First Time Hearing Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit (Reaction!)

[@gushbond]

You got it on your first listen. The song is about drugs/psychedelics told through the lens of Alice in Wonderland.

[@gsquat]

He gets frickin' everything on his first try. It's insane.

[@Scary__fun]

Unlike most reactors, he researches songs beforehand... so it's not a blind reaction.

[@TonyM1961]

Incorrect in that, if you are familiar with Alice In Wonderland, there are references, both implicit and implied throughout the story. Hookah smoking caterpillar, the mushroom she eats to get big, the potion to get small, etc, etc. Grace and the rest of the band have been fighting this particular urban legend since the album dropped back in the 60s. Use your head and don't just buy into everything you hear or see. Just like Puff The Magic Dragon isn't about drugs. It's about a little boy and his imaginary friend and the sadness involved in children growing up and losing their unfettered innocence. Nothing more, nothing less.

[@cindyv1401]

Hippies at their best ❤

[@jamessugg7061]

Surrealistic Pillow is a great album!

[@tommarks3726]

I love the bass in the beginning. Her vocals are perfect

[@mapegatkinson92]

They were all on "stuff" in sixties and seventies. I was there and can verify this. Peace.

[@Slop_Dogg]

Peace & love! ✌️ ♥️

[@debjorgo]

Grace Slick, the young lady singing the song, wrote it.

[@CJ-Fischer]

Great Music! I did mushrooms and I totally understand these lyrics! You can still find mushrooms it’s an experience like no other hehehe 😮

[@fidge54]

The singer, Grace Slick, actually wrote this before she joined Jefferson Airplane

[@ohfour-seven6228]

This song was HUGE on top 40 radio. Those were great and wild times!

[@margiewilson4324]

By all means look up Alice in Wonderland. Check out the illustrations first and you'll see a lot of the references in the song. Read the book. The author was a fascinating character. Love your reactions.

[@eileendesandre8316]

'alice through the looking-glass' is also referenced. love your reactions, brother. so open-minded.

[@mspicer3262]

the song is about LSD more than shrooms... acid was huge at the time...

[@kristinholsapple2587]

That's what I said out loud , " It's about LSD" LOL

[@rafehr1378]

74 years old. LSD changed America. Serving overseas in the shit. iT helped.

[@rmacdougallaliasdogviticus]

'Somebody To Love' next please Shon. Also this band later morphed into 'Jefferson Starship' and later just 'Starship'. 'Jefferson Starship - Jane' > Banger! Cheers

[@ebooboo6784]

I saw them do this live in San Francisco.. ages ago. definetely about LSD

[@dannycasson1551]

You don't miss much do you?! Nothing escapes your ears and eyes...another great reaction!

[@magicbrownie1357]

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Lookin-Glass are great books and worth the read.

[@Jan-xn3kz]

Check out the original illustrations of Alice I W by Sir John Tenniel 1865.

[@NancyOHanley]

Grace was known as the acid queen

[@louielouie22]

This song is criminally short 😂 love it but dang. I've been down that rabbit hole many times😂😐

[@Ghost-airlines]

“Down the rabbit hole “ ha? 💨💨😂

[@Barnes466]

Vietnam war era music is golden.

[@kimmycook2698]

The voice that launched a thousand trips....

[@scottb8454]

At least

[@MaryannTurton]

Grace Slick is a beast on vocals Shon! This is 60’s psychedelic music at its finest!Let’s go!💊☮️👊

[@browntabproductions]

One of the first songs of the psychedelic music era that slipped references to Drugs past Censors. This clip is from The Smothers Brothers TV Show.

[@GaryCain-qf5vi]

In the 70's I visited friends in San Francisco, California we were driving around town, there was this whole city block, surrounded by a iron fence and house in the center looked like the Disney Haunted Mansion, and my one friend said this is where the Jefferson Airplane group lives, it was mesmerizing I immediately thought of this song 😅 And saw a White Rabbit or maybe it was the Acid we took but anyway mesmerizing Peace✌️ and Love❤️ your 70 year old forever hippie Gary 😊

[@Squeekyleaks]

The book is far better than the movie. You'll love it. It was required reading in our school system. It freaked me out a little bit. 😂

[@RhondaHill-mi7cw]

The quintessential psychedelic drug song of the time. Still much used and analyzed. Thanks for sharing.

[@boblozaintherealworld3577]

Brother Shon. You GONNA dig this before I even listen. And per my own research, this version was a live TV performance. Psychedelic graphics added. These hippies were amazing musicians. As for Grace Slick...omg. She was BEAUTIFUL! THANK YOU, SIR.

