Jefferson Airplane - Greasy Heart Lyrics

LYRICS

Lady, you keep asking why he likes you how come
Wonder why he wants more if he just had some
Boys, she's got more to play with in the way of toys
Ladies eyes go off and on with a finger full of glue
Lips are drawn upon her face in come-to-me tattoo
Creamy suntan color that fades when she bathes
Paper dresses catch on fire & you lose her in the haze
Don't ever change lady, he likes you that way because
He just had his hair done and he wants to use your wig
He's going off the drug thing cause his veins are getting big
He wants to sell his paintings but the market is slow
They're only paying him two grams now for a one-man abstract show
Don't ever change people even if you can
You are your own best toy to play with remote control hands
Made for each other made in Japan
Woman with a greasy heart automatic man
Don't ever change people your face will hit the fan
Don't ever change people even if you can
Don't change before the empire falls
You'll laugh so hard you'll crack the walls

Psychedelic rock is one of the best subgenres ever. One of the worst is hair metal (ex: Poison) . Also post-grunge alternative Rock is pretty terrible (ex: collective soul)

Hard to imagine a song where the first few seconds sound more exciting ...

.....without question the most decadent rock song ever made.............J.A..............

Ah yes, that chirpy little ditty that the good ol' Chrome Nun from Palo Alto wrote when she was 3 years old about a woman with a greasy heart presumably full of Pond's Cold Cream and an aut-o-matic maaaaaan long before the advent of Viagra or Cialis or even the whole MAGA trip because the one thing that Grace has always understood in spite of all the booze and coke and blackface makeup blackouts is just exactly how fucked-up that pretty much all of us human beings inherently are as a race as well as a species. Other than that, RCA wanted another single from the Airplane that would hopefully hippity hop right to the top of the Billboard charts like a white rabbit looking for somebody to love and instead Grace served up a big brimming bowlful of sarcasm and venom that only Bob Dylan or maybe Frank Zappa could've arguably thrown down better and it never climbed any higher than number 98 in spite of its undeniable genius whether we are talking lyrically, musically or vocally and that is truly a fucking shame...🌹🇺🇸✌️

also isnt this song about female masturbation?

Playing the album (CD) right now!

Dam! Love this Song!

made in Japan

Great JA tune

One of my top 5 favorites. By the way, the other 4 are either from JA or San Francisco of 1960s.

What’s the other 4 ones?

The music trade publications announced this new single in 1968- and there was a musical explosion of fantastic tracks being recorded in the us and the UK - this track has energy lacking in today's sorry poprapkrap scene.

More Blows Against The Empire

Grace Slick is "The Queen of Psychedelia". I love her songs and her singing.

❤❤❤

One of the most bad-ass albums of all time...............

Bad ass= crétin passe ton chemin

So when it says "dont ever change people" do they mean dont change OTHER people or dont change yourself?

It means don't change your clothes.

So eternally relevant, yes we had hoped for progress. Love the band love Grace!

This has already been officially uploaded by the record company. Repeat uploads like yours are unnecessary and only clutter up this website. Dislike earned.

Everything about this album makes my hair stand on end....just like it has for the last 50 years ! :-)

this sounds like a cartoon if that makes any sense

Ladies eyes go off and on with a finger full of glue
Lips are drawn upon their face in 'come to me' tattoo

Grace's lyrics back then would just hit you right in the face. Her singing too. That intense ridicule she had of society. That was Jefferson Airplane era Grace Slick.

A little song about complicity with the Death Culture, a plague which may destroy us all.

Made for each other . Made in Japan .  Woman with authorithy.... At least that is what I understand.  All in all a very strong song. Impeccable.

The album version has a little more "dwell" to the psychedelic content...

Paper dresses catch on fire and you lose her in a haze...............

QUEL SUPER MORCEAU et quelle voix !!

yes nothing but rejects on TV these days

I am saddened to see that the cultural marxists won the Cold War ... even after it allegedly ended in 1989. It's like North Korea... an untamed monster hellbent on the destruction of civilization. Fuck you, socialist libtards!

