Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing; October 30, 1939) is an American musician and painter whose musical career spanned four decades. She was a prominent figure in San Francisco's psychedelic music scene during the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.
Initially performing with the Great Society, Slick achieved fame as the lead singer and frontwoman of Jefferson Airplane and its spinoff bands Jefferson Starship and Starship. Slick and Jefferson Airplane achieved significant success and popularity with their 1967 studio album Surrealistic Pillow, which included the top-ten US Billboard hits "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love".
With Starship, she sang co-lead for two number-one hits, "We Built This City" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now". She has released four studio albums as an independent artist. Slick retired from music in 1990, but continues to be active in visual arts. In 1996, Slick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Jefferson Airplane.
Early life and education Grace Barnett Wing was born on October 30, 1939, in Chicago, to Ivan Wing, an investment banker, and Virginia Barnett Wing, a retired singer. Her parents met while they were both students at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1949, her younger brother Chris was born.
Her father's work required the family to relocate to San Francisco, and then Palo Alto. Wing attended Palo Alto Senior High School, then transferred to Castilleja School, a private all-girls school in Palo Alto. Despite not being academically gifted, she attended Finch College in New York City from 1957 to 1958, and the University of Miami from 1958 to 1959, majoring in art.
After graduating, Slick worked as a model at an I. Magnin department store for three years. She also started composing music, including a contribution to a short film by her husband, Jerry Slick.
Music career
1965–1966: The Great Society
In August 1965, Slick read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the newly formed Jefferson Airplane. Despite being situated in the growing musical center of San Francisco, Slick only half-heartedly considered music for a profession until she watched the band live at The Matrix. As a result, Slick (vocals, guitar), accompanied by husband Jerry Slick (drums), Jerry's brother Darby Slick (lead guitar), and David Miner (bass guitar) formed a group called the Great Society. On October 15, 1965, the band made its debut performance at a venue known as the Coffee Gallery. Soon after, Slick composed the psychedelic piece "White Rabbit". The song, which she is purported to have written in an hour, is a reflection on the hallucinogenic effects of psychedelic drugs; when performed live, it featured a speedier tempo and was an instant favorite among the band's followers.
Although Slick was an equal contributor to the Great Society's original material, Darby Slick pushed the band toward becoming a raga-influenced psychedelic act. By late 1965, they had become a popular attraction in the Bay Area. Between October and December 1965, the Great Society entered Golden State Recorders and recorded several tracks under the supervision of Sly Stone. One single emerged from the demos, the Darby Slick-penned "Somebody to Love", the "B" side to "Free Advice", on the locally based Autumn Records subsidiary label "North Beach". Grace Slick supplied vocals, guitar, piano, and recorder.
Also during Slick's Great Society period, she was responsible for her friend, Jeannie Piersol picking up singing experience.CBS News, March 20, 2025 – "Sonoma party celebrates album by enigmatic '60s-era San Francisco singer Jeannie Piersol" by Dave Pehling
1966–1972: Jefferson Airplane
In late 1966, Jefferson Airplane's singer Signe Toly Anderson decided to leave the band to raise her child, and Jack Casady asked Slick to join them. Slick stated that she joined the Airplane because it was run in a professional manner, unlike the Great Society. With Slick on board, Jefferson Airplane began recording new music, and they turned in a more psychedelic direction than their former folk-rock style. Surrealistic Pillow included new recordings of "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love", both of which became top 10 singles.
Jefferson Airplane became one of the most popular bands in the country, and through it Slick rose to a position of prominence among female rock musicians of her time. In 1968, Slick performed "Crown of Creation" on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in blackface and ended the performance with a Black Panther raised fist.
1974–1984: Jefferson Starship and solo career
After Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen decided to leave Jefferson Airplane to focus on their project Hot Tuna, Slick formed Jefferson Starship with Paul Kantner and other bandmates, and also began a string of solo albums with Manhole, followed by Dreams, Welcome to the Wrecking Ball!, and Software. Manhole also featured keyboardist/bassist Pete Sears, who joined Jefferson Starship in 1974. Sears and Slick penned several early Jefferson Starship songs together, including "Hyperdrive" and "Play On Love". Dreams, which was produced by Ron Frangipane and incorporated many of the ideas Slick encountered attending twelve-step program meetings, is the most personal of her solo albums, and was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Slick was nicknamed "The Chrome Nun" by David Crosby, who also used the nickname "Baron von Tollbooth" for Kantner. Their nicknames appear as the title of an album she made in 1973 with bandmates Kantner and David Freiberg: Baron von Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun.
1984–1989: Starship and Jefferson Airplane reunion
During the 1980s, while Slick was the only member remaining from Jefferson Airplane in Starship, the band went on to score three chart-topping successes with "We Built This City", "Sara", and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", which received a big boost from being featured in the movie Mannequin. Despite the success, Slick since has spoken negatively about the experience and the music. In 1987, Slick co-hosted The Legendary Ladies of Rock & Roll, for which she also sang backing vocals on "Be My Baby" and "Da Doo Ron Ron". She left Starship in 1988, shortly after the release of No Protection.
