Blindspotting: Jefferson Airplane, "Surrealistic Pillow"
Extremely low altitude
The Legacy: A patchouli-scented case of being in the right place at the right time, Jefferson Airplane wafted into the hazy atmosphere of the burgeoning psychedelic music scene during the mid-'60s, their airborne status assisted partly by virtue of the fact that co-founder Marty Balin was sharp enough to start a San Francisco nightclub that served as a reliable forum for their folk-rooted hippie anthems. After a series of early lineup changes, they settled on the core combo responsible for their most culturally impactful releases: Balin on vocals and guitar, Jack Casady on bass and rhythm guitar, Spencer Dryden on drums, Paul Kantner on rhythm guitar and vocals, Jorma Kaukonen on vocals and guitar, and Grace Slick on vocals, keyboards, and... recorder?
Although their first album, 1966's Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, didn't do dick on the charts, they really broke out in a big way with Surrealistic Pillow, which arrived early the following year. Slick, taking over for original vocalist Signe Toly Anderson, brought with her the record's big hits: "Somebody to Love," written by her brother-in-law and former bandmate Darby Slick, and "White Rabbit," which she wrote herself. Both were singles, and both breached the Top Ten; although the band would enjoy further radio success with its seemingly interminable future permutations, "Love" and "Rabbit" remain the Airplane's only Top 40 hits.
Pillow was a big hit in its own right, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and selling more than a million copies. The band's commercial jets cooled considerably after this early peak, but they were still pretty popular — they released five albums before imploding and being reborn as the Jefferson Starship in 1974, all of them went Top 20, and four of them sold more than half a million copies. We're obviously talking about a very different time in terms of record sales, but still — that's a fairly impressive feat for a group that was roundly rejected by radio after making its big breakthrough, and a testament to its enduring relevance.
First Impressions: Like a number of their peers, the various members of Jefferson Whatever made a series of concessions to changing trends during the '70s and '80s. They also kind of hated each other, leading to an extremely fungible lineup that forever seemed to be spinning off satellite projects and taking each other to court. This is the very short version of how Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship and then finally just Starship — and why, having lived through Jefferson and non-Jefferson Starship's stubborn streak of uniformly irritating hits, I have never had the slightest desire to listen to an Airplane record.
The whole point of the Blindspotting series is to force me into musical discoveries I'd probably never get around to making otherwise. I know I'm not typically super effusive in my reviews, but I always go into these things with an open mind and high hopes, and more often than not, that attitude has led to some unexpectedly rewarding listens. This one, though? Jesus Christ.
It's important to acknowledge that every album is a product of its time, and there's absolutely a certain amount of "you had to be there" for records like Surrealistic Pillow, which are tightly intertwined with not only their particular moment, but the culture that produced it. I'm not sure it's even possible to hear this album in 2025 without listening through a series of filters, all of which can't help but muffle the way the music might have made you feel when it was first released. There's also no getting around the way the group's extremely fuzzy lyrical aesthetic has aged; you can't listen to stuff like "Somebody to Love" or "White Rabbit" without being confronted by the countless ways in which the Age of Aquarius willfully submitted itself to the Reagan Era, and how quickly those mantras of peace and love were often revealed as little more than hollow shorthand giving permission to engage in abjectly cruel and selfish behavior.
That being said, you can be disappointed in old hippies and still enjoy their music. David Crosby might be one of the most repugnant people to take the mic during the rock era, and his bandmates in CSNY are certainly guilty of their own crimes against humanity, but there are still things worth holding onto within (some of) the music they made together. Dylan, Baez, Joni Mitchell — lots of ups and downs in there, and not everything has aged well. Surrealistic Pillow, in comparison, is just a slog. I'd rather listen to "We Built This City," and to be 100 percent clear, I do not wish to listen to "We Built This City."
To be fair, there are germs of interesting ideas here, or at least possibilities thereof. Fashioning a folk-blues hybrid to serve as the framework for more... mystical musical explorations isn't a bad place to start. The thing is, though, that a framework only gets you so far; once you get going, you need solid original ideas to make what you're doing worth anyone's time. Try as I might, I don't hear anything in Surrealistic Pillow's grooves beyond the sort of aimless noodling you might expect to hear while watching a low-budget movie about the Summer of Love. The musicianship is competent, the vocals are in tune, and the singles are memorable enough to make you understand why they were hits, but aside from residual affection that eventually curdled into nostalgia, it's hard to understand how these folks were permitted to keep lumbering on — in one permutation or other — as major recording artists until the late '80s.
Then again, if there's one thing boomers excel at, it's stubbornly gripping reins they should have handed over years ago, and loudly refusing to go away. Perhaps it's appropriate that on a gruesome, dark day when the most overwhelmingly loathsome member of their generation is permitted to return his greasy palms to the levers of power, I'm sitting here listening to a so-called classic that boomers bought by the truckload back when they were young and full of dreams to change the world. Turns out they really did end up changing it — only instead of ushering in an age of peace and love, they slid bare-assed down the moral arc of the universe, bending it toward grotesque mountains of cash stolen from their fellow citizens and descendants.
Favorite Song: "Embryonic Journey," a lovely instrumental that makes me think I should have dedicated this column to any random Hot Tuna album instead.