[@michellerutherford9551]

Shon, you crack me up! I love that you try to decipher what the author is trying to say !! You still trying to see if you feeling the music....I love it!🎉🎉

[@kevinp5119]

JEFFERSON STARSHIP- MIRACLES. An absolute must!

[@bamboozlejones]

For sure, just make sure it's the studio and not the radio cut Shon

[@lisarousseau788]

Definitely! Also Save Your Love my absolute favorite by them

[@sweisbrod6109]

Listen to it again. 🍄

[@FavoriteMovieDate]

Great literature is eternal and artists always turn to other artists for inspiration. Wonderful you seem to understand this! Always loved this song but wish it was longer. It’s haunting.

[@tjrivers]

Right on, Shon!

[@xanajak]

This song is in a scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. You'd enjoy it.

[@beadybaby]

Just as the music started, I noticed it was 4:20 here in anchorage, so, cheers! ❤ Go Ask Alice was the absolute best coming-of-age book I read in my youth. I read it several times. Some years ago I realized my copy was gone so I bought another one and read it again. Check out “Mother‘s Little Helper“ by the Stones lol I do my very best to “feed my head“ in as many ways possible. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I don’t think there’s a chill pill big enough for those who are not willing to listen. I don’t know if you have reacted to the Triumph song “fight the good fight“ or “magic power“ but I definitely recommend them.

[@professorstewart6379]

This song takes you on such a journey. It's a total mood all its own.

[@leegonzales1092]

The darkness--I believe in a thing called love

[@deannajones3849]

Love this one! Watch Disney's Alice In Wonderland animated movie, then listen to this again!

[@blindsurvival8570]

The Jimmy Castor Bunch- Troglodyte.

[@flowergrannyjanet]

I really enjoy hearing your reactions to various recordings. I would love to hear your reaction to Nina Simone's Mississippi Goddammn

[@Irockthere4]

I did a paper in High School on how Alice always took something, ate something or drank something before she was 3 inches small or 10 feet tall or falling down a rabbit hole, seeing talking playing cards etc

[@edgarsnake2857]

Great song and a great performance by Grace and the band. I saw them do it live many times and it was always great. Your reaction was a lot of fun to watch. Thanks, Shon.

[@3generboiler]

Highly recommend the 60’s or maybe 70’s animation movie

[@Dee-eq1pg]

So trippy!

[@billdemotte7152]

I miss LSD 70's 80's it was everywhere and it was wonderful

[@rmacdougallaliasdogviticus]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Novelist 'Ken Kesey' is the reason 'LSD' made it into the public. I think he first got LSD in an sponsored experiment by the CIA called MK-ULTRA. He liked it so much he got a job at the Hospital where the MK-ULTRA program was ran and he stole some. Then they got it reverse engineered and mass produced.

[@micheleyoung6118]

Love your channel man

[@fidge54]

You really should watch Alice in Wonderland. The 1951 animated one or the 2010 version with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter are both very good

[@rogerrowles8702]

"Somebody To Love" Made Her A 60,S STAR VOCALIST, Bur, This Performance, Made Her A Psychedelic Acid Trip LEGEND !! Her Nickname In Some Segments , Of The Press Was Grace SLICK " The ACID QUEEN" In large Part Due To This Sog/ Performance PS Mr. OWLSLEY Was So Proud!!" 😉✌😁🖐lol... 😅

[@williamkidney6031]

It wasn't uncommon for artists back then to write songs while trippin even the Beatles did it lol there's a really trippy yet creepy song called DOA by the band Blood Rock. And if anyone is interested, there's an old silent movie of Alice in wonderland from 1915 on KZbin. It's public domain

[@jeanniewright2554]

See the Disney movie of Alice in Wonderland. It has much more entertainment in it!!!

[@JaquelineGoodspeed]

Love this song using Alice in wonderland. If you havent seen it, you should.

[@juliemartin4267]

It’s the story of Alice who takes the pills in wonderland and the smoking caterpillar is in there too but I believe the overall song is really about having an lsd trip

[@grandpaslayer6232]

It's about drugs man. #ROCKON

[@mattblatchley2061]

that sly look on Grace's face...absolutely slays...me anyway

[@glennhayes9376]

It's also based on the book "Go Ask Alice"...story of addiction

[@hopeklemann1]

🌸 you are so correct... the original book came out in 1865 AND ..... it was definitely not a children's book.

[@TeresaMount-t9o]

Thanks Shon

[@brentharker7868]

These guys killed it at Woodstock. They are the perfect embodiment of the late 1960's music scene. Shon, check out Nina Simone and her "Funkier than a Mosquito's Tweeter". The woman rocks!

[@polycarphunter2257]

The sixties were pretty freaky. they say if you remember the sixties, you didn't live them.

