Background "White Rabbit" was written and performed by
Grace Slick while she was still with her previous band,
the Great Society. Slick then left the Great Society to join
Jefferson Airplane to replace their departing female singer,
Signe Toly Anderson (who left the band to give birth to her child). The first album Slick recorded with Jefferson Airplane was
Surrealistic Pillow, and Slick provided two songs from her previous group: her own "White Rabbit" and "
Somebody to Love", written by her brother-in-law
Darby Slick and recorded under the title "Someone to Love" by the Great Society. The Great Society's version of "White Rabbit" was much longer than the more aggressive version of Jefferson Airplane. Both songs became top-10 hits for Jefferson Airplane and have ever since been associated with that band.
Composition, lyrics and inspiration "White Rabbit" is one of
Grace Slick's earliest songs, written from December 1965 to January 1966. It uses imagery found in the fantasy works of
Lewis Carroll — 1865's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass'' — such as changing size after taking pills or drinking an unknown liquid. Slick wrote the lyrics first, then composed the music at a red upright piano she had bought for US$50 with eight or ten keys missing — "that was OK because I could hear in my head the notes that weren't there" — moving between
major chords for the verses and chorus. She said that the music was heavily influenced by
Miles Davis's 1960 album
Sketches of Spain, particularly Davis's treatment of the
Concierto de Aranjuez (1939). She later said: "Writing weird stuff about Alice backed by a dark Spanish march was in step with what was going on in San Francisco then. We were all trying to get as far away from the expected as possible". She later commented that all fairytales read to little girls have a
Prince Charming who comes and saves them. But Alice did not; she was "on her own... in a very strange place, but she kept on going and she followed her curiosity – that's the White Rabbit. A lot of women could have taken a message from that story about how you can push your own agenda". Slick added that "The line in the song 'feed your head' is both about reading and psychedelics...feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention". Slick reportedly wrote the song after an
acid trip. For Slick, "White Rabbit" "is about following your curiosity. The White Rabbit is your curiosity". For her and others in the 1960s, drugs were a part of
mind expansion and social experimentation. With its enigmatic lyrics, "White Rabbit" became one of the first songs to sneak drug references in, bypassing censorship on the radio.
Marty Balin, Slick's former bandmate and co-founder of Jefferson Airplane (and later
Jefferson Starship), regarded the song as a "masterpiece". In interviews, Slick has related that
Alice in Wonderland was often read to her as a child and remained a vivid memory well into her adulthood.
Recording by Jefferson Airplane The song was first played by the Great Society in a bar in San Francisco in early 1966, and later when they opened the bill for bigger bands like the
Grateful Dead. They made a series of
demo records for
Autumn Records, for which they were assisted by
Sly Stone. Grace Slick said: "We were so bad that Sly eventually played all the instruments so the demo would sound OK". When Slick joined Jefferson Airplane later in 1966, she taught the song to the band, who recorded it for their album
Surrealistic Pillow. "White Rabbit" is in the key of
F-sharp which Slick acknowledges "is difficult for guitar players as it requires some intricate fingering". ==Reception and legacy==