“White Rabbit” is a 1967 song from the album Surrealistic Pillow by the famous psychedelic rock group Jefferson Airplane. In a period of wars such as the Vietnam war and the Cold war, and in an era of revolution in social norms, civil rights, and so on, the 1960s were marked as a decade of irresponsible excess, flamboyance, the decay of social order, and the fall or relaxation of social taboos. During this period, psychedelic drugs such as LSD became popular, which were used as a method of “raising consciousness”, a pathway to the dark pits of imagination in a hunt for the unusual, as a means for rebellion. Many musicians of the time such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and Jefferson Airplane admitted writing music induced by hallucinogens, in a state described as “acid-trip”. With its enigmatic lyrics, "White Rabbit" became one of the first songs to sneak drug references past censors on the radio. Having strong ties with Lewis Carolls’ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the song includes themes of musical nonsense and hidden subtexts reflecting the “hallucinogenic reality” of the end of 1960s.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. Since the 1960s, readers have identified an underlying theme of drug use in the book (though still debated by literary experts), which explains why Grace Slick, the vocalist for Jefferson Airplane, chose to base her song on this story. The Cheshire Cat disappears, leaving only an enigmatic grin behind. Alice drinks potions and eats pieces of mushroom to change her physical state. The caterpillar smokes an elaborate water pipe... Slick said the composition was supposed to be a wake-up call to parents who read their children novels such as these and then wonder why their children use drugs. Despite the undeniable subtext of LSD use, Slick also connected the meaning of the song to curiosity and pushing one’s own agenda. “I identified with Alice. I was a product of ’50s America in Palo Alto, California, where women were housewives with short hair, and everything was highly regulated. I went from the planned, bland ’50s to the world of being in a rock band without looking back. It was my Alice moment, heading down the hole. ‘White Rabbit’ seemed like an appropriate title.”
The song opens in a hazy, disjointed death march before an intoxicating guitar riff slithers up through the smoke and into the ear, setting the mysterious and “weird” scene.
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all…
The song starts by referencing the book’s opening chapters, where, already in Wonderland, Alice changes size by drinking a potion and eating a cake. There is no mention of “pills”; these are the song’s invention and make the drug connection more explicit. The line also hints towards the contemporary attitude of the youth toward the Establishment (the adult culture): that their values had no power, that they were impotent and “don’t do anything at all.”
…And if you go chasing rabbits…
This phrase resembles “chasing the dragon”, a slang term for smoking opium. Throughout the song Jefferson Airplane added a lot of allegorical hints about drug culture situations and common slang.
…Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
He called Alice
When she was just small…
In the book, the Caterpillar gives Alice advice resembling the opening lines of “White Rabbit”:
‘One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.’
‘One side of WHAT? The other side of WHAT?’ thought Alice to herself.
‘Of the mushroom,’ said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
It was common to be introduced to the drug scene by someone else, so you would have to give a reference when buying drugs or joining a party.
…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…
Here is a reference to Caroll's 2nd book about Alice, "Alice through the Looking Glass," where the world is a one big chessboard. In the book, Alice plays a Pawn who is often bossed around by the senior pieces. Allegorically, these lines refer to authority figures giving orders: the state drafting citizens and sending them to the battlefield.(“White Rabbit” was written during the Vietnam War era.)
Like Ravels’ Boléro, "White Rabbit" is one long crescendo. Crescendo is a gradual increase of loudness and intensity. The last stanza is the climax of the song. It is here that Jefferson Airplane directly states their point of view.
…When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead…
A lot of characters are mentioned here: the White Knight, the Red Queen, and the Dormouse. Lewis Carrol was a professor of math and logic at Oxford, so much of the whimsical madness of his books subverted, inverted, or parodied the strict patterns of his academic studies. The first two lines of the stanza can imply that even mathematicians, who are stereotypically very strictly bound to the rules, are practical and logical, have a side to them that is wild, nonsensical like Wonderland, and is yet to be explored. The lines can also be interpreted as the effects of drugs. Dreams and psychedelics create a sloppy logic and throw the proportions of the world out of order.
…And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head…
In the book the White Knight does not talk backwards, but nevertheless has a nonsensical speech. “Backwardness” (mirror reversal) is a theme of the book in general. Here the reference to Carroll highlights the connection between drugs and going “out of your mind” and maybe the contradiction between feeling and mind, because in the book, it is the Queen of Hearts (The Red Queen), who constantly orders beheadings. This shows that, after LSD, the already wicked world becomes even crazier. It could also suggest that the authority (the queen) has gone crazy (lost her head).
…Remember what the Dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head…
This line is the most debated in the entire song. In Carroll’s Alice, the Dormouse never actually says “Feed your head.” The direct reference here is to Alice, Chapter 11, when the Mad Hatter is questioned before the court:
‘But what did the Dormouse say?’ one of the juries asked.
‘That I can’t remember,’ said the Hatter.
‘You MUST remember,’ remarked the King, ‘or I’ll have you executed.’
This context gives an ominous spin to “Remember what the Dormouse said.” If you do not “feed your head” (expand your mind), it could seriously cost you. Slick has added that "The line in the song 'feed your head' is both about reading and psychedelics... feeding your head by paying attention: read some books, pay attention."
"Writing weird stuff about Alice backed by a dark Spanish march was in step with what was going on in San Francisco then. We were all trying to get as far away from the expected as possible.”
P.S. Armenian contemporary composer, musicologist, pianist, and music educator Artur Avanesov compares Alice’s “transformational skills” of becoming smaller or larger to compositional techniques in music like augmentation, diminution, inversion, that were widely used since pre-Baroque times, especially in polyphonic textures. He also parallels certain instrumental fast passages that lead nowhere, to the logical or rather illogical need of “running fast to stay in one place” applied in some episodes of “Through the Looking Glass”. Recalling this, we sort of want to point out that Lewis Carrol’s fantasies are not necessarily instigating drug addiction but that the “feed your head” prescription can also encourage artistic challenges of much wider… and safer scale.
Author: Lilit Kakoyan
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