[@kenpatton8761]

Yea, see the Disney cartoon movie for an easy brush up on this song…..It’ll make more sense after you see the movie. Cheers

[@asadotzler3069]

This is virtually all straight out of Alice in Wonderland, properly titled Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. You can find audio readings all over the place, probably even podcast format on Spotify, or on kindle or paperback. Give it one chapter, please. If you don't love it after one chapter, bail, but I think you'll go right down that rabbit hole, and this book is the origin of that phrase, down the rabbit hole. It's fantastical and absurd and fun and childlike but full of ancient wisdom at the same time. This songwriter, the female lead and opera trained singer here, Grace Slick, recognized how trippy that old book was, as did many others in the 50s 60s and 70s as counterculture bloomed in the West, and she utilized just a few of the book's really trippy bits. Alice does ingest things that make her small and tall after chasing a rabbit down a hole in the ground where she meets a hooka smoking caterpillar, a mad hatter, a red queen, and many other wonderful and outrageous characters that are so fantastical and funny and smart and witty and sweet and everything that it is in fact an acid trip in book form. This song sounds like drugs feel because Lewis Carrol wrote a wild book over a century and a half ago that describes a literal "trip" down a rabbit hole to an alternate universe where logic and proportion fall apart, and that twist on reality is the actual protagonist of the story, embodied in several characters you will never forget for the rest of your life if you read this simple "children's story". The song, again, has nothing new from 1967 in it except for style and cadence and sound. It's all borrowed from the book, top to bottom. Every line is a line from the book re-written or re-ordered. That you thought it was about LSD isn't far off though because as I said, the book is an acid trip a century before there was acid and the song, with the music and the fashion and the intent of the songwriter, are clearly about "modern" psychedelics that Lewis Carroll would not have had. Again, that's a testament to how fun a read is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. update: This reading is fine kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKSlqoJ5jLierK8 and free and on this platform. Please give it a chapter. I think you'll be hooked when you get to ten minutes to Alice recalling one of several simple rules her friends had taught her, specifically that "if you drink much from a bottle marked poison, it is almost certain to disagree, with you sooner or later. However this bottle was not marked poison.." Well, that's about 10 minutes in and I think you'll be hooked by then, so I'm not even asking for a whole chapter, just ten minutes, a typical long song. Beyond that, you won't be able to stop yourself :-). It's amazing, one of the greatest pieces of fantasy ever written, in the form of a children's tale. Let your amazing music adventure sprout a small literary branch with this as the leaping off point. There are always new genres to explore and the supply of truly great works in any one of hundreds of genre is enough to last years. "Alice", a reading on KZbin, inspired by Jefferson Airplane, c'mon, man, do it.

[@BernardHodgson]

What a great reaction! We took ourselves very seriously back then but you got the humour straight away. Feed your head!

[@michaelwalker5257]

Watch the original Disney animated version (from around 1852 or so). It's one of the best movies I've ever seem - only 90 minutes - and if you watch it 20 times (which you might, over time) you'll still be understanding more stuff that you missed on the other 19. Almost every line is LOADED.

[@thefleasofathousandcamels6498]

Disney making animated movies in 1852???

[@maggynewtown3500]

You might want to also check out Tom Petty's "Don't Come Round Here No More".

[@nettiemac]

YESSSSS

[@mamaflush9945]

Here's a new artist to give a listen, if interested. "Lenny Kravitz - It Ain't Over Til' It's Over (Official Music Video)" (by the channel: Lenny Kravitz) --This song was written, produced and performed by American musician Lenny Kravitz. It is from his second studio album called "Mama Said" released in1991. This single was Kravitz's most successful single hit record on the US Billboard Hot 100 to date. It peaked at number #2 and hit the top of the charts in other countries as well. This was Not his only hit though he has other great tunes to explore in future, if interested.

[@hopeklemann1]

Grace slick has such a beautiful voice ... and her vibrato is beautiful as well.

[@MikeJaegerLive]

Till Time Returns all are here in eternity. White Rabbits 🐇 eat and fornicate but music 🎶 is synchronization of every movement.

[@alainelowell1997]

You definitely need to read Alice in Wonderland and also, Alice Through the Looking Glass. Classic books that shaped our culture.

[@burstcity3832]

Look for a George Benson version of this, it's clearly a cover but is musically brilliant without singing.

