Darby Slick is an American guitarist and songwriter, best known as a former member of The Great Society, and as the writer of the Jefferson Airplane song, “Somebody to Love”. In 1965, he co-founded The Great Society with his brother Jerry Slick, Jenn Piersol, and his sister-in-law Grace Slick (David Miner and Bard Du Pont would join shortly after). Darby played lead guitar and occasionally performed backup vocals early on and less often towards the disbanding. (More from Wikipedia)
Jefferson Airplane was one of the major bands in the San Francisco Sound of the 1960’s. I once read frequent lead singer Grace Slick described as “the voice that launched a thousand trips”. She was not an original bandmember, however; Slick was previously in another San Francisco band called the Great Society. In the band’s entry in Allmusic, Richie Unterberger notes that the Great Society “were nearly as popular as Jefferson Airplane in the early days of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Instrumentally, the Great Society were not as disciplined as Airplane. But they were at least their equals in imagination, infusing their probing songwriting with Indian influences, minor key melodic shifts, and groundbreaking, reverb-soaked psychedelic guitar by [Grace] Slick’s brother-in-law, Darby Slick.” In 1967, Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane and brought with her the Darby Slick song “Somebody to Love” and her own song “White Rabbit”. They became her new band’s biggest hit songs, with both reaching the Top Ten, and she became the most prominent member of the group.
(June 2014)
