After yesterday's Frightened Rabbit, it was simply too tempting to follow down this particular hole in this wondrous psychedelic number written by Grace Slick. So familiar now, almost a cliche for its era's association and yet still fresh and otherworldly, it's easy to underestimate the influence and innovation of this song n the golden age of psychedelia, even when Pink Floyd were still finding their feet. Mixing drug references with scenes of Lewis Carroll's famous Alice books, the song was written in 1966 when Slick was still in the San Francisco rock band, The Great Society. After they broke up and she joined Jefferson Airplane, and it appeared on their 1967 album Surrealist Pillow.
As well as Slick's distinctive voice, the songs power comes in it's slow but remorseless pace, and a wonderful guitar by Jorma Kaukonen. Covered by many artists from George Benson to Emilíana Torrini, it will be forever associated with acid trips and the craziness of the Vietnam War when it was used powerfully in the 1986 film Platoon, as well as Terry Gilliam adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and many other films and TV programmes.
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call...
Call Alice
When she was just small
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know
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
Feed your head
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