[@Serai3]

Yes, this was the Great Acid Anthem. The book is pretty wonderful, and has stood the test of time. Another interesting thing about the song that nobody ever mentions is that musically it's based on a classical piece by Ravel, called "Bolero". It starts with a rhythm, low and insistent, and slowly climbs up and up, the rhythm getting more and more insistent, the melogy more complex, until it's a full orchestral piece, repeating the same musical motif over and over for about 15 minutes in its required tempo (though it can be played at different speeds). The gradual intensity is very interesting. It's one of my favorite classical pieces because it's so subtle but at the same time it's a real steamroller, and leaves you breathless by the time it reaches its enormous climax. You should check it out sometime. :)

[@Pahdopony]

You should check out Alice in Wonderland. For the short version, watch one of the movies. For the best version, read the book or listen to it on Audible or on tape because there are so many interesting little details the movie misses. It’s a trip for sure. Just don’t fall down the rabbit hole!

[@dianawilliams525]

Welcome to the 60's - I lived in that wonderful, magical time

[@richardmoon7713]

You've gotta check out ' Volunteers of America ' by Jefferson Airplane. It's one of their best, a true 60's classic in every way! I don't think that you'll be disappointed...

[@lancevaughn432]

In the book, the caterpillars are smoking a hookah.

[@karenwalsh1143]

Grace Slick was my favorite female artist in my younger years! Janis also ofcourse! But i really loved Grace!!! So many good songs from Jefferson airplane to starship❤

[@malloridorrego6167]

This is one of my all time favorites songs. Found your channel and am watching everything!

[@treetoptia-2903]

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is a great book. There’s also a book titled “Go Ask Alice” which is a real teen girl’s diary published anonymously. All books, like music, were new once. ❤

[@travisbickle1552]

When i saw this suggested it reminded me that i have this on vinyl somewhere. I used to be a vinyl dj and now my records are in different storage places, but i still remember when i originally found and bought it used.

[@jeffmartin1026]

The author of "Alice in Wonderland" was a mathematician. There is a version of the book, "The Annotated Alice", which discusses the math, theory, and paradoxes that he put behind the story. It's an interesting read. BTW, Grace Slick was, and continues to be, the Queen of the F'ing Universe!

[@danrieke9988]

Alice in Wonderland... one of the most amazing stories of all time. This song sruck a chord back in the day of old-school overlapped new-school. A turning point, this song.

[@dcg4mn]

Yes she DOES chase a white rabbit and falls down a hole, and there IS a hookah-smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland 😁 This is a fun and excellent track, but a more important one by JA is “Volunteers of America” ✊🏽

[@stephenzepp6536]

The song is actually about the eternal parent generation/child generation conflict. The parent generation in this case denounces drugs and tries to shame the "loose drug filled culture" of the 60's. She's talking about Alice in Wonderland because she's throwing back at the parent generation "Hey, you are complaining about us doing drugs and not understanding why, yet even the fairy tales and children's stories you gave us (Alice in Wonderland) are ALL ABOUT mind-bending experiences. What gives?"

[@CozzyKorner]

If you want to check out the story of Alice, syfy has a movie Alice. That’s the best one to watch. I hated disneys Alice in wonderland! Lewis Carrol, who wrote it, was a drug user of all sorts. Lots of opium back then and, yes, mushrooms too.

[@hannejeppesen1809]

Love Grace Slick, she is one of the few female rock singers that I really like. Check out her performance from Woodstock.

[@debbiewood13103]

🕊

[@DariaBilowus]

The voice of Grace Slick is mental.

[@griffalo1013]

From what I heard Grace Slick was trying to address the hypocrisy of parents at the time telling their kids to stay away from psychedelics like LSD and mushrooms, only to then read them stories like Alice in Wonderland.

[@bathory313]

One of the first songs to sneak drug references past the censors for the radio. Remember this was 1967 and people were fighting against the hippie culture.

[@dougca7086]

React to the Jefferson Airplane singing Somebody to Love live on the Dick Cavett Show the day after they were at Woodstock

[@davidquatermass789]

Great track!

[@billallen1307]

Check out the campus of Epic near Verona WI. Part of it is themes for Alice in Wonderland. Some is a take off on Harry Potter. And there are several other sections.

[@christianwilliamson9752]

This is also a live version and it sounds amazing

[@carnivoroussoupspoon]

for all the drug references and Alice in Wonderland stuff....Her voice is AMAZING!

[@steverusso177]

Must do "Jane" Jefferson Starship

[@barbarabweaver1]

And all of this is in the book except for “feed your head”

[@dawnyoung8]

You’re smart , I love it ! You give me hope ❤

[@Marcus-p5i5s]

How many people did NOT read Alice in Wonderland as a child? Yes, she is talking about psychedelic drugs of her time

[@erickent3557]

You might even toy with the logic-and-proportion line being an ironic jab at the absurdity of reality... how ridiculous society is... don't eat that crap, but instead: FEED YOUR HEAD.

[@angelaarsenault]

Classic!

[@vickithomas7976]

Maybe watch Alice …movie.