Reviews for White Rabbit Lyrics

This is all a bit sad. I doubt if people who can't spell or handle even basic punctuation could plough their way through either Alice in Wonderland (the 19th century novel) or Go Ask Alice, which I suspect took its name from the song. Lewis Carrol was almost certainly no stranger to opium. Opium, or various medications containing it(e,g, laudanum), was widely used in Victorian England, obstensibly as a pain killer but 'addiction to prescription medication' is not a new phenomenon. So it's not surprising that Grace Slick should base a song for a drug-using audience around his book. What is fascinating is that contemporary illustrators should show the "hookah-smoking caterpillar" sitting on a fly agaric mushroom - just how did they know? Lewis Carroll is actually a very ambiguous character. He never married, that doesn't necessarily mean he might have been gay. In fact, he was rather exceedingly fond of children, especially pre-pubescent girls. In fact, the mother of Alice Liddell (yes, that Alice) forbade him access to her younger sister when he transferred his attention to her after losing interest in Alice as she entered her teens. Lewis Carroll (real name Rev, Charles Dodgson) was both an Oxford professor of mathematics and a keen amateur photographer in the days when basic photography required degree level chemistry. When one examines the few photographs of young girls he took that are considered suitable for publication, one suspects that Mrs Liddell was a woman possessed of unusual common sense for such a sexually naive period. The Liddell's Guildford (Surrey, England)house backed onto the grounds of the castle - there's a bowling green, a bandstand, a chess board laid out in floor tiles and a little tunnel that is a short cut to the town. I spent my hippy days in Guildford, and many a hazy, summer Saturday afternoon speculating on the connections between what Lewis Carrol wrote and the grounds of Guildford Castle. Is 'White Rabbit' about drugs? Of course. Are Alice in Wonderland and ALice Through the Looking Glass about drugs? Probably not. Drug inspired? I think it's more than likely. Why don't you read them and make your own mind up? But the song! Surely one of the most powerful and emotional songs in a genre that specialised in powerful emotion, and along with 'Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)' and 'Won't Get Fooled Again' a strong contender for the definitive rock song. Take care.

OK - to settle all arguments, maybe we should find Grace Slick's email and ask her what she wrote (being that she wrote the song back in the 60's). I am an original fan (from the 60's). My older brother wore out about 4 45 rpm records on this song before he was 18...lol -
At Lyrics.com it says the "Remember what the Dormouse said, "Feed your head, feed your head."
However, in the book the Dormouse actually says "keep your head" in reference to the red queen trying to do Alice in over her jealousies.

when i first listened to this song i knew it was about alice in wonderland but at the same time i was listening to it i was nicely high and to me it was that the song on the surface is about alice in wonderland but when i stopped thinking about the story and just listened to the music it struck me that this could be anyone's accounting of the progression of a trip on LSD from the time first offered the drugs until the desire to do it again comes

I Just love this song, I listen to it at least once or three times a day. I first heard the song about a few months ago at my boyfriend's house and it still hasn't gotten old to me. AND I LOVE ALICE IN WONDERLAND!!!
I can't wait for the Tim Burton movie to come out

About the book "Go Ask Alice" -
This is a very powerful book, based on the real experiences of a teenage girl so isolated from those around her she can only talk to her diary. When Alice finds a group of friends who accept her she also finds drugs, which become her only escape from an increasingly unbearable reality: 'Nothingness', she writes, 'is a lot better than somethingness.' This is a very mature and lucid account of her experiences, far from being just a stream of consciousness. Alice has a strong command of language. The passages where she describes the effects of drugs on her body and mind are vivid and frightening, but at the same time they show quite graphically the seductive nature of drugs. The psychiatrist's report at the end on Alice and her situation balances the more intimate, personal style. Exactly how real the story is is still in doubt - it is so well written and the horrors so graphic that it reads more like a brilliant work of fiction. But however true or imaginary, this is a harsh, disturbing account of the effects of alienation.