I am not following, you like this song or no? What about Ted Nugent's politics and all the rock riffs now in Country syndicated music? A real mind blower is Igor Stravinski's Rite Of Spring, if you listen to it and read about it's debut in Paris, you would be convinced Igor was a Leftist, turns out he was a declared Fascist. Maybe the "cultural Marxists" were holding their own up until the Eagles came out with "Take it Easy" and we could all see they had corporatized the Buffalo Springfield sound and the "60s revolution" was officially over. Thank God for the Punk resurgence if you ask me. Now everything is totally splintered. All the best to you.

This music is great...

I love!!!!!! 💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

christ she use to be brilliant

And THE EMPIRE is teetering !

With the heroin tsunami, much of this song is still very relevant some 47 years later .
"only paying him 2 grams now for a one man impressionist show "!

I think she was speaking of Coke

I wonder if she was talking about Andy Warhol

They're only giving 2 grams now, for a one man abstract showwwwwwwww. Love you, Grace.

back off, she's mine 😂😂

2 grams of what though? lol that could potentially be millions of dollars xD

@div ine Heroin.

Grace's message still applies today with all the bullshit involving peoples appearance.

She is making reference to the fact that men are naturally attracted to the differences of a woman's body, and vice versa. IOW, we were made for each other.

Nothin but retards on the tv anymore.

you know they were on some serious drugs when this was written

before, not during

You'll laugh so loud you crack the walls!!!

Jack Casady is the rising tide in this song. Listen to the driving lift he provides behind the "don't ever change people" lyric. Wow!

Jack is the moving force in every JA song, yeah!

@Doug Walker Don't forget Jorma. His blues fueled psychedelia was just as much a part of their sound. He and Jack as we know
went on to found Hot Tuna which further stamped their legend on modern rock....

@Thundergod129-7307 Jorma, for sure. He developed a unique electric-guitar sound on those early JA albums, and his acoustic playing was (and is) amazing.

@Doug Walker Love his acoustic stuff too. Some of my favourites are Embryonic Journey with JA and Hesitation Blues with
Hot Tuna before they want electric. Jack and Jorma actually met when they were teenagers, so they've known each other since
the 1950's which is mind boggling....

@hermitcrabbot how stoned are you lmao

Happy Birthday GRACE!

Grace is badass.

"He wants to sell his paintings, but the market is...........slow." haha.

''Don't change before the empire falls- you laugh so hard you crack the walls''. Poetry into prophecy as the sands run out. Great music just gets deeper and more inclusive as we get older. What a gift! Thanks for the upload.

it does not get better.

Cannot.

classic...

another great classic of the Airplane.thank you very much.

I love you Grace!!

IL SOGNO DEI JEFFERSON

I grew up with JAand Grace Slick in my ears in my heart in my soul....sounds as young and relevant as it did then....

I for one discovered JA in my late 20s. There is no looking back from that point though. Part of my heart and soul too.

the really good shit stays fresh forever

One of the finest bands from anywhere, ever.

For a couple of brief years before excess got to them, anyway.

David

Suntan that fades as she bathes. That's what you call a SF suntan!

I got this album at amoeba in Haight Ashbury, San Fran over April vacation on record store day. I can't stop listening to this album/track. JA is soooo freaking amazing.

Jefferson Airplane were one of the finest American bands of the sixties!

Oh, No! Lady Ga Ga just got blasted off the stage!
Power vs Posturing.

The four horsemen of the Apocalypse?? In SF musical terms, they were: Tom Donahue ( KSAN ), who played the music, & set up Autumn records, Ralph Gleason, who gave the movement legitimate media credibility, Bill Graham, the mover & shaker of hippy backsides, & Marty Balin; he dreamed up the Airplane, but created the Matrix, wtih some friends, for all the SF bands to play. What happened in the mid sixties in SF would not have happened without them. Only Marty lives. God bless them all!!!

@UpSky2 it's cool man I dig it.

Happy Birthday Ms. Slick!

Love love love this song!!

Amazing that this song is about odious things and yet it isn't an odious song... obviously it conveys a certain appreciation of its tawdry subject matter.

Sort of like Robert Frost saying he had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Or else my own viewpoint is odd. I'm open to that.

