Lather Lyrics

While I am here I might as well comment since this song did seem interesting to me. We in the 60’s kind of lived it in a way, now I am 56.

Yes it is about growing up, but what I found interesting was the use of “Sergeant Dow Jones, commanding his own tank” Basically saying war big business, and those who control the market get to make war.

Harwitz E. Greened thirty-three, His leather chair waits at the bank.
“Distinguished 20th-century bearers of the Jewish family name Horowitz include the Galician-born Israeli economist, David Horowitz, who was first Governor of the Bank of Israel”

Maybe the Jewish reference point to the money changers, in the temple.
Green seems to mean money in ones name, like a family owned bank where one can pass the wealth on like so many elite families in America tried to do.

The last part refers to the drummer I believe, who turns out to be quite productive, with the use of drugs for energy and inspiration becomes great, and yes a hero in the eyes of the young, and a mad man in the eyes of the old.

The last line seems to say it is best to live the illusion you are not old, because one looses the innocence of being wide eyed observing the world, and joy of youth.

The 60’s were great opening of the eyes of the people and much change came about, real freedom, and peace loving, was a part of that, and a better understanding of how things work.

Boy! So much for these deep interpretations!

I always thought that this song meant just what it sounded like. A 30-year old is rich because he's part of a very successful band. He's a drummer who can do things as care free as "lie about nude in the sand".

And the older generation sees him with his long hair lying nude in the sand, and thinks he's a good for nothing, but the children, who know he's a great drummer, call him "famous". Of course, often, he's just the unknown member of the band.

Alas, he's now turned 30, and he's being told he has to grow up and be responsible. But he was so happy when he was 29 that the narrator should have told him, "No, you're not old!"

A child's mind trapped in a body that has crossed the