The "White Rabbit" is a powerful metaphor that has resonated in music for decades. From Jefferson Airplane's psychedelic anthem to Egypt Central's hard-hitting rock track, the symbol of the white rabbit evokes themes of exploration, deception, and the journey through the unknown. This article delves into the meaning behind these two distinct yet connected songs.
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit": A Psychedelic Journey
"White Rabbit" is a song written by Grace Slick and recorded by the American rock band Jefferson Airplane for their 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow. With its enigmatic lyrics, "White Rabbit" became one of the first songs to sneak drug references in, bypassing censorship on the radio. It was released as a single and became the band's second top-10 success, peaking at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100.
Grace Slick wrote the lyrics first, then composed the music at a red upright piano she had bought for US$50 with eight or ten keys missing. She said that the music was heavily influenced by Miles Davis's 1960 album Sketches of Spain, particularly Davis's treatment of the Concierto de Aranjuez (1939). Like Boléro, "White Rabbit" is essentially one long crescendo.
Characters Slick referenced include Alice, the White Rabbit, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, the Red Queen, and the Dormouse. For Slick, "White Rabbit" "is about following your curiosity. The White Rabbit is your curiosity". For her and others in the 1960s, drugs were a part of mind expansion and social experimentation.
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Marty Balin, Slick's former bandmate and co-founder of Jefferson Airplane (and later Jefferson Starship), regarded the song as a "masterpiece".
The song was ranked number 478 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, number 483 in 2010, and number 455 in 2021 and appears on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane - Song Meaning
Egypt Central's "White Rabbit": A Tale of Personal Struggles
Egypt Central have been through their fair share of ups and downs since the release of their self-titled debut album in 2008 to the much anticipated follow up ‘White Rabbit’ in 2011. But rather than complain about what they went through, the band instead offers up a diverse collection of tunes each weaving an intricate tale of their own, kicking off with the the biggest adventure of them all, ‘White Rabbit.’ The title track recreates the story of what the band’s been up to for the last few years, so hop in the rabbit hole, listen closely and get reacquainted with Egypt Central.
Egypt Central
The title ‘White Rabbit’ is symbolic of what you’ve been through in the past few years as a band. It’s pretty much the story of everything we’ve been through for the last three years of trying to make the transition from the first record to the second record and just all the things we had to go through and the tough decisions that we had to make.
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Bass guitarist Joey Chicago told the story of the song in an interview with AntiMusic: "I remember flying down the highway at 90 miles an hour and first thinking of the white rabbit lyrics. We were driving fast being fueled by a punk style, upbeat, instrumental demo we had recently recorded. We were headed from Memphis, Tennessee to McGehee, a small town deep into the Arkansas landscape. A small cabin, used mostly for hunting dear, was open to be used during the off season months. It was pushed deliberately back into the woods and surrounded by thick trees and large farm lands. It was the perfect place to escape all distraction and begin crafting our new record. We had struggled so badly over the last few years, fighting personal and business trials, and had been so anxious, desperate really, to get a chance to write some new music."
One of the main focuses of the new music was going to be honesty and transparency, something we felt was lacking from everyone around us. At first we compared it to hell, being pushed into the fire and coming to a point where you no longer feared the pain of the blaze. We had faced almost every negative turn of events a band could and somehow had come out standing, we were not afraid of anything and weren't going anywhere. We wanted to get that point across.
Months later we drove down to meet Skidd Mills in Nashville for a song writing session. The first of our writing sessions scheduled for the second, second record. We played a lot of our new ideas for Skidd, one of them being the song including the white rabbit lyrics. That verse had been tossed aside in the last recordings and was still very much a useable and unrecorded lyric. Skidd loved it, and so did we. The song White Rabbit started to take form.
We wanted the song to have a diminished kind of creepy, haunting, warning like feel to it and really incorporated that idea into the riffs and scale selections. When it was complete, we loved it so much, we chose to record the whole record with Skidd.
Diverse Interpretations of "White Rabbit"
Like all songs it can be perceived or interpreted to be about more than one thing. It could be about a guy that has a girlfriend with an addiction, self control issues, and is a liar to herself and him. "you cant fix a broken promise" and "your lies fool no one" and hes being dragged down with her in her wonderland of filth "we follow like alice and just keep diving down the hole" created by her crazy mind which is filled with lies "white rabbit straight jacket" shes the kind of crazy that does harm to themself. thats one way of looking at it another could be that we all kind of live in our wonderlands in a way in our heads with movies, games, music, art, jobs, passions, and dreams "we follow like alice and just keep diving down the hole" in a way were all not perfect and have a good and a bad side some of the song he could just be fighting from being a bad person and "you cant offer your posion to me" could be aimed at drugs or fast food and shit like that. "you cant fix a broken promise could be about the government and how they always lie. this song is about our worlds in and outside of our heads. but only the ones who wrote it know what it is supposed to mean.
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Album Composition
While the title track paints a vivid picture, the rest of the album follows suit with heavy, gloomy brooders like ‘Ghost Town,’ anthemic arena ready rockers in the form of ‘Kick Ass,’ and softer acoustic tinged numbers like ‘Backfire.’ A diverse offering of songs and emotions, Egypt Central laid it all out this time around proving they aren’t your average rock band.
On the first record, everything musically was done first and I felt personally that there was always pressure to write the lyrics. [Bassist] Joey [Chicago] has always been heavily involved and influential with the lyrics but he definitely took it to the next level on this new album. [Drummer] Blake [Allison] has always been on the arranging side, so he became a producer and an engineer and took that to the next level, along with his songwriting. Having Jeff [James] do all the guitar work, the collective group just went to a whole new level and it allowed me the opportunity to really just focus on being the singer that I wanted to be and be relaxed going into the process.
I love how the song ‘Backfire’ takes you to a simplistic, acoustic place but still remains so dynamic showing off a softer side of the band; was it important to you to show your diversity on this album? Most definitely. I think it’s important for anyone in any profession. You don’t want to become one dimensional unless you truly are a one trick pony. You want people to know that there are layers to you and what you’re capable of. At the same time it just happens that way. Songs are written and they are what they are, we just try to present them the best possible way that we can. We’ve always been that type of band where we’re very heavy one second and then the next second we’re writing an acoustic song.
The song ‘Enemy Inside’ is one that you worked on a lot and it’s gone through many different versions; tell us about how you arrived at the final recording of it and what the song means to you? It’s actually not that different from the original version, which is crazy. Originally, it was conceived as a darker, deep song and people tried to play with it and take different angles saying it didn’t work in its original form but we didn’t know that because we had never released it as a single.
‘Good Night’ is one of the standout songs for me. I think a lot of us can relate to the story being told, but wanted to ask you for your personal take on the song lyrics? It’s about losing someone that you truly care about. When somebody passes on and they’re no longer with us I think that there’s a lot of doubt, confusion and fear that you may never see that person again. I personally believe that you will see the people that you’ve loved and lost one day. I hope that the song helps other people find some comfort.
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