@elwoodc AMEN. Aftter all these yrs. it still moves. Hare Krishna.

in school we were told to do a report on any famous person that we wanted.... naturally im writing mine about Grace Slick :)

You are great.

@cxmafia
Well, Grace was known by the band as the 'Chrome Nun', so maybe she'd wear one of those 26" rims as a hat.

Glad this song is back on-one of my favorites

amazing!!!!!!!!!! <3

Grace was so hot here!

You laugh so hard you crack the walls"

I think she sang with so much soul that she cracked the walls!! amazing how much passion I can feel in this song

What a Fender bass tone. Jack Casady. My main man.

@fluxstringer ahhh yes. Modern "music" - designed and engineerd, having rarely seen a record studio, mostly with dumb, mindless lyrics. The engineers behind this scheme are greedy old men, who coulden't care fuck less about the music quality, as long as the puppet performs enough mindless stupitities to keep the cash rollin' in. These days, "music" is mostly mads to earn money, not to make statements like way back in the days.

PS: I doubt, Grace would find 26" chrome rims very interresting

delicated noise ! great mysterious voice. Greacy Legand!

@frankgump No, I didn;t know that. And I would drive an Aston too if I could. But In Grace's case a DB 6 of the '70s was not the proportional chunk a modern Aston is.today. And if she sang about it I doubt it would have 26 inch wheels with spinners.
I listen to my god daughter's music in the car. Every other song is about how expensive the singer's life is and how they lord it over everyone. The one's in between are mostly descriptions of sex acts. Then the bare few that even hint at romance.

@tsomer07 - if I was into rating, I'd agree - this cut is off the charts great.

@vectortemple
I always thought of it as Grace's version of Plastic Fantastic Lover.

Probably the best lyric, and best vocal performance of that decade.

Grace at the pinnacle.

century, not decade

Do young people comment about how phony society people are? Or are they more concerned with being society people or at least emulating their ways? That is what this song is about.
Plastic people, phonies, unnatural zombies walking the Earth and driving sports cars (hey I'll take a Ferrari!) In current terms, the Snookies and the Guido's, Britneys and da " Gankstahs". Beauty is only as fine as the social and ethical conciousness it holds.

Absolutely in my opinion, the most fantastic, underrated rock chick song of the late 60's.

Grace was hardly "underrated" back then!

aminorchacha - well spoken! She makes more sense to me now than she did 40 years ago. LOL!

Don't think so. This is a Gracie song - if it's a sequel to anything, it's Two Heads on Baxter's - another song about a lame (impotent..), narcissistic guy....

My fav next to Surrealistic Pillow...

A Grace Slick song.

Her lyrics and vocals had a cutting edge that added a rather acerbic antedote to the more hippy trippy aspects of 1960s pyschedelia.

Great stuff.

Gitars5 :
Floor pedal that creates a Wau-wau sound of varing audio depth depending on pressure level.

wha... that's great.

The Jorma sound through a wahwah is the Airplane sound to me.

Don't ever change people
Your face will hit the fan
Don't change till the empire falls!

How appropo, 40 years later?

I survived the late 60's,
and still remember it well.
A Magical era!

This is the sequel to Plastic Fantastic lover

Wah-Wah??? LoL!

Love it.Thanks for the share pataphysician66! Five stars X

When I was a kid I picked up Thirty Seconds Over Winterland, then HAD to backtrack all the earlier releases. Loved this on vinyl and now loving it, like brand new loving it, on this fantastic CD re-release. HOT STUFF so well done. Its a kick that there's a whole new appreciation for the band out there.

2 grams now for a one man abstract show

Jorma got a bunch of talent too on his birth-day...

I wanted so much to be as good as him on the acoustic guitar.

A great review of this LP when it came out circa 1968 said that Jorma 'must have gotten a wah-wah pedal for his birthday'...Always sounded great to me!

skills!!! and a little wahwah would be my guess....

do you know what pedal is jorma using? because i want to buy one that gives me a similar effect

Wah Wah try a cry baby if you can find on3

"Boys shes got more to play with in the way of toys"

Grace at her best! a drivin' force.. respect

damn this is a rockin' song!

Still Topical after 40 years.
Eccept "made in China" now.
Don't change before the Empire falls!