About the Song: This was written by Grace Slick, who based the lyrics on Lewis Carroll's book Alice In Wonderland. Like many young musicians in San Francisco, Slick did a lot of drugs. She saw lots of drug references in Carroll's book, including the pills, the smoking caterpillar, the mushroom, and lots of other images that are generally trippy. She noticed that lots of children's' stories involve a substance of some kind that alters reality, and felt it was time to write a song about it.Slick got the idea for this after taking LSD and spending hours listening to the Miles Davis album Sketches Of Spain. The Spanish beat she came up with was also influenced by Ravel's "Bolero."

Actually i did some research and this song is actually about Alice in wonderland i watched some videos and they diffinitly had alice and the white rabbit who was always late and in the movie theres the smokin hooka caterpillar it all makes sense but its still saying that alice got all stoned and high and Jefferson Airplane even said that he thanked Johny Depp "fear in los and la vegas" or how ever you spell it .. but yah that just says it cuz that movie was all about drugs lol

Its obvious that this song is about drugs, and i deffinitly think that this song goes with the book go Ask Alice.. but I also think that Alice and Wonderland is a trippy movie to watch and i think a lot of people when they see it especialy when your high think its trippy, so it could be for both in a way. but yah Im reading the book right now and ive heard the song and i thought of the book right away, it makes more sence.

Have any of you actually read the book by Lewis Carrol? The song was only inspired by Alice in Wonderland.
The only one on here who has any insight is the anonymous reviewer who titled his piece, "We were all 'Through the Looking Glass'".
Quit looking for an exact and true message and decide what the song means to you.

for those of you who are clueless!
The book was written before the goddamn song you muppets! It was Lewis Carrol who wrote the book, in the Victorian era, this song was in the 60's.
There is no actual evidence to say that the book itself is about drugs, though the references speak for themselves, no I doubt he was warning kids off drugs, because at that time- youngsters would simply not be doing drugs, it was for the rich.

whatever the meaning is, why can't you people let it be that people will think different things about it. To come on here and say wrong wrong wrong im right im 8 years old.. it's bullshit.. just chill

I'm reading some of the ideas behind White Rabbit, Grace Slick wrote it because of the hypocrisy about teens doing drugs,and here is this book that millions of parents are reading their kids, with Alice and the gang doing drugs.

The 60s were a completely unique time. There had never been a time like it in America, except during the Civil War perhaps, and most likely there never will be again. It's almost irrelevant what the song meant to its author or the artists who sung it. What you heard was guided by where you were at. Where you were at mentally, physically, geographically, educationally, socially, politicly, spiritually, etc. I was in Vietnam when I first heard it. To me it was about chaos. The chaos of a country at war that I saw everyday. The chaos created by a political system that had sent me there. The chaos within a military that could no longer avoid realizing it had been sent on a fools errand. The chaos inherent in the burgeoning peace movement. The chaos that later expressed itself at Woodstock and later still during the Nixon administration.

We were all through the looking glass. Up was down, yesterday was tomorrow, big was small, white was black, right was left, dark was light. It was all alternately frightening, exhilarating, numbing, and enlightening.

Let the song be. Hear whatever you hear.

Yepp,its fully about the famous tale: Alice in wonderland. with between-the-lines lyrics about drug consuming. Fully supporting the "mushroom", and other little things... I love this song, but hate its message, and the impression it, and other songs made to the youth around the world.. Still nice music tough.

I have the original recording of White Rabbit on an Album by Grace Slick and The Great Society from the late Sixties. The sleeve notes include an interview with Grace and she was asked "Have you deliberately tried to inject social comment into the songs you write?" The reply "Not really. Your music has to come from your own experience. Mine was not a ghetto experience. I guess the closest I came was on the recording of White Rabbit. I read Alice in Wonderland a a child, and it wasn't until later, after I had tried drugs, that I began to get into it. I like Lewis Caroll because it was obvious he was on opium."

okay well for people who think this song was made after the movie...... you are so wrong!! wrong wrong wrong.
the movie was inspired by the song.

And the book "go ask alice" was written sadly by a drug counselor. The book is about all the problems her patients had. it is not a diary of an actual girl...... but the "alice" in the title was inspired by the song. So sorry to wreck the magic of thinking a real girl wrote it, but it had to be said.