Jefferson Airplane - Lather Lyrics

Fifty years later, more or less, I still want to be Grace Slick.

such a classic track!

Had not heard this in 35 years.
Remember every note.

Being an AB, I found these lyrics interesting

' some pretty momma goin'a cum my way.' Write 'us' "off the Page."

The album cover is great

When I hear this song it makes me think of my brother who has a developmental disability. He's actually 31 now. No matter your lot in life, if you could EVER have showered by yourself, made your own food by yourself ever taken the bus by yourself or a million other things that are considered normal you are very lucky . It's such a rare song. Never heard one like it before.

Lather would be 81 years old in 2019.

Happy birthday Grace. Oct302019

Greatest female vocalist i love the lyrics

I have always loved this song since I first heard it in 68 especially on vintage audio gear ! But the problem with is song is it should have been a longer version ....

One of my favorire JA songs.

fly jefferson airplane

¡Tierra 2!

turning 65 next month. still enjoying all types of music

The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane..... Man, we use to listen to this record ALL the time! Experimenting with...........things.
Great album,,,, Wonderful memories !

Hannover Fist no doubt

Lather was quite a guy after all wasn't he, when they write this song and grace is singing it.

Ha! still young at 72! No you are are no longer young! It all, well>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Finest!! :-)

Love airplane 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

turning 30 in 5 months, super depressed over it. Not sure if listening to this song is helping or not, but it's a great song none the less.

Facevo ascoltare questo pezzo a mia figlia mentre era ancora nel grembo materno

Being an adult baby almost from birth in 1948, iI was amazed at this song and the lyrics. Finally, someone that felt like me.

I was in usmc boot camp on my 17th birthday in 1971.. that song rang through my head all the time and even when I was shipped over to nam. I really don't know why and to this day, I don't know. It comforted me in some way back then and now in an old man and still know the lyrics. I was wounded and the song was in my head when I was taken out by the dustys and I still had it in my head.

I remember going to boy scout camp and hanging a picture of Grace Slick and Janis Joplin on the inside of my tent. I believe Grace was wearing a girl scout outfit. coincidence?

I'll be 50 in 4 days😕

Harold finding his way back home.

It's a lullaby

good shit

they will NEVER MAKE. music like that these days. lol. no where even closr

you go that right. we had no political correctness back then. music was great to shows were good

Grace said this tune was about Paul Kantner.

I grew up during the time this group and others were the only things on the radio. However, I was a very dumb having not even graduated from high school. So I mostly did not know what I was doing even though I tried to do what the generation that grew up when Uranus was transiting my Neptune and Neptune was transiting Scorpio.
Just having listened to this song again on Radioparadise I heard something I did not even recall was in the lyrics. It was the mention of hari-kari.
If you know what it is like growing up a Pisces you might understand that there are people on the planet that do not want to see this sign of the zodiac even exist, even though the model of the human race is different than one person's chart. It seems that some people do not see what that means. That when a cathedral in France says the model is a Minotaur, which in Astrological terms means the model is Ge(mini/Taur) we and the mirror image of that is Scorpio/Sagittarius they already have the human race.
So what are they doing? Body Snatching I would say. Kidnapping the human race, and that is where the important lyric comes up in the song. There is mention of hari-kari. that I did not notice during my "hippie" days.. I, really wasn't a good hippie, even though our mom had the type of choths that an entire generation would wear before she died. That blue jeans and blue jean jackets exactly right. But alos before she died there was an incident that happened that I did not know to look at the way it should have been looked at related to hari-kari. Unfortunately, there was someone in our house four years older than me that did know it was an important thing to consider because he had the document that told him that and was told by someone in our neighborhood that Trappist monks. Trappist Monks were hired by the Japanese Army to go on suicide missions for them like Pearl Harbor. But I think it has been proven that what really happened at Pearl Harbor was not what history says happened. So when planes went down it might not have been because they wanted to crash their planes on the decks of aircraft carriers at all.
So because I was born a Pisces and only because I was born a Pisces. I have not even lived outside the US as an immigrant or to travel I was a victim of someone that wanted to repeat what happened at Pearl Harbor, but not because i was in the Armed forces or because of it kind of "tickled" or using Tickle deodorant that girls used in the 1970's It was because a branch of the Armed forces may have caused something at Pearl Harbor that they don't care to mention and brought down the Japanese planes with Transponders. Because of the Kamakazi's did not want to crash their planes
So in about 1957, when I just about 7 1/2 years old I was taken to the Desert Inn Motel and during the night my arm, as though someone elese had control of it because they have control of dreams and sleep with Neptune caused my arm to move as though I werre committing hari-kari. But I was not really doing that and I did not have a knife and did not hurt anyone. But someone had taken over my life completely. The really bad part is all someone had to do is tell me what happened then, and why it was importnat. But I do not think it is only hte family that i lived in that was at fault it was the people from the Boston area that also essentially killed our parents also because they had the sacred geometry to tell them when our mom and dad were going to die and yet came to Florida and where we lived just so they could steal ID from us. So for that reason they killed both our parents

