| "White Rabbit" | ||||||||||
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| Single by Jefferson Airplane | ||||||||||
| from the album Surrealistic Pillow | ||||||||||
| B-side | "Plastic Fantastic Lover" | |||||||||
| Released | June 24, 1967 | |||||||||
| Format | Vinyl record (7") 45 RPM | |||||||||
| Recorded | November 3, 1966 | |||||||||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock, acid rock | |||||||||
| Length | 2:31 | |||||||||
| Label | RCA Victor | |||||||||
| Writer(s) | Grace Slick | |||||||||
| Producer | Rick Jarrard | |||||||||
| Jefferson Airplane singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"White Rabbit" is a song from Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow. It was released as a single and became the band's second top ten success, peaking at #8[1] on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was ranked #478 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,[2] #27 on Rate Your Music's Top Singles of All Time and appears on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
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“White Rabbit” was written by Grace Slick while she was still with The Great Society. When that band broke up in 1966, Slick was invited to join Jefferson Airplane to replace their departed female singer Signe Toly Anderson, who left the band with the birth of her child. The first album Slick recorded with Jefferson Airplane was Surrealistic Pillow, and Slick provided two songs from her previous group: her own “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love”, written by Darby Slick and recorded under the title "Someone to Love" by The Great Society. Both songs became breakout successes for Jefferson Airplane and have ever since been associated with that band.[3]
One of Grace Slick's earliest songs, written during either late 1965 or early 1966, uses imagery found in the fantasy works of Lewis Carroll: 1865's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass such as changing size after taking pills or drinking an unknown liquid. It is commonly thought that these are also references to the hallucinatory effects of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. Characters referenced include Alice, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, the Red Queen, and the Dormouse.
For Grace and others in the 1960s, drugs were a part of mind-expanding and social experimentation. With its enigmatic lyrics, "White Rabbit" became one of the first songs to sneak drug references past censors on the radio. Even Marty Balin, Grace's eventual rival in the Airplane, regarded the song as a "masterpiece." In interviews, Grace has related that Alice in Wonderland was often read to her as a child and remained a vivid memory into her adult years.
Set to a crescendo similar to that of Ravel's famous Boléro, as used in the Miles Davis and Gil Evans album, Sketches of Spain, and a horn arrangement by Spencer Dryden,[4] the music combined with the song's lyrics strongly suggests the sensory distortions experienced with hallucinogens, and the song was later utilized in pop culture to imply or accompany just such a state.
While the Red Queen and the White Knight are both mentioned in the song, the references differ from Lewis Carroll's original text, wherein the White Knight does not talk backwards and it is the Queen of Hearts, not the Red Queen, who says "Off with her head!" However, in the movie Alice In Wonderland (1951), the Queen of Hearts is often referred to as the Red Queen.
The last lines of the song are: "Remember what the Dormouse said. Feed your head. Feed your head." They do not explicitly quote the Dormouse as is often assumed. "Remembering what the Dormouse said" probably refers to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter XI: "Who Stole the Tarts", wherein a very nervous Mad Hatter is called to testify:
" 'But what did the Dormouse say?' one of the jury asked."
" 'That I can't remember', said the Hatter."
It is, therefore, better to say that the lyrics were inspired by the book, rather than that they reference it directly.
The song was covered in the following years:
"White Rabbit" has been used in numerous films and television shows.[13]
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