Want two heads on your body
And you've got two mirrors in your hand
Priests are made of brick with gold crosses on a stick
And your nose is too small for this land
Inside your head is your town
Inside your room your jail
Inside your mouth the elephant's trunk and booze
The only key to your bail
Two heads can be put together
And you can fill both your feet with sand
No one will know you've gutted your mind
But what will you do with your bloody hands?
Your lions are fighting with chairs
Your arms are incredibly fat
Your women are tired of dying alive
If you've had any women at that
Wearing your comb like an ax in your head
And listening for signs of life
Children are sucking on stone and lead
And chasing their hoops with a knife
New breasts and jewels for the girl
Keep them polished and shining
Put a lock on her belly at night, sweet life
For no child of mine
Want two heads on your body
And you've got two mirrors in your hand
Jefferson Airplane finally finished their third LP Halloween week after two months of off-and-on recording in Los Angeles. It’s called After Bathing at Baxter’s, has a fold-out cover designed by cartoonist Ron Cobb, and, says lead singer Marty Balin, is "a whole new and different thing for the group." Recorded while the San Franscisco band lived in luxury at a Beverly Hills mansion that the Beatles rented on one American tour, the album’s very tentative release date is November 15.
As of November 1st, seven tracks, besides ‘Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil’ and ‘Two Heads’ previously released as a single, were finished. Three are Paul Kantner compositions: ‘Watch Her Ride,’ ‘Martha,’ and ‘Wild Time.’ The other members, except for Jack Casady, have contributed one track each. Grace Slick’s song is ‘Rejoyce,’ originally called ‘Ulysses,’ whose lyric is snatches of James Joyce’s novel. An oboe plays behind her voice. "It’s too powerful for Top 40," says Balin, "it has the line, ‘I’d rather my country died for me,’ and there’s a character in it named ‘Blazes Crotch’." Spence Dryden did his cut, ‘A Package of Value,’ all by himself, putting three drum tracks, a marimba track, and one on harpsichord into a ‘song sandwich’ that is the joke of the album. Jorma Kaukonen’s number, ‘Last Wall of the Castle,’ is ‘a mind-blower,’ according to the Airplane’s personal manager, Bill Thompson. ‘Young Girl Sunday Blues,’ Balin’s contribution, is over five minutes long, the album’s longest cut.
Answering criticism that the album is way behind schedule, Balin said the group had never set a date for the album’s completion. "We’ve just done it when we could." As the Airplane left the Fillmore a week ago Sunday for their last planned session in RCA’s Los Angeles studios (the same ones used by the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead), they had no idea of what songs would complete After Bathing. "We have a few more done," Balin said, "but we don’t like them. There’ll probably be two more and they’ll be things we come up with right at the last minute. We always do that. "Man, we’re the worst people ever in a recording studio. We create our music in the ballrooms. Compared to them a recording studio is so sterile, like a hospital, that it takes us three weeks just to get used to walking through the door." This time, with complete artistic control and without the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia as ‘spiritual and musical advisor,’ the Airplane has been on its own. "No one helps us," said Balin, "I think everyone there is afraid of us. We try crazy things and no one tells us they can’t be done. Our producer is like a school teacher with a real creative class, letting the kids do what they want and just making sure they don’t smash all the erasers."
Bill Thompson says the album cover is as strange as the sounds inside. Cobb’s cartoon is a monster airplane which carries, in tiny detail, symbols of plastic American culture; beer cans, billboards, ticky-tack houses and buildings, some of which are recognizable San Francisco landmarks. The plane trails a banner inscribed with the album’s title, a name suggested by an "underground-underground group called the Night Owls," says Balin. It refers to no known place or event. Inside the fold are six pictures of the Airplane taken by photographer Allan Frappe. Thompson says they are indescribably far out, with strange color and form distortions. Balin is so impressed that he would like to do a whole book with Frappe’s photographs. If hard times in the studio have held up the works, la dolce vita back at the mansion hasn’t helped any either. The mansion, with a giant pool, sauna bath, rifle range, electronically-controlled gate, and a Japanese houseboy (all for $5,000 a month), has been "a giant toy," says Balin for the group who haven’t always had it so good. "Every night something was happening," Balin said with a fond smile. "There were parties, strange parties, and then weird parties. We just sat there and watched the world go by right inside that house." From: https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/jefferson-airplane-after-bathing-at-baxters
