Jefferson Airplane: Surrealistic Pillow [LEGACY/RCA]

Why you'll love it

This RCA/Legacy reissue is remastered and pressed on 180g vinyl. Surrealistic Pillow peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, went platinum, and joined the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2024.

This edition

• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Download card included
• Stereo mix

About the album

Two weeks. That's how long Grace Slick had been in Jefferson Airplane when the band walked into RCA Victor's Hollywood studio on October 31, 1966. She'd come over from The Great Society, jazz drummer Spencer Dryden had replaced Skip Spence, and with Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady the classic line-up was suddenly in place.

Working with producer Rick Jarrard, they moved fast. "She Has Funny Cars" opens on Casady's fuzz bass, "My Best Friend" is a sunny folk-rocker by the departed Spence, and Balin's "Today" (with Jerry Garcia reportedly on lead guitar) went down in a single take. Slick brought two songs from her old band: "Somebody To Love" reached No. 5 on the Hot 100 and "White Rabbit" No. 8, with its bolero build that has since turned up in countless films. Kaukonen's acoustic "Embryonic Journey" is a lovely breather in between.

It's widely seen as one of the defining records of early psychedelic rock and the 1960s counterculture. Balin wrote "Plastic Fantastic Lover" about a television set after touring a plastics factory, which may be the most 1960s sentence we've ever typed.

Also at Kops: more Jefferson Airplane on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On RCA Victor / Legacy (cat# 88985396711), a reissue of the 1967 album.