Free Somebody to Love? by Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan Page A

unattainable state. He gave people the impression that giving could even be an enjoyable adventure.
    As had happened with the seemingly overnight changes in lyrics, the sudden, yet natural shift from the rigid dress codes of the fifties to the if-it-feels-right-wear-it free forms of the sixties didn't give me a moment's pause. Does anybody question going from the fourth to the fifth grade? Remember reading about that kid who dressed up all the time?
    SHE'S BACK, SHE'S TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, AND SHE'S GOT COSTUMES!
    They ranged from a miniskirted, knee-booted pirate getup to a floor-length Indian caftan. I never wore tie-dyed T-shirts—too modern. I always went for the costume racks at the San Francisco Opera House or Western Costume Movie Rentals in L.A. If they didn't have what I wanted, I'd sew it myself.
    Shades of Lady Sue.
    I had the big buckled leather boots and belts made, and I got the jewelry from a secondhand store or a head shop. When all else failed, I got two extra-large paisley-printed towels, sewed them together at the top corners, stuck my head through the opening, and belted the front and back at the waist with an enormous five-inch-wide black rubber tire tread. No more couturier department for Grace. To this day, you can still see me in that towel outfit on some VH1 “Flashback” programs.
    Lucky you.
    My first experience with community living, a definite sign of the times, happened as a matter of convenience. I was with the other Great Society band members most of the time anyway, and to make the situation easier on us, we all decided to get a house together in Mill Valley. While this enabled us to play or practice day and night, the difficulties of communal living emerged quickly. What if one person wanted to sleep and the others were playing music? What if you'd just had an argument with someone and couldn't get away from that person? What if someone wanted to use the bathroom and
she
was in there? It was the usual interpersonal problems multiplied by six or seven. The difficulties eventually outweighed the advantages and probably hastened the departure of David Minor and Bard Dupont from the group. It's natural that differences escalate in tight quarters. You don't have to watch five rats in a small cage to understand claustrophobia.

15
    Peyote, Sweet Potatoes, and LSD
    M y group of friends spent a lot of time at Fay Roy Baxter's house. (No, he wasn't the one Airplane referred to in the album title
After Bathing at Baxter's
.) Fay Roy was a man who knew how to throw a party. He loved artists and musicians, so around twenty of us would gather at his house on the weekends for dinner and conversation while he ran in and out of the kitchen joining in the chat and preparing some of the best meals I've ever tasted. Great wine, candlelight, incense, marijuana, and interesting tablemates were a given at Fay Roy's.
    A gathering at his house was simply
the best.
    When I was there, I felt as if I'd been transported back to the salons held by Gertrude Stein. Artists told each other elegant lies and engaged in spirited arguments over the integrity of some author or other. Listening to music through the pleasant alteration of hashish, we were young enough to think that we were the first group of people to really have a handle on IT—the next level of perception in human consciousness. And we thought that all those other “poor suckers” were just plodding along in the old survival grind. Arrogance, indeed—but it was fun buying into our self-created storylines.
    Along with the regular jazz musicians, macramé artists, writers, and students gathered at Baxter's, there was also a chemical engineer named Nick who worked for a big oil company. A twenty-two-year-old Brit with pink cheeks, a placid grin, an easy manner, and a Rolls Royce (an appreciation gift from his deep-pocketed employer), he'd invented the glue that adheres those plastic disks (road bumps) to street dividing lines. But industrial-strength glue