This is such an iconic psychedelic sound and for the era I always thought this was about the struggles of war. Lather is sent off to war and is no longer a boy and they replaced all his toys with guns as he had to kill a bunch of people and now he’s home snorting cocaine to dull the pain of war. It makes me feel better knowing it’s just about not growing up because you’re an adult. I still act 12 most of the time.

I would imagine that, in live performances, for the parts that call for the "nose," I think a synthesizer solo could fit well (a la George Harrison's Moog, 1969).

I'M TURNING 30 IN THREE MONTHS
I WANT TO DIE

....is it true that I'm no longer young?

One of my favorite Airplane songs. Grace had a very sweet voice.

Funny how she altered her voice.

Man im 13 and other kids at school whos your celebrity crush and every time I say Grace Slick in the 60s.

Mr. Mojo Risin1971 I was you, 8 years ago (although a little older), in high school in São Paulo, Brazil.

Seen her sing white rabbit in 68-69 central park ...I was 13 free concert

Yeah grampa I'm 4 yo and I like the London Bridges song but this one is cool

holy crap I had this album it got stolen as well that hearts deep down in I've been stapped in my back he hert me bad

six great records before Balin and Dryden quit ..... sigh

Stumbled upon this trippy song,seriously creative mind blowing

1 one my fav. songs by them,,Hard to believe it's Grace singing ? helium ?

Lather sounds like my kinda people. Those that are not meant for the confines of a box🤙

Yes. There are two kinds of people those lemmings who follow all the others off a cliff and those who say NO.

57 people looked up the song Lather by Jefferson airplane and disliked it? lol

Such a lovely song....

"Lather"

Lather was thirty years old today,
They took away all of his toys.
His mother sent newspaper clippings to him,
About his old friends who'd stopped being boys.
There was Harwitz E. Green, just turned thirty-three,
His leather chair waits at the bank.
And Seargent Dow Jones, twenty-seven years old,
Commanding his very own tank.
But Lather still finds it a nice thing to do,
To lie about nude in the sand,
Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps,
And thrashing the air with his hands.

But wait, oh Lather's productive you know,
He produces the finest of sound,
Putting drumsticks on either side of his nose,
Snorting the best licks in town,
But that's all over...

Lather was thirty years old today,
And Lather came foam from his tongue.
He looked at me eyes wide and plainly said,
Is it true that I'm no longer young?
And the children call him famous,
what the old men call insane,
And sometimes he's so nameless,
That he hardly knows which game to play...
Which words to say...
And I should have told him, "No, you're not old."
And I should have let him go on...smiling...babywide.

This song is about PTSD and the sadness of being cashiered out.

Short but sweet......one of their best.....will continue as each new generation turns 30...Lather is ageless.....gratitude

Lather knew The Secret.

I should have told him, “no you’re not old.”Perfect lyric

Beautiful song

Lather was just an excitable boy.

Not just a brilliant song but a beautiful sound collage. Nicely arranged. Concise and poignant. Grace's vocal had a much softer tone in the early years with JA. I guess the drinking eventually changed that.

This is one of the most mournful songs that I have ever heard in my life. Get the fuck away from me.

LOL. Don't trust anyone over 80.

This song reminds me of a lot of people. I used to know 50 to 60 yrs old and never grew up

Never grow up... it's a trap.

no band was ever better; RIP Paul Kantner!

All their albums were great in their own kinda way. One was very different than the next one.

I need more music like this. People nowadays can't recognize this good old pieces of music because they just listen to radio and don't explore.. this results in close minded generation not even knowing what the past has to offer. I would give anything for the chance to experience at least a month during those hippie times in America and see what the energy would be like. Peace and love everyone and share these beautiful songs with your friends.

