Grace Slick
It was around 1982. I was having some fairly regular funk jams at our house on Myra Way in San Francisco. One day, a friend of mine, Rudy Wilburn, called to make sure
that we were jamming that day and asked if he could come by with Grace Slick, who
he had been hanging with. "Sure" I told him. While I didn't know her personally, I
was no stranger to her as she recorded regularly at Wally Heider's, the studio where
my wife Susie worked. I had sold weed to Starship a few times, and saw them all the time around the studio without incident. But Grace was well known around the studio, and
there were many stories of her drunken exploits, and at times, she would pass out at the studio with the instructions "Whatever you do, don't fucking wake me up!"
I didn't think about any of that because I was kind of excited about the fact that she was coming to my house to jam! We were all playing when she showed up with Rudy.
I hooked her up with a mic and we continued to jam. She started singing spontaneously
and I was getting into it, getting down with a funky lick on my guitar. I was listening to Grace coming up with words off the top of her head "What the fuck are YOU smilin' at?"
she screams into the mic "What the fuck are you smilin' at?". I look up, and she's focused
on me, screaming that line like a psycho. She then holds the mic up like a weapon and lunges toward me. Rudy tackled her to the floor, holding her down on the carpeting as we left the room. After calming her down, they left. We all talked about what happened, and continued to jam.
A few months later, I went with Rudy to Paul Kantner's house to show him some gold Columbian weed. I think I was selling mine for $300, and all of the "shake" had been removed. Kantner showed me a bag of the exact same weed, but half of it was shake. He
was puzzled why mine was only $300 when the other thing he had was $500, and he
didn't seem to be able to understand it was the same weed; from the same load, and his other guy was trying to make a killing.
We go out to his living room, where the Starship was set up for rehearsal. Kantner's house adjacent to Lincoln Park Golf Course, and had a 60 foot living room with windows
looking out to an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The band was set up backs to the windows. I was admiring the set-up when Grace came into the room at the far corner. She immediately focused on me like a pitbull, started acting like an ape, scratching under her armpits and making ape sounds, and rushed me, getting right up to my face. "Oooh, OoooH!" like an ape, with an expression like a mental patient. As I left, Paul followed me out, apologizing for Grace, saying "Don't take it personally, she probably has you confused with someone else" when I told him about my previous encounter.