Living in fear of orgies: The unnerving moment Grace Slick first met Mick Jagger
It is difficult to imagine Grace Slick ever being intimidated. After all, the Jefferson Airplane vocalist was a vital pillar of the wild hippie generation, travelling around the world and living the archetypal rockstar life. More so than many bands of that era, the Airplane truly lived life on the edge, regularly partaking in the mind-altering power of LSD and living on a healthy diet of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and very little sleep. Nevertheless, the prospect of meeting Mick Jagger was enough to elicit panic in the mind of Grace Slick.
It is worth remembering that, by the late 1960s, Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones had become something of a global phenomenon. The encapsulation of this new generation of rock and rollers, The Stones were among the first to establish a post-war adolescent rebellion that would go on to inspire the hippie counterculture. As such, Jagger and company held a special appreciation for the bands that made up that scene, of which there were few bigger than Jefferson Airplane.
Stalwarts of the San Francisco psychedelic scene and Jefferson Airplane were nothing short of iconic figures within the counterculture movement. After cementing themselves as being among the strongest bands of the era through their legendary performance at Woodstock along with the release of Surrealistic Pillow, it was only a matter of time before the band would cross paths with the rock and roll statesman that was Mick Jagger. Of course, meeting the frontman of The Rolling Stones is a pretty daunting prospect for anybody, and Airplane vocalist Grace Slick was no different.
Nevertheless, the two groups wanted to organise a rock festival for the West Coast of America so that those hippies who missed Woodstock in New York could get a taste of the countercultural celebration. So, as Slick explained to Rolling Stone, “Paul [Kantner] and I went to England to talk to Mick Jagger about Altamont,” noting that, “I was scared because I’d never met Mick before. I thought, ‘Oh, God, there’s going to be some kind of orgy there and I don’t do orgies and they’re going to think I’m a big prude and it’s going to be a party with heroin and all this weird shit I don’t do’”.
Slick’s worries might not have been all that uncalled for. After all, there are numerous stories from throughout The Rolling Stone’s career that paint a picture of wild parties illustrated by drug taking, orgies and widespread destruction. Luckily, then, Slick and Kanter seemingly managed to catch Jagger on an off-day, saying, “I walked into Mick’s flat and it looked like my parents’ home: Oriental rugs, Edwardian furniture, well kept. I was perfectly at home — it really was like visiting my parents. He was in a three-piece suit and served us tea, and we talked about how to put this thing on”.
According to the Jefferson Airplane singer, Jagger was very professional when it came to organising the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, sharing, “When he does business, he does business. He doesn’t screw around. He knows how to separate having orgies from doing business”.
The fact that the groups were so professional in planning the event must have made it all the more disappointing when the gig at Altamont turned out to be a complete disaster, characterised by widespread violence and even a death – mainly resulting from the band employing Hell’s Angels as a security force. As it turns out, Slick and Kanter might have been responsible for hiring the bikers, “We’d done a bunch of free stuff in Golden Gate Park and the Hell’s Angels had been our security. And they never hurt anybody. And they were good at it because people were afraid of them. So we said, ‘We’ll get the Hells Angels to do security’, and Jagger didn’t know and said OK”. The rest, as they say, is history.