Lather (song)

"Lather", a song by Grace Slick, performed by US rock band Jefferson Airplane, is the opening track on the 1968 album Crown of Creation and was the B-side for the single of the same name.

The song tells of someone known as Lather who has just turned 30 and, much to his chagrin, is coming to the realisation that he's expected to behave in a fashion that people find appropriate for his age. The song was written for Jefferson Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden on the occasion of his thirtieth birthday.

Slick was poking fun at Dryden, then her lover, because he was the first person in the band to reach that milestone age of thirty. Speaking on the Fly Jefferson Airplane DVD, Slick repeats these lines and remarks: "Spencer was very child-like. He was more child-like than the rest of the other guys in the band. So it's a song about Spencer Dryden being the old guy but still being a child. I called him Lather because he used a straight-edge razor at the time and had a fairly thick beard - he used lather."^[1] However, one passage of the song:

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

has been said by Bill Thompson, in his introduction of the liner notes to the 2003 reissue of Crown of Creation, to refer to the occasion when bassist Jack Casady was arrested nude on a beach in Santa Cruz, California while on the psychedelic drug STP.

Slick was also decrying Wall Street and militarism.

I should have let him go on smiling baby-wide

The band performed the song in their 1968 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.^[2]

Cover versions

Tom Constanten performs a solo piano instrumental cover of this song on his album Morning Dew.
Small Potatoes performed as part of a medley "Lather Danish Misfortune Mad Mouth" on their album Waltz of the Wallflowers (A Dysfunctional Duet).

References

↑ Fly Jefferson Airplane DVD
↑ Jefferson Airplane perform "Lather" on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on YouTube

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