1967 Rock Classic, Ranked Among 'Greatest Songs of All Time,' Was Written in an Hour on a Broken Piano
Who is the true queen of rock and roll? There's no official answer, of course, but the first names that usually come up in answer to that question are Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, Janis Joplin...and, obviously, Grace Slick. More than just an iconic singer, Slick's songwriting skills helped make Jefferson Airplane one of the most significant bands of the '60s. Case in point? Without Slick, there would be no "White Rabbit."
Released as a single from Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow, "White Rabbit" was Jefferson Airplane's second top 10 hit, peaking at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July of that year. But the tune wasn't originally intended to be a Jefferson Airplane hit - in fact, Slick wrote the song in just about an hour before she even joined the band, inspired by the psychedelic scene, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Spanish music.
"All fairytales that are read to little girls feature a Prince Charming who comes and saves them," Slick told The Guardian in 2021. "But Alice's Adventures in Wonderland did not. Alice was on her own, and she was in a very strange place, but she kept on going and she followed her curiosity - that's the White Rabbit. A lot of women could have taken a message from that story about how you can push your own agenda."
"The 1960s resembled Wonderland for me," Slick continued. "Like Alice, I met all kinds of strange characters, but I was comfortable with it. I wrote 'White Rabbit' on a red upright piano that cost me about $50. It had eight or 10 keys missing, but that was OK because I could hear in my head the notes that weren't there. I used that piano to write several different songs. When I started making money I bought a better one."
As Slick explained, "The line in the song 'feed your head' is both about reading and psychedelics. I was talking about feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention." The singer went on to admit that "the song is a little dark. It's not saying everything's going to be wonderful. The Red Queen is shouting 'off with her head' and the 'White Knight is talking backwards.' Lewis Carroll was looking at how things are run and the people who rule us."
Not only was "White Rabbit" meaningful to Slick at the time, but the song went on to remain a touchstone throughout her life, both symbolically and financially.
"I was born in the year of the rabbit and all kinds of white rabbit stuff has happened to me," Slick said. "It's almost witchcraft. I had a fire in my house...the only thing saved was a ceramic white rabbit. I've still got ceramic white rabbits around the house and today people send me white rabbits."
"White Rabbit's been bringing in royalties for over 50 years. I still get to pay my bills off that one song. Now that's a good song!" she quipped.
Slick isn't the only one who thinks "White Rabbit" is a "good song." In addition to being a chart-topper at the time of its release, the tune has gone on to attain legendary pop culture status. It earned a ranking of #455 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, was included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll" roundup and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. Plus, all these years later, plenty of people are still listening: At the time of this writing, it's been streamed over 300 million times on Spotify.
Related: 'The Most Detested Song in Human History' Has Been Streamed Hundreds of Millions of Times
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This story was originally published May 30, 2026 at 6:48 PM.