Recorded at RCA Victor's Music Center Of The World, Hollywood, California.

This newly remastered 2003 deluxe edition contains bonus tracks.

Jefferson Airplane: Grace Slick (vocals, recorder, piano, organ); Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Marty Balin (vocals, guitar); Jack Casady (guitar, bass); Spencer Dryden (percussion).

Recorded at RCA Victor's Music Center Of The World, Hollywood, California.

Originally released on RCA Victor (3766). Includes liner notes by Jeff Tamarkin and Bill Thompson.

Personnel: Marty (vocals, guitar); Spencer Dryden (percussion).

Liner Note Authors: Jeff Tamarkin; Bill Thompson.

Photographer: Herbert Greene.

Arranger: Jorma Kaukonen.

The second album by Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow was a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit -- literally -- like a shot heard round the world; where the later efforts from bands like the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and especially, the Charlatans, were initially not too much more than cult successes, Surrealistic Pillow rode the pop charts for most of 1967, soaring into that rarefied Top Five region occupied by the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and so on, to which few American rock acts apart from the Byrds had been able to lay claim since 1964. And decades later the album still comes off as strong as any of those artists' best work. From the Top Ten singles "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" to the sublime "Embryonic Journey," the sensibilities are fierce, the material manages to be both melodic and complex (and it rocks, too), and the performances, sparked by new member Grace Slick on most of the lead vocals, are inspired, helped along by Jerry Garcia (serving as spiritual and musical advisor and sometimes guitarist). Every song is a perfectly cut diamond, too perfect in the eyes of the bandmembers, who felt that following the direction of producer Rick Jarrard and working within three- and four-minute running times, and delivering carefully sung accompaniments and succinct solos, resulted in a record that didn't represent their real sound. Regardless, they did wonderful things with the music within that framework, and the only pity is that RCA didn't record for official release any of the group's shows from the same era, when this material made up the bulk of their repertory. That way the live versions, with the band's creativity unrestricted, could be compared and contrasted with the record. The songwriting was spread around between Marty Balin, Slick, Paul Kantner, and Jorma Kaukonen, and Slick and Balin (who never had a prettier song than "Today," which he'd actually written for Tony Bennett) shared the vocals; the whole album was resplendent in a happy balance of all of these creative elements, before excessive experimentation (musical and chemical) began affecting the band's ability to do a straightforward song. The group never made a better album, and few artists from the era ever did.

[Surrealistic Pillow on CD has been problematic -- actually, make that a real pain in the ass. It's been reissued numerous times on compact disc, in distinctly different editions -- a plain 11-song disc from the 1980s that sounded wretched and was an embarrassment; a high-priced RCA-BMG gold-disc upgrade, with significantly better sound from the mid-'90s that encompassed the stereo and mono mixes of the album; a European version from 2000/2001 (with four bonus tracks but no mono mix or liner notes) that got into the U.S. as an import; a U.S.-issued 2001 upgrade, initially available in the bizarre four-CD box Ignition, which encompassed the stereo and mono mixes in a brighter, sharper, louder remastering than the 1996 version, but still -- in some listeners' eyes -- lacking the presence and the soaring sound of the original LP; and a 2003 reissue (on the BMG Heritage label), mastered by renowned reissue producer Bob Irwin (of Sundazed Records fame), including the mono single versions of "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," along with the related bonus tracks "Come Back Baby," "In the Morning," "J.P.P. McStep B. Blues," and "Go to Her," which have previously been scattered around various anthologies and other expanded editions. Those tracks generally push Kaukonen even more to the fore and give the balance of the material a bluesier feel. And there's an uncredited "hidden" bonus cut, an instrumental of "D.C.B.A. - 25."] ~ Bruce Eder

From the opening, hard-edged chords of "She Has Funny Cars," it's apparent that SURREALISTIC PILLOW, Jefferson Airplane's sophomore effort, is a far more spiky beast than the band's debut. It became not only San Francisco's soundtrack to the Summer Of Love, but all of America's. It spawned two Top Ten classics ("Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit") and established the Airplane as one of the main pop voices of the cultural revolution.

Some of the newfound dynamism can be attributed to personnel changes. Singer-keyboardist Grace Slick, who joined the Airplane following a stint in the mildly successful Great Society, had a unique artistic gleam her predecessor, Signe Anderson, never possessed--both of the aforementioned hits were songs she'd written for her former band. And new drummer Spencer Dryden could make the music shake with heretofore-unheard polyrhythms, or walk a straight line with militaristic precision. SURREALISTIC PILLOW's other strengths lay in the band's boldly diverse sound. Effortlessly gliding from twisted Motown (the electrified "3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds"), to Dylanesque rock (Balin's "Plastic Fantastic Lover") to an acoustic, psychedelic bluegrass instrumental (Kaukonen's "Embryonic Journey"), the Airplane proved themselves able to at once interpret the cultural tide and make it radio-friendly.

Until the release of this disc in the summer of 2003, the CD history of Surrealistic Pillow had been a study in confusion and frustration. The original 1980s CD was an abomination, the mid-'90s high-priced audiophile version an improvement (offering both the stereo and mono mixes of the album), the 2000 European reissue a slight improvement over that, and the 2001 remastering a sharper and louder version of the stereo/mono mixes. And then came this 2003 remastering, which skips the mono mixed version of the album but offers superior fidelity on the stereo mix, with better balance and a more solid center (especially for the voices) between the two stereo channels than any prior version. It's still not perfect, betraying some slight distortion, but it hits this listener as at least the equal of the 2001 version, with the added bonus of a quartet of chronologically related single sides: the superb Jorma Kaukonen-authored slow blues "In the Morning" (worth the price of the new disc), featuring John Hammond, (allegedly) Jerry Garcia, and future Steppenwolf keyboard wizard Goldy McJohn; founding member Skip Spence's more folky and spirited "J.P.P. McStep B. Blues" (which would have been a great B-side, but lay in the vaults until 1974's Early Flight); the slashing, guitar-driven rocker "Go to Her" in its harder, more developed second version -- the Paul Kantner co-authored song had been in the band's repertoire from the beginning, and gets its more powerful of two treatments here, with a killer solo verse by Grace Slick and great ensemble singing; and Kaukonen's searing psychedelic rearrangement of Lightnin' Hopkins' "Come Back Baby," a late-winter 1967 track sandwiched midway between this album and the sessions for After Bathing at Baxter's. Also included are the mono single mixes of "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit," which aren't all that special, though they are different from the stereo album mixes. There is also a hidden bonus track appended, after an extended pause, to the latter song -- an instrumental track to Paul Kantner's "D.C.B.A. - 25," included for no apparent reason except to throw listeners a bone from the original multi-track studio tapes. The overall effect is to make Kaukonen stand out a bit more in center stage and, coupled with the very thorough annotation, makes the 2003 version an absolutely essential acquisition. ~ Bruce Eder