Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

This is also another one of those 'replay until dead' songs - I'd say this song is pretty timeless, and definitely one of my favourite, if not favourite, songs from the Jefferson Airplane. I think it's the ending of this song that just makes one want to keep playing it; you just want more of it. 

"White Rabbit" was written by Grace Slick, who based the lyrics on Lewis Carroll’s book Alice In Wonderland. Like many young musicians in San Francisco, Slick did a lot of drugs. She saw lots of drug references in Carroll’s book, including the pills, the smoking caterpillar, the mushroom, and lots of other images that are generally trippy. She noticed that lots of childrens stories involve a substance of some kind that alters reality, and felt it was time to write a song about it. 

Slick got the idea for this after taking LSD and spending hours listening to the Miles Davis album Sketches Of Spain.

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small,

And the ones that mother gives you

Don’t do anything at all.

Go ask Alice

When she’s ten feet tall.

And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you’re going to fall,

Tell ‘em a hookah smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call.

Call Alice

When she was just small.

When the men on the chessboard

Get up and tell you where to go

And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom

And your mind is moving low.

Go ask Alice

I think she’ll know.

When logic and proportion

Have fallen softly dead,

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen’s “off with her head!”

Remember what the dormouse said:

         “Feed your head. Feed your head. Feed your head”