Free Somebody to Love? by Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan

members of the various local bands, just hanging out. Once in a while, a marketing representative from a record company came in and blew smoke up my ass, saying things like, “You guys are great. I'm going to make you rich.” One guy said he was going to make another Edith Piaf out of me.
    How? By breaking my back?
    The press vacillated between thinking we sucked and complimenting us on our originality. Good or bad, who's to say, but
original
is definitely what we were. Music lyrics were changing then, from the classic boy/girl romance stories to a wider variety of subjects, and we all took a shot at writing material. Pretty soon, the only “outside” song we did was “Sally Go 'Round the Roses.” The Motown-style arrangement lent itself nicely to the East Indian rhythms Darby and Peter loved; it had a sort of repeated mantra in the title chorus.
    Since all changes, no matter how small, are absorbed into and add impetus to the ongoing paradigm shift, nothing ever really slips away. The old themes and styles persisted as stitches in the unfurling tapestry, but they were hard to see. What caught the eye was all the newness.
    At a certain point, the “Why don't you love me?” concept was pretty much put on the back burner, replaced by what we considered
relevant
topics: political, social, and psychological ones. In a short space of time, we learned more than our parents wanted us to know about things they'd been too timid to investigate. Or, to put it more kindly and accurately, our new forms of communication hadn't been available to them at a time when their minds were open enough to
“hear it.”
    In any event, our parents' world was crumbling (a perfectly natural evolutionary process that they refused to acknowledge), so they kept saying,
    “DON'T!”
    and we kept asking,
    “WHY NOT?”
    The same question that was being voiced in England, Africa, South America, Russia, and China, according to each country's own parameters, became an almost tangible force in our lyrics. Both the joyful songs that celebrated new life and the wrenching shouts of labor pains were heard in the music, the press, the movies, the prisons, the churches, and the state rooms.
    What concerns you? Put it in a lyric.
    What country's style of music best suits the idea you're trying to convey? English? Spanish? Jamaican? Whatever it is, use it.
    Global nation? Use it.
    Does colored oil and water produce interesting images when you backlight it and project it on a screen? Great. Use it.
    Are nude young girls shit-dancing a good example of freedom of expression? Sure, let 'em dance.
    Does living with a bunch of friends who aren't related by blood feel more comfortable than living with your family? Yes? Then move in.
    Does shooting a bunch of people in a foreign country for no good reason sound like a drag? Yes? Then
don't
do it, but
do
put it in a song.
    Darby Slick's “Somebody to Love,” which Darby originally wrote for The Great Society, is a good example of the shift that lyrics were taking. In the past, when people wrote love songs, they were talking about someone who would or wouldn't fill their personal desires. “Somebody to Love,” which became a huge hit later when Jefferson Airplane recorded it, turned the old concept around. The lyrics implied that rather than the loving you're whining about
getting
or
not getting,
a more satisfying state of heart might be the loving you're
giving.
    Don't you want somebody to love?
    Don't you need somebody to love?
    Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
    You better find somebody to love.

    Cluster: Jefferson Airplane in 1968. (Jim Wells/Archive Photos)
    Darby wrote the words simply, without pedantry, suggesting that adhering to the old Puritan cliché “It's better to give than to receive” might actually make you a happier person. The idea of service and selflessness may sound like a tedious task reserved for bald monks, but the way Darby wrote the lyrics, altruism didn't seem like such a lofty and