The 1970s were undoubtedly challenging for all the artists, especially for the ones in the rock scene, due to the excessive presence of everything, from alcohol and marijuana to cocaine and Quaaludes. While it fueled creativity to some point, it also came with a destructive cost because many prominent names of the era, like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin, died from an overdose.
As for other rock bands on the music scene of the period, Jefferson Airplane also went through tough times in the early ’70s. While the band was enjoying the success of their earlier hit records, the drugs began to take a heavy toll also on the Airplane members. Especially after the notorious Altamont concert, where a big fight broke out, the band began to fall apart.
Shortly after the incident, the drummer Spencer Dryden quit, followed by Marty Balin’s departure due to his choice of a different lifestyle rather than a drug-fuelled career. By 1974, Jefferson Airplane had dissolved entirely, but Grace Slick still tried to pour her energy into forming another band and continued performing with Jefferson Starship and its continuation Starship.
Although her later bands also achieved critical success like Airplane, it looks like her initial band always had a special place in Grace’s heart, as she revealed during a 2019 interview with Classic Rock. The veteran singer reflected on her music career with both Jefferson Airplane and Starship while also explaining why she hated the latter.
“That was a sell-out band. The Airplane was a smorgasbord, but the Starship I hated,” Grace Slick said, sharing the difference between her two former bands. Then, the vocalist also confessed that she despised Starship’s high-charting single ‘We Built This City’ from the ‘Knee Deep in the Hoopla’ album. She noted, “Our big hit single, ‘We Built This City,’ was awful. What are you talking about? What city? LA was built on oranges, film, and oil.”
Grace continued, revealing that she also couldn’t bear singing the song on stage, but she did it anyway. The rocker admitted, “San Francisco was built on the gold rush. The Romans built London. It sounded like we were bragging, even though Bernie Taupin, an Englishman, wrote the lyric. I could sing it – and the others – because I can fake enthusiasm. You have to act to get on stage. I felt like I’d throw up on the front row, but I smiled and did it anyway. The show must go on.”
In terms of the musical direction, Starship slightly differed from the sounds of Grace Slick’s earlier bands, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, with its pop-rock and synth-pop tunes. Despite the chart-topping successes of the songs ‘We Built This City,’ ‘Sara,’ and ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,’ Slick was not satisfied with the band’s music, so she eventually left in 1988 and retired from the music business soon after.
