Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

I saw you

I saw you

Comin’ back to me

The Jefferson Airplane were the first of the San Francisco-area psychedelic bands to have a real impact on the musical world.  

Their second album, Surrealistic Pillow, was “a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit – literally – like a shot heard round the world,” according to reviewer Bruce Eder of Allmusic.com.  

The only better American album from that era is the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and both records share many of the same virtues.   The production of Surrealistic Pillow is sophisticated without being slick.  There’s none of the self-indulgent excess that mars many albums of this era.  

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I didn’t buy Surrealistic Pillow at a store – I got it from a record club.  

More record clubs of that era offered a heapin’ helpin’ of free albums, but required you to buy a certain number of additional records – e.g., “Get 12 records free when you agree to buy six more in the next year,” etc.

The ad I responded to offered two records for 99 cents, and there were no strings attached.

What was the other record I got?  I’m glad you asked!  It was Hugo Montenegro’s Music From The Man From U.N.C.L.E. album.  (I don't think this was the actual music played during the television show, which was only the coolest show ever – it consisted of a cover version of the main “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” theme plus other instrumentals in the spirit of the show.)

I remember playing that album one Saturday night when my parents were out to dinner with friends.  I was pretending to be Napoleon Solo, jumping from one hiding place to another – peeking around the corner, and then diving behind the sofa, firing my imaginary Walther P-38 pistol at my pursuers as the music played.  (I was at least 15 years old at the time – maybe even 16 – so this is a little embarrassing to admit.) 

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Surrealistic Pillow didn’t inspire me to run around my house in fantasy secret-agent mode.  In fact, it often put me to sleep.

I remember sitting in the big, overstuffed La-Z-Boy in our living room and drifting off to sleep (despite it being the middle of the day) while Surrealistic Pillow played on our Magnavox console stereo.

It was such a relaxing record to listen to – not boring, just relaxing.  Classical music often had the same effect on me.  I rarely made it through a Mozart or Beethoven symphony without nodding off.  (I wish I could just let myself fall asleep at an orchestra concert.  It's such a nice feeling to go to sleep while listening to music.)

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The Jefferson Airplane was put together by 23-year-old singer Marty Balin to be the house band at The Matrix, a rock-folk-blues club he opened in San Francisco in 1965.  (When I lived in San Francisco in the early 1980s, my apartment was four blocks west and eight blocks south of where The Matrix was located, but it had closed long before.)  Steppenwolf, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Doors, and the Velvet Underground were among the groups that recorded live albums there.

So was the Great Society, an early acid-rock band that featured a lead singer named Grace Slick.  Signe Anderson was an original female singer of the Jefferson Airplane, but left the group after giving birth to a daughter.  Slick left the Great Society – whose members included her husband and his brother – because she felt that the Jefferson Airplane was run in a much more professional manner.  

Grace Slick

Slick contributed two songs to Surrealistic Pillow:  “Somebody to Love” (which was written by her brother-in-law and had been recorded previously by the Great Society) and “White Rabbit.”  Both were top-ten hit singles.

But Surrealistic Pillow really belongs to Marty Balin.  He wrote or co-wrote five of its songs, including what I think are the four best songs on the record.  We think of Grace Slick as the Jefferson Airplane's lead vocalist because she sang on the two hit singles from Surrealistic Pillow, but Balin was the singer on the lion's share of the songs on that album.

By the way, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia played guitar on several songs on Surrealistic Pillow, including “Comin’ Back to Me,” which Balin said he wrote in a single setting after smoking some topnotch marijuana given to him by famed blues singer Paul Butterfield.  (That’s Grace Slick playing recorder on the song.)

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Influenced by the success of “heavier” musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Cream, the group changed musical direction after Surrealistic Pillow.  

Paul Kantner, who had a child with Grace Slick, became the band's primary songwriter.  (The couple eventually formed Jefferson Starship.) 

Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, who had gotten their starts as blues musicians, launched Hot Tuna. 

Marty Balin eventually became the Airplane's odd man out.  He had been a close friend of Janis Joplin, and abstained from drugs and alcohol after her death, which further isolated him from his bandmates.  He left Jefferson Airplane in 1971.

The records that the Airplane released after Surrealistic Pillow contain some very good songs, but the group sort of jumped the shark after its release.  Nothing Jefferson Airplane did later compares to that glorious album. 

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Click here to listen to Surrealistic Pillow.

Click here to buy the 2003 reissue of that album, which contains several bonus tracks that were not on the original LP.