Sgt. Dow Jones

Just 27 years old
commanding his very own tank.

Lather would be almost 80.

Still nice!!!

Happy Birthday to Jack Casady(April 13).

Hey man, you forgot about Marty Balin !

I thought anyone who reached 30 years of age was the "Enemy" whatever that means??

one of my two very favorite songs the airplane did.

Barney Hoskins in "Beneath The Diamond Sky": " "Lather" was Slick's dig at her boyfriend Spencer Dryden"

After not hearing this song for 45 yrs I still remembered almost every word.There is something mysterious and magical about this song.

Something almost Old English and Celtic about its sound.
But mysterious is also a good description.

phenyl alanine I could listen to Gracie all night long.Her voice is so captivating, hypnotizing, crisp, and clear.There will never be anyone like her.The Best.

phenyl alanine I was 18 remember getting high listening to this lol

Same here.

phenyl alanine 2 years after you said it, I experienced it after accidentally running into this song. It had been at least 25 years since I last heard this song. It came back like it was yesterday, I remembered the lyrics and I fondly remembered how much I liked this song.

ty for post.very cool, evocative of it's time

Mark Engel hey Mark - Engel is German for Angel, as in Gabriel et al.Beautiful painting " Zwei Engel"( two angels)not sure of artist name

I would hate to have a woman with such an icy voice angry with me...

so im high as fuck chilling out to some jefferson airplane, then youtube ads puts on some creepy horror film trailer i can't skip and have to listen to. not cool!

I have a gift for you... uBlock Origin. There are versions for Chrome and Firefox (and probably more). Say goodbye to annoying ads. If you have an Android phone or tablet, you'll have to use Firefox as your browser to stop the ads.

Smash twenty get you tube RED

I still believe that Crown of Creation was their strongest album.

So do I.

Tommy Bruner : A belated but sincere Happy New Year to you Tommy. Cheers!

Same here. Best album JA ever made.

I gave this album to a friend of mine who was having his Bar Mitzvah. He had asked me for The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown...He still loves this record. Belated Happy New Year.

Baxter's and Crown are equal, imo. I never understood why people say Baxter's was too self-indulgent. It was just perfect for psychedelic rock. Maybe they could have done without that short avant-garde track in the beginning, but the rest is still just as strong as Crown.

Ascanio 64 Costa Rica únicos!

This was for me the haunting piece of the album! I was 18 and unfortunately injecting drugs already. Things were moving too fast for us baby boomers.

It's quite surprising to hear such words from a person as old as you are. It might be because my country endured over a century of foreign occupation, was devastated during WWII and suffered 44 years of communist regime. People brought up during the latter usually have quite conservative beliefs, which is somehow understandable given that they were oppressed by people calling themselves revolutionaries.

I am actually really fond of the times we live in now. There are still many young and reasonable people who don't follow the crowd. Nowadays access to the information is very easy and the opportunities are huge. I think that enthusiasm and rational thinking are valuable as never before.

@Telecorpse! dobrze wiedzieć, że są Polacy słuchający JA :) pozdrawiam

Very haunting!

Future Shock has claimed many victims

What a unique song.

What is "Lather"?   A prophecy?   "Lather was 30 years old today.   A prophecy of '75?   Song sung in '68.  '75 would be the 30th of the bomb being dropped. -Rocky    http://nextaxpro.wordpress.com

When I was 18 and first heard this, I had NO IDEA what the song was about. Being nowhere near age 30, or understanding any of the judgments between how one acts vs. how old one is....I was a kid forever and I didn't care. Now I understand

@Jo D'Anna Ahahaha ok :P

+Jo D'Anna Do you make a conscious decision to try to balance the "kid at heart" with the realities of life? I think a lot of people sell out - not saying YOU have. But people become what they professed to understand, know, and mistrust and be cynical of at one time - the adult world.

+jas22 yes, try to balance...but it's not succeeding. At age 66 I'm still a kid.

haha! well, if you have a roof over your head, some food in the fridge, and 2 or 3 great friends that love you, you are doing well enough, and "f" anyone who tells you otherwise!

Keresztanyam ez nagyon TETSZIK :)

Signe Anderson as well....

r.i.p paul

R.I.P. Paul Kantner, and thanks for all!

RIP Paul. Your music will live on.

RIP Skip Spence, Signe Toly Anderson. Spencer Dryden, and Papa John Creach too. All alumni of the Airplane who've departed.

