Jefferson Airplane, renowned for psychedelic songs about love, drugs and revolution, was formed by Marty Balin and Paul Kantner in San Francisco in 1965; their first gig was at an old pizza parlor. Within months they became the first San Francisco band to sign with a major label. In 1966 Grace Slick joined from the Great Society, bringing "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" with her, and in 1967 both songs made the Top 10. The sound of the Haight-Ashbury (a neighborhood in San Francisco) had gone national!

They were the pioneers of psychedelic rock, with Grace Slick one of the first female rock stars. They played Monterey Pop and Woodstock, and as the Vietnam War dragged on, their songs grew more and more political. Volunteers (1969) was openly against the war and went gold within two months; its title song was a revolutionary anthem, and "Wooden Ships," written with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, was about the struggle to survive after an apocalyptic nuclear war. Along with a few others, they helped turn rock into the soundtrack of the anti-war movement.

This song wasn't performed by them. But it could have been! This version is by Jefferson Biplane. Lyrics like these—a promise to keep us out of the fray, broken in a day; men who sign the orders and never wear the boots; a mother in her kitchen, counting the days—are just what the Airplane might well have sung in 1969. The sad part is that they're every bit as applicable today.

That '60s Album

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/23/2026 Updated: 10/25/2026		Page Views: 184
Hashtags: #Music #1960s
The Sixties songs as you remember them, not as they were!

I've gathered here songs by the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary; the Grateful Dead; Glen Campbell, Dionne Warwick and the Supremes that exemplify, if not the actual hits of those years, the memory of them. So the songs aren't by those artists; they're by the likes of them, so that you can re-live (or live for the first time) the teenage experience of hearing new music…from the Sixties…for the first time!