Jefferson Airplane's Influence On American Culture

The most pervasive, recurring themes throughout Jefferson Airplane’s music revolve around recreational drug use and a flagrant rejection of mainstream society. For example, in the Jefferson Airplane song, “White Rabbit,” Slick makes references to Alice in Wonderland that promote drug use as a means of self actualization. These beliefs become clear and deliberate in the final verse of the song, “When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy 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” (Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit”). Thus, she argues, when everything falls apart, much like it had in the sixties, Americans should “feed” their head,

In the eyes of these young Americans, the “mainstream” way of living represented an older generation’s archaic and puritanical views on society. Furthermore, this older generation embodied the physical aspects of American Culture that they so fiercely disparaged, promoting senseless wars and bigoted beliefs. As rebellious young adults, the counterculture generation sought to tear away from these values, in favor of their own, idealistic, enlightened views about the world. In an interview conducted for one of his specials, George Carlin spoke on this time in his life, echoing the same ideas. Carlin stated that, as a child, he always had a plan for his life; first, he would become a disc jockey, then he would use his position as a disc jockey to launch a career as a comedian, and finally, he would use his platform as a comedian to become an actor, thus achieving his life’s dream. According to him, this was a very “mainstream” dream, that many of his peers shared as a child, but that as he grew up, he began to realize that he embodied the opposite of all of these “mainstream” values that he built his childhood dreams upon. As an adult, Carlin found professional success ridiculing those same societal institutions that he protested as a

For a brief period of time at the beginning of the decade, the folk revival scene gave birth to the most influential protest songs, featuring acts like Bob Dylan, whose songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Masters of War” garnered him a borderline prophetic status among his followers. According to Dick Weissman in his text, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” Dylan was “the first artist to bring radical propaganda to the masses” (Weissman, 210). However, Dylan chose to pursue a new path in music around the middle of the decade, favoring “plugged in” electronic music over the folk music that made him famous. Altogether, the folk revival scene sizzled out shortly following the Newport festival in 1965 when Dylan chose perform electrically, much to the disappointment of his fans and peers. Rock and Roll, having found its roots in popular music from many different cultures, stretching from R&B, to blues, to country, found a mass appeal in the youth of America who craved the innate rebellious nature of rock music and its fresh, innovative sound. Artists like Jimi Hendrix performed the most groundbreaking pieces of rock and roll, setting new standards in the genre and breaking conventional rules of music with their use of distortion to create an emotional effect. This embrace of rock and roll hit its peak at the Woodstock music festival in 1969, where young Americans, black or