to take a couple of things
Speaker 1: and I'm moving to Saucelito. I'm out of here. And
Speaker 1: he did. Mike Fisher came over and helped me move that. Well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't very happy, but he's not very good to
Speaker 1: live with either. You know, there's a part of him
Speaker 1: that's uh uh very sweet and revolutionary and strong and
Speaker 1: all that kind of their part that's just so nasty
Speaker 1: you don't want to deal with it. I don't know
Speaker 1: where it comes from. China, who is his daughter, said
Speaker 1: he has issues and stuff. The kids use that word now.
Speaker 1: I call her a kid. She's almost fifty, but they
Speaker 1: say he has issues. Well, everybody has issues. Who you
Speaker 1: can't act like a jerk just because you have issues.
Speaker 1: If you got issues, go fix them. So I don't
Speaker 1: want to live with people who have issues and don't
Speaker 1: want to fix it. Okay, So then you embark with
Speaker 1: the Jefferson starship and then you have the Monster album
Speaker 1: Red Octopus. Did we anticipate that being as successful as
Speaker 1: it was? No, I have no idea, but that's that's
Speaker 1: largely Marty's album. But by the same token, you have
Speaker 1: played on love on that album. Yeah, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: really a single, but he had deepd miracles. Thought about
Speaker 1: the album of general is a fans I love playoff Love? Well? Good,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did okay, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: like that album was it did well? Okay, And eventually
Speaker 1: Marty drops out, Paul drops out, and you do we
Speaker 1: built this city. How do you feel about we built
Speaker 1: this city? No? Thank you? Okay, Okay, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: For me, this is not me I'm right or wrong either.
Speaker 1: It's just I'm more comfortable when the band is writing
Speaker 1: their own songs. We had I think three two or
Speaker 1: three number one hits in the eighties, but they're not
Speaker 1: our songs and they're dumb. And I love Diane Warren.
Speaker 1: But nothing's gonna stop us now. I think a MC
Speaker 1: truck will nail you right in the middle of the road,
Speaker 1: and more than fifty of the people get married get divorced.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, nothing's gonna stop us, you know?
Speaker 1: And we built a city on rock and roll. That's stupid.
Speaker 1: What city? There's no city built? Rock and roll is
Speaker 1: too new? What are you talking? London has been around forever.
Speaker 1: San Francisco is built on gold and shipping. L A's
Speaker 1: built on oranges and oil and the movie. And what
Speaker 1: city are you talking? What are you built a city?
Speaker 1: Everybody thought we were talking about San Francisco. No, it
Speaker 1: was written by Bernie Tappin, and Bernie was talking about
Speaker 1: the clubs closing in l A. What are you talking?
Speaker 1: Do you supply and demand? This country operates on If
Speaker 1: people want clubs, they will get clubs. The police can
Speaker 1: close up stuff for a short period of time, but
Speaker 1: you can bet the heavenly city planning fathers want money,
Speaker 1: and you keep those clubs open, they'll open again. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about it now. Bernie Toppin is an amazing songwriter,
Speaker 1: but we all have our missus. Even though it went
Speaker 1: to number one, I call it a miss because there's
Speaker 1: a stupid song. Rolling Stone said it was stupid. I
Speaker 1: agree with him, stupid. How how do you decide to retire?
Speaker 1: I'm imitating myself and that's that's not very artistic. And
Speaker 1: I'm almost fifty. That's enough because if you continue to
Speaker 1: do rock and roll after your fifty, it's kind of
Speaker 1: silly because rock and roll is a young person's medium
Speaker 1: that's storming the sit at all, you know, and when
Speaker 1: you're fifty, you ought to be able to You ought
Speaker 1: to be around trying to figure out how to keep
Speaker 1: the citadel from being hideous, or you ought to try
Speaker 1: to figure out how to organize the kids who want
Speaker 1: to storm, you know, be a producer something. But leaping
Speaker 1: around on a stage after your fifty, for me, is
Speaker 1: just not cool. What do you've think about everybody who's
Speaker 1: doing it? Then they're comfortable with it, so but you
Speaker 1: don't judge them. No, they can Everybody can do whatever
Speaker 1: they want except kill people. That's the only thing you
Speaker 1: can't do in rock and roll. So what are you
Speaker 1: most proud of in your music career? Persistence? Persistence? I
Speaker 1: was talking about specific not characteristics of your identity. There
Speaker 1: aren't specifics because there are parts of a number of
Speaker 1: different songs that I like, but not an entire thing.
