Surrealistic Pillow
Surrealistic Pillow is the second studio album by the American rock band Jefferson Airplane, released by RCA Victor on February 1, 1967. It is the first album by the band with vocalist Grace Slick and drummer Spencer Dryden. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[9] It is considered to be one of the most influential and quintessential works of the early psychedelic rock era and the 1960s counterculture.[10][11][12][13]
"My Best Friend" was released as the first single in December 1966 but reached only No. 103 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart. Two singles were released later in the year; "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" peaked respectively at number five and number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and are the band's only top 40 hits on that chart. "Today" was not released as a single but was played often on college radio and rock stations and remains one of their most popular songs. It was also recorded by jazz saxophonist Tom Scott for his 1967 album The Honeysuckle Breeze; this version was sampled in the song "They Reminisce Over You" by Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth.
A live version of "Plastic Fantastic Lover" was released as a single in 1969. Billboard described it as "heavy hard rock."[14] Cash Box wrote that it "features the team's more commercial-than-controversial style" and has "a solid instrumental track and very fine vocal."[15] Record World wrote it was one of the band's favorites.[16]
In 2024, it was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress who deemed it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to the American recorded music industry.[17]
Production[edit]
Jefferson Airplane's fusion of folk rock and psychedelia was original at the time, in line with musical developments pioneered by the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, Bob Dylan, the Yardbirds, and the Beatles, among other mid-1960s rock bands. Surrealistic Pillow was the first blockbuster psychedelic album by a band from San Francisco, announcing to the world the active bohemian scene that had developed there starting with the Beats during the 1950s, extending and changing through the 1960s into the Haight-Ashbury counterculture. Subsequent exposure generated by the Airplane and others wrought great changes to that counterculture. By 1968, the ensuing national media attention had precipitated a very different San Francisco scene than had existed in 1966. San Francisco photographer Herb Greene photographed the band for the album's cover art.[24]