But maybe throaty lead singer Slick, 35, and guitarist Kantner, 34, aren't such horrifying role models after all. To be sure, they have been living together without burden of clergy for the past six years, but it says something that their daughter China, 4½—her original name, "god," Paul now dismisses as "hospital humor"—is also thriving. At the time of her pregnancy, Grace had conceded to being "a little worried, what with all the weird drugs we've been taking." But shortly thereafter, Slick publicly crowed about her daughter, "Art Linkletter and Al Capp will be disappointed to learn that she is very healthy, in spite of what they say about drug-crazed hippies."
The three of them, in fact, share an almost bourgeois life in San Francisco, near enough to the bay to hear foghorns in the night. As for wedding bells, Paul declares: "Marriage is nothing more than that," and he wafts a paper napkin across the king-size bed he and Gracie share. From her side of the mattress, Slick is less adamant against the institution. "I'm money-hungry enough to consider the tax reasons for marriage," she says. "Also the ceremony's fun and you can have a really great party afterward."
Temperamentally, the co-pilots of the Starship tend to fly off in opposing directions too. "Most of the time," says Grace, "we look at each other in wonder at how another human being can be so totally different." Paul, for instance, revels in the eclectic clutter of their home and in owning things like books and records—his current favorites being James Clavell's Shogun and the reggae albums of the Wailers. Grace is just as happy when, as at present, they are on tour (17 cities in 31 days). She actually likes "the starkness of hotel rooms with nothing in them and a simple 25 pounds of luggage or so." Creatively, she finds herself able to compose any time or place—"in bed, on the toilet, on airplanes, I'm never without my pad."
Slick and Kantner are equals in the Starship, which is run with remarkable democracy. "I speak for the group a little more," Kantner explains, "but she's a little more famous." "Grace was never just the chick singer," adds another member. "She fought for a strong position in the group, got it and has kept it." The only instance of sexist pressure against Grace occurred recently when the boys began calling her "Fatso" to coax her into shedding 30 pounds. It worked.
Paul, a native San Franciscan, didn't even take up music until "I was about 20, other than the usual piano lessons." After a couple of goof-off terms at the University of Santa Clara, he played guitar and banjo in local folk groups before he and singer friend Marty Balin formed the Airplane. The charter songstress, Signe Anderson, left after a year, and Grace was hired.
She grew up in suburban Palo Alto. Her mother had given up a career as a club singer to bear children (something Grace vowed not to do), and her father was an investment banker. At first she went east to Finch College, because "it was the cheapest way for me to get to New York, with my parents paying." After a year she became a fashion model and computer operator, before marrying a young filmmaker, Jerry Slick, and starting a band called the Great Society. Neither the group nor the union made it.
With the Airplane, Grace was labeled the "psychedelic Streisand" and became a symbol of the counterculture. She hymned of drugs in hits like White Rabbit ("Feed your head"), and when Tricia Nixon inadvertently invited her to a White House party for Finch alums, Grace brought along radical Abbie Hoffman. The guards barred them, and "boy, were they right," said Slick, revealing in Stereo Review at the time that she was toting 600 micro-milligrams of LSD. "We were aiming for the Old Dad, hoping he might come to the party and have a cup of tea."
The Airplane lived in a communal mansion until 1971, when Paul and Grace moved into their own pad and became comparatively monogamous. She, more than he, Grace reports in The First Time, the new true-confessional tome about celebs' sexual histories. Her few lapses, Grace told the authors, she attributed to her "peculiarity about Orientals." Both she and Paul are Asiaphiles. They retain an acupuncturist to ease tensions and take classes in the martial arts. Kantner has written a letter to Chairman Mao offering to give one of their frequent free concerts on the mainland. Grace's complete kitchen repertoire is brewing a pot of green China tea. They have a housekeeper who also tends to their daughter, but for all their otherwise funky ways, Kantner and Slick are responsible and fond parents.
Grace, who's been dyeing her prematurely gray hair since she was 23, says she feels her age, "but I'm going to keep going until I drop. I'd rather sing till I ruin my voice—Callas I'm not." They both just dig their work. "It's nice that we're making a living at it," agrees Paul, "but making a living is not why I do it." Grace adds, "Unless you're trying to find a cure for cancer, fun is a shorter word for it than self-realization." As for the artificial nonmusical highs that the Airplane once sang about, the Starship seems to be into the vintage chemotherapy of their parents. "Dom Perignon's up to $30 a bottle," complains Grace Slick. "Now that's what I call a drug problem."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