Speaker 1: Like I said, White Rabbit, it's very lucrative for me,
Speaker 1: but it's not written well because I was aiming it
Speaker 1: at the parents, and you don't get that when you
Speaker 1: hear it. So the lyric is not as good as
Speaker 1: it could be. Uh there. I like parts of of
Speaker 1: Eskim a Blue Day, but it's too long and it's
Speaker 1: not as understandable as it could be lyrically music, so
Speaker 1: I like some songs from a solo album called Dreams,
Speaker 1: not Airplane, not Starship. So there are chunks of stuff
Speaker 1: that I like, but I haven't written anything that is
Speaker 1: good from beginning to end lyrically and musically, I don't think.
Speaker 1: Do you still listen to your own work? Do you
Speaker 1: listen to the music at all? Yes? What's currently on
Speaker 1: my thing is Peter Gabriel's Melted Face album right now
Speaker 1: is on my That's the best one he ever did,
Speaker 1: the third Mercury record. So who is the love of
Speaker 1: your life? Skip Johnson? So why did you get divorced?
Speaker 1: Because both of us wouldn't stop working. In other words,
Speaker 1: he has his stuff production, managing, and I had my stuff,
Speaker 1: which was rock and roll singer and uh, we're booked
Speaker 1: in different states most of the time, so it was stupid.
Speaker 1: And our accountant called up and saying, you know, you guys,
Speaker 1: really this is dumb. So we finally got a divorce.
Speaker 1: But he comes out here since the fire, he's come
Speaker 1: out here maybe two weeks. Then he'll go back for
Speaker 1: a month to New Hope, Pennsylvania, which is where he lives,
Speaker 1: and then he comes out here for two weeks and
Speaker 1: he works like a maniac around here, fixing stone. Has
Speaker 1: he ever found a new love. Yeah, he's got a
Speaker 1: girl lives with him there. Okay, And uh so in
Speaker 1: terms of your so, how did you get into the painting.
Speaker 1: I did that before music. I would draw an angel
Speaker 1: and my parents would make a Christmas card out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, so I did that before music. So you
Speaker 1: started doing that after you retired. Yeah, And what point
Speaker 1: did you say, Okay, I want to show this work
Speaker 1: and I want to sell this work. I didn't. My
Speaker 1: accountant knows this agent who also has done handled some
Speaker 1: of Jerry Garcia's work and some of John Lennon's lithographs.
Speaker 1: He's not an international agent or anything. So I started
Speaker 1: working with him do gallery shows, and I did really
Speaker 1: well in New Jersey and Denver and Sacelito for some reason,
Speaker 1: but not in San Francisco. And so at this point,
Speaker 1: you're you're still painting whole frequently every day, every day,
Speaker 1: And is that stuff still shown up for sale? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a show in September. I don't know,
Speaker 1: thee September something at a rock and roll kind of
Speaker 1: art stuff. Because, um, the brain, artistic people can usually
Speaker 1: go from genre to genre because all the same part
Speaker 1: of the brain. A lot of musicians paint. Marty painted,
Speaker 1: uh only Stone, Ronnie Wood. He was handled by some
Speaker 1: of the same galleries. Uh, Jerry Garcia. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I can David Bowie. That happens a lot. So, um,
Speaker 1: there's a gallery down here that handles rock crossover. So
Speaker 1: how do you feel about your artistic work? Are you
Speaker 1: satisfied with your career? Yeah? I am, because I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun, which I include in
Speaker 1: the enjoyment, in the satisfaction. Uh. If you're if it's
Speaker 1: a drudge, then you're doing something wrong. Pick something you like,
Speaker 1: two things, you like it, you're good at it, do
Speaker 1: that and any regrets only that I never nailed, Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendrix and Peter O'Toole never learned how to write a horse.
Speaker 1: I've never been to the Middle East, and I can't
Speaker 1: do any of those things now, so too bad. What
Speaker 1: do you think you know, when you're old, you don't
Speaker 1: regret what you did. You regret what you didn't do.
Speaker 1: That's really kind of what I was asking. So I
Speaker 1: certainly answered that, what do you think about the state
Speaker 1: of our country? Well, it's sad, uh, But what's really sad?
Speaker 1: It wasn't not. Donald Trump's a jerk. That that's obvious.
Speaker 1: But he's not the problem. The problem is when you
Speaker 1: realize how many people voted for him, and you go,
Speaker 1: holy moly, we are in deep doo doo that many
Speaker 1: people are thinking that way. That's trouble. So that's what's scary.
Speaker 1: He's not scary, he's just a clown, But that many
Speaker 1: people voting for him, that's scary. Now, we used to
Speaker 1: believe in the sixties and early seventies music could change
Speaker 1: the world, and certainly you and the Jefferson Airplane push
Speaker 1: that envelope. Do you think he made a difference. I
Speaker 1: think so. It's it's incremental and it's a spot. It's
Speaker 1: like the fire in Malibu, the spot fires that jumps
Speaker 1: over here. And this is good, But do you think
Speaker 1: without the sixties push we could have had Barack Obama?
