White Rabbit Essay Research Paper The song

White Rabbit Essay, Research Paper

The song I am reporting on is called White Rabbit . The band, Jefferson Airplane, performs the song. I selected this song because of the eerie feeling it gives you when you listen to it. Also, this song is a very good example of drug use among the youth, especially the hippies, in the 1960 s. The copyright date on this song is 1967.

Jefferson Airplane was a very influential group in the late sixties all the way up to the late eighties. When Grace Slick joined the group, during the summer or love, she made the band an icon for the hippie generation. Their performances were known for extreme psychedelic visuals as well as the unique sound they produced. When those two things came together the experience was said to be the ultimate companion for taking LSD.

When this song was put out, it was early in Jefferson Airplane s career. White Rabbit was on their second album and their first with new lead singer, Grace Slick. She was the role model for all hippie girls, and the dream girl for all hippie guys. She stayed with, as well as slept with, the group for most of its career.

In the time that White Rabbit was recorded, the war in Vietnam had started raging into a global conflict.

The hippie movement, in which Jefferson Airplane participated, was against the war, and for love, peace, and drugs. The music of Jefferson Airplane took these ideas and spread them with creative and appropriate songs.

The lyrics of White Rabbit were clearly those that expressed drug use. The beginning of the song tells us that the pills that mother gives you don t do anything at all, but the ones they take might make you large or make you small, this is clearly a reference to taking LSD.

The song title as well as the characters in the song all come from the Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland which is believed to have subtle drug themes. The song basically tells me that the band took acid, watched a Disney movie, then wrote a chart topping song about it