Steve Cox you forgot Paul Kantner.

Thanks for all the music, Paul. RIP.

RIP Paul Kantor 74. Thanks for all the good times.

+33Luger I found out while listening to Dead, so it's still San Francisco.

+33Luger its kantner

missing Paul

+Nathan Sciarone Sorry about that.

have fun with your german gun

Favorite album ♥

Lather was Ginger Baker.

It's about Spencer Dryden you fng tool.

While the insult of L. Ron Gardner wasn't necessary, the song is about Spencer Dryden RIP

@Steve Simpson Lather was NOT Grace's brother. Her brother's name was Darby Slick. Lather was Spencer Dryden, who was the drummer in the Airplane and he and Grace were lovers at the time. The song is about Lather, that was Spencer's nickname because he shaved with a razor.

+ Jo D'Anna --- Correction: Darby Slick was not Grace's brother. If he had been her brother, his last name would have been Wing. Darby Slick was her brother in law when she was married to Jerry Slick.

@bobh28630 somebody knows their Jefferson Airplane history ;-) Just testing!

This is for Jeff.

I never thought I'd grow up and relate so much to this song. I use to listen to it a lot when I was a kid and think this guy must be nuts. now that i'm 41 I feel like everyone I know thinks I'm insane because I hang on to a lot of things from my younger days like lather. I've always loved Jefferson airplane.

I too like them

Everyone in these comments are like, "I turn 30 or 40 or 50 soon!" And I'm over here like...I turn 16 soon...

Brianna Wood good taste mon Jefferson airplane rocks I been listening to them for over 30 years first heard this one their worst of Jefferson airplane album when I was 11

If she does it right, her 40s will be same! Just a bit more achy haha

©™ TMALX Transnational 🌏 Militant💥 Armed🔫Liberation⛓ Xecutive🕶 Reply ✒ ✒✒ ✒

I was 12 when this album released. You do the math.
You're about 19 now and I have this to offer: You only go around once in life, but if you do it right, once is enough.
Enjoy!

Brianna Wood baby boomers music

66 yrs... Here, Still Love the Grace and the Airplane... ✌😎

I used to listen to this when I was coming up on 30, and freak.  Now I'm  67-shit!!  Love the "San Francisco Sound." Christ, where did time go.................

Yeah, me too, back in 2017. I felt like I was an old lady. But not anymore.

👍🇺🇸🤘

Disgusting filthy hippie

@Miyuki Shijisha old fart

@Lance Smith That's me, you're on your way so enjoy the journey*^^*

Airplane should have released this as a single. I'm sure it would have been right up there with the Door's 'People Are Srange'

@Moonpie Shane hmmmmm. I dont agree...

It was released as a single, but was so weird, most DJ's flipped it and played "Crown Of Creation" instead

What's most refreshing about Jefferson Airplane is that you get amazing sound and lyrics. There's no conflict of having just one.

I wonder how Lather was at 60?

He is probably still lying around nude in the sand.

He's not around anymore. Capitalism and cultural conformity ate him up.

I'll be 60 this year, and I've always related to this song, as I've always thought that it was about someone just like me. Anyway, what happens is, Grace gets hauled out of time and brought before a Patriarchal Hegemony Court, which came about as a male backlash against the Marxist/feminist fraud, and exists far in the future, with the ability to bring people forward in time and put them on trial. Let's just say that things don't go so well for Grace, even though exquisitely pretty as she was, back then. You know, she was a fat, gray-haired, man-hating, butch-cut bulldyke even then, but she just didn't look like it on the outside, which was what deceived everybody. They judged her well on her appearances, instead of on who she really was.

I would point out that time has corrected the misperceptions about her, and the Patriarchal Hegemony Court has corrected her misbehavior. Rather firmly.

Freaking out every decade

@ the bank

I like this song even though it's weird

I turned 30 years old today. They have yet to take away all of my toys....

@azzinpizzazz I'm 41 and I haven't either. I don't think I am ever going to be a grown up.

+azzinpizzazz Yup! I'd like to see 'em try.

+MoeSlislack it's a year later and I still also don't think I will ever will be a grown up. maybe it's overrated and we'll have more fun not growing up. hopefully it will be damn exciting..so exciting that the toys will come to life and dance. if they aren't already. all the best.

+Saluki thank you. that's right. I refuse to part with the toys. here's to never relenting or losing that feeling. cheers.

Jefferson airplane trip

sound of san francisco