Speaker 1: And we're lucky to have him. He's probably the most elegant,
Speaker 1: well behaved he and his wife president like ever in
Speaker 1: my life. Especially good for being born in Africa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially her being from Kenya exactly. But he was just wonderful.
Speaker 1: It was so watching him, uh speak, you know, he
Speaker 1: knows how to do he knew how to do that.
Speaker 1: Trump does not to do that. He's a mess. And
Speaker 1: let me try to figure out how to say this. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a hideous job, by the way, right, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know why. You know, you grew up. I remember
Speaker 1: going to elementary school and they said anybody could be
Speaker 1: president in America who wanted to It's like the CEO
Speaker 1: of the country. That's just crazy. Yeah, that is just no, no, no.
Speaker 1: And so you obviously mean you're your a unique character,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. And they broke the mold when they
Speaker 1: made you. Were you a fan of music in your era? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't like Elvis Presley because I went over my
Speaker 1: boyfriend at the time Joe McCarthy, his sister said, you
Speaker 1: gotta come home, you gotta hear this guy. It was
Speaker 1: a forty five black and blue with a picture of
Speaker 1: a guy going like just on it with yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a raised lift for those about a ton of vastline
Speaker 1: near something in his hair. And I said, oh, that's gross.
Speaker 1: You ain't nothing but a hound, I said, the stupidest song.
Speaker 1: I was listening to Edward Greek pier against Suite. I
Speaker 1: was listening to Rochmaninoff. I was, but if you're who
Speaker 1: were your favorites? May era? Okay? The when the Beatles
Speaker 1: first came out somebody, so you gotta come ome and
Speaker 1: see the Beatles where there're guys who were twenty five.
Speaker 1: They're all dressed alike. I want to hold Jim Han.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh, But then I saw the Rolling Stones.
Speaker 1: That that's rock and roll. That's funny because back in
Speaker 1: that people don't realize there was a big war, either
Speaker 1: Beatles fan or Stones. Yeah. I was rolling Stones. But
Speaker 1: then the Beatles flipped over from uh being cutesie and
Speaker 1: that was their manager's fault. They weren't cutie before that.
Speaker 1: They were tough boys in Germany that you know with
Speaker 1: the black leather jack is every what's his name? Whoever
Speaker 1: their manager was, Brian Epstein changed that thing? Oh where
Speaker 1: all those little suits? I'm sorry, they're too old to
Speaker 1: be that cute. So I didn't like that. But they
Speaker 1: change because they're not stupid, and they started really writing
Speaker 1: some good stuff. So I'm both the Beatles and Stones
Speaker 1: fan after a while. Okay, and you say you're difficult,
Speaker 1: if I haven't heard that in this conversation, give me
Speaker 1: a couple of examples where you're difficult. Okay, let me
Speaker 1: use the words my mother used to use when she
Speaker 1: was annoyed. Do you have to be so terse? Do
Speaker 1: you have to be so curt with people? So on
Speaker 1: terse and Curt? And I told her, well the terse
Speaker 1: and Kurt is like, I don't like to waste time
Speaker 1: that this. If you're just straight, shoot right into whatever
Speaker 1: the heart of the problem, I said. I don't want
Speaker 1: any frills. I don't even wear jewelry. I wear a watch,
Speaker 1: that's it. I don't like frills. I don't like lacey things.
Speaker 1: That's not my thing. My daughter's lacy and has birds
Speaker 1: on her dresses and stuff that's because that's she's comfortable
Speaker 1: that way. I'm not so uh Terse and Kurt is
Speaker 1: part of the deal. So it doesn't sound like you
Speaker 1: suffer fools. Well, I don't know about that phrase, but
Speaker 1: I'll just go for the jugular and you have legs.
Speaker 1: If you don't like it, it's very easy for you
Speaker 1: to move. And so with hindsight, do you wish you
Speaker 1: handled some interactions in a different way. Let's see whatever.
Speaker 1: I would have paid a little more attention to the
Speaker 1: business end, the music business because it's called the music
Speaker 1: business for a reason, So I would have paid a
Speaker 1: little more attention to the business end. Okay, this has
Speaker 1: been wonderful. We certainly got insight into who you are,
Speaker 1: which is the number one vision I have with this podcast.
Speaker 1: So you're listening to Grace Slick. Grace, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for doing this. Well, thank you for pulling it out.
Speaker 1: Until next time, This is Bob left Sense