Read Online Somebody to Love? by Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan - Free Book Online

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    My mother was a singer and I thought maybe I could squeeze myself into that job, whatever it was. I picked out a song that I loved and dressed to the nines for the tryout. Two men in a small recording studio with a closet-sized control room waved me over to a microphone to do the song I'd rehearsed. Unfortunately it was “Summertime.” For an all-black record label? Bad choice, but I figured it would be worse to attempt a song I hadn't rehearsed. Through the double-glass window of the control booth, I saw gentle smiles—not condescending—just two black men watching a little white dufus squirming under the weight of her own self-inflicted hubris.
    I didn't get a callback.
    I'd always been a lover of art and I considered myself a fair illustrator, so when an advertising agency placed an ad in the newspaper for a graphic artist, I showed up for the interview, not knowing exactly what a graphic artist was supposed to do. But I explained that I had an idea for updating their Bank of America TV commercials. “How about a cartoon character to liven it up a bit?” I suggested.
    “No,” they said. “That would never work. The public doesn't want anything that frivolous when it comes to institutions entrusted with handling their investments. We have to convey the appearance of respectability and reliability.”
    I didn't get the job, but on the tube, two months later, I saw a cartoon symphony conductor pointing out the benefits of a Bank of America checking account with his baton. Did they steal my idea?
They
would have said no. After all, I hadn't said anything about a symphony conductor.
    How dumb could I get?

13
    Grace Cathedral
    W hen I was five years old, I told my parents, “I'm going to be married in
that
church.” I was pointing to Grace Cathedral, a neoclassical Episcopalian monolith that sits on top of Nob Hill along with the Pacific Union Club (rich guys only) and the Fairmont Hotel. At five years of age, of course, I didn't know what denomination it was, who went there, or anything else about it, but it was big and beautiful, and it had my name.
    In 1961, it seemed fitting that Grace Cathedral would be my matrimonial church of choice. My decision to marry was not sudden. Rather, it was a natural progression of events, seemingly the right thing to do at the time. But nothing predictable had real longevity during that turbulent era. My generation, educated by the best public school systems before or since, was busy gathering the ingredients for a cultural stew that would feed reactionary efforts right up through the millennium. So when you consider the diverse mass of information we were receiving during the time period between 1959 and 1962, and the evolutionary shifts that were occurring, it was probably inevitable that my first marriage would be temporary.
    My parents, as yet unobstructed by their hedonistic daughter, had moved to a stately, fake Tudor structure covered with ivy and surrounded by ivy-covered neighborhood homes. My mother was doing volunteer work at Stanford Children's Hospital, playing bridge with the ladies, and taking care of my brother, who was a quiet but naturally busy nine-year-old boy. My father was chairman of the board at Weeden and Company, living a polite, unassuming existence. Jerry Slick's parents had become good friends with my parents, and the two families were in the habit of enjoying weekends together at the Slicks' beach house in Santa Cruz. My future husband, Jerry, had two brothers, Darby (author of the song “Somebody to Love”) and Danny (who avoided rock-and-roll silliness altogether). The rest of the Slick family comprised Jerry's mother, Betty, a housewife who drank her way through the family gatherings, Jerry's lawyer father, Bob, and a basset hound.
    Our decision to marry was inevitable. Neat and tidy? Not yet aware of what “complete personal freedom” meant, I was evaluating the long-run specifies. Jerry was bright