In 1989, Slick and her former Jefferson Airplane band members reformed the group. They released a self-titled reunion album, and held a successful tour before disbanding.
1990–present: Retirement
Following the Jefferson Airplane reunion, Slick retired from the music business. During a 1998 interview with VH1 on a Behind the Music documentary featuring Jefferson Airplane, Slick, who was never shy about discussing the process of getting old, said that the main reason she retired from the music business was that "all rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire." In a 2007 interview, she reiterated: "You can do jazz, classical, blues, opera, country until you're 150, but rap and rock and roll are really a way for young people to get that anger out", and, "It's silly to perform a song that has no relevance to the present or expresses feelings you no longer have."
Despite her retirement, Slick appeared twice with Kantner's revamped version of Jefferson Starship; the first came in 1995 when the band played at Los Angeles's House of Blues, as documented on the live album Deep Space/Virgin Sky. The second was for a post-9/11 gig in late 2001, during which she came on the stage initially covered in black from head to toe in a makeshift burqa. She then removed the burqa to reveal a covering bearing an American flag and the words "Fuck Fear". Her statement to fans on the outfit was: "The outfit is not about Islam, it's about oppression; this flag is not about politics, it's about liberty." She has generally otherwise refrained from engaging in the music business, although she did perform on "Knock Me Out", a track from In Flight, the 1996 solo debut from former 4 Non Blondes singer, and friend of daughter China, Linda Perry. The song was also on the soundtrack to the film The Crow: City of Angels.
In 2010, Slick co-wrote "Edge of Madness" with singer Michelle Mangione to raise money for remediation efforts following the BP oil spill. Grace also sang background vocals on the song and is clearly audible in the middle of the song singing, "On the edge of madness." Slick has made sporadic appearances and has done radio interviews. She accepted Jefferson Airplane's Grammy Lifetime Achievement awards in 2016, and made an appearance for the unveiling of the band's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2022.
Personal life Slick was married to cinematographer and drummer Gerald "Jerry" Slick from 1961 to 1971, then to lighting designer Skip Johnson from 1976 to 1994. She has a daughter, actress China Wing Kantner, born January 25, 1971. China's father is Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner, with whom Slick had a relationship from 1969 to 1975.
In 1971, Slick was severely injured when she crashed a car into the inside of a tunnel in San Francisco. This happened while she and Jorma Kaukonen were drag racing and both were driving over .
Slick has publicly acknowledged her alcoholism and use of substances including LSD (for which she got the nickname The Acid Queen) and marijuana. By the age of 15 she was drinking heavily, disguising screwdrivers as orange juice at school and stealing gin from her parents. She has discussed her drug dependency and rehabilitation experiences in her autobiography, various interviews, and several published celebrity addiction and recovery books. The latter include The Courage to Change by Dennis Wholey and The Harder They Fall by Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill.
Her alcoholism became a problem for the band during Jefferson Starship's 1978 European tour.Behind the Music: Jefferson Airplane, VH1, Paramount Television, 1998. The group had to cancel the first performance night in Germany because she was too intoxicated to perform, causing the audience to riot. She performed the next night with the band but was so inebriated that she could not sing properly. She also attacked the audience, mocking Germany for losing World War II and groping both female audience members and bandmates. She left the group the next day. The same year, she was "dragged off" the stage of a local San Francisco game show for abusing the contestants. She was admitted to a detoxification facility at least twice, once during the 1970s at Duffy's in Napa Valley, and once in the 1990s with daughter China.
In 2006, Slick suffered from diverticulitis. After initial surgery, she had a relapse requiring further surgery and a tracheotomy. She was placed in an induced coma for two months and then had to learn to walk again. Also in 2006, Slick gave a speech at the inauguration of the new Virgin America airline, which named their first aircraft Jefferson Airplane.
Legal incidents President Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia and Slick are both alumnae of Finch College, and Slick was invited to a tea party for the alumnae at the White House in April 1970. She invited anarchist Abbie Hoffman to be her escort and planned to spike President Nixon's tea with 600 micrograms of LSD, but the party had been billed as an "all ladies" event. Hoffman's presence in the waiting line immediately aroused the suspicions of White House security personnel. He claimed to be Slick's "bodyguard and escort", which failed to convince the security personnel, who told him that the event was "strictly for females".
Hoffman then took out a black flag with a multicolored marijuana leaf and hung it on the White House gate. Slick declined to attend once Hoffman was denied entry, and the two ran across the street to a waiting car. Slick later speculated that she received the invitation only because it was addressed to "Grace Wing" (her maiden name), and that she never would have been invited if the Nixons had known that she was Grace Slick.