was "Surrealistic Pillow," the Airplane's second LP, with its artful compound of modal folk minstrelsy and electric acid beat, that spread the Bay Area message of peace, love and dance throughout the land. In Grace Slick's siren-like wail on "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit," a generation heard the voice of a new Utopia and raced excitedly to its source. As Airplane singer-guitarist Paul Kantner says fondly, "She was everybody's dream fro one good summer -- in fact, for a good many summers after that."
"Surrealist Pillow's" social and commercial impact belies the circumstances of its making According to Kantner, the album was recorded on four-track in only two weeks. Most of the rhythm tracks were cut live in the studio with relatively few takes, since soaring Airplane rockers like "She Has Funny Cars" and "3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds" were already staples of the band's live set, as were the two Slick showcases (which she had carried over from her former band, the Great Society). "Everything we did was based on live experience," Kantner says, "And then taking it to the edge."
Unfortunately producer Rick Jarrard was, in Kanter's words, "an obnoxious ass in the true Hollywood tradition," with a fondness for drenching everything in heavy Phil Spector-like echo. So the Airplane brought in compadre Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, billed as "musical and spiritual adviser" on the back cover, to act as de facto producer for most of the record. According to Kantner, Garcia lent "his particular Grateful madness to the whole project." Garcia also played acoustic guitar, undredited, on "Plastic Fantastic Lover" and singer Marty Balin's delicate ballad "Comin' Back to Me."
The Airplane's own droll humor nicely complemented Garcia's "Grateful madness." The letter in the rather cryptic title of Kantner's "D.C.B.A.-25" are nothing more than the chords in the song. The number Kantner says, "is a reference to LSD-25. It's basically an LSD-inspired romp through consciousness. I can't even remember the words at this point."
In addition to highlighting the Airplane's advanced song writing gifts, "Surrealistic Pillow " (the title was Marty Balin's idea) also revealed the band's unique musical strengths, particularly the triple-decker vocal-harmony sandwich of Slick, Balin and Kantner. At that time, Kantner was actually scoring the vocal parts, basing the layered effect of "two relative drones on the bottom and top with a moving thing in the middle" on the pre-Beatles folk singing of the Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary. And when Grace replaced Airplane's original female singer, Signe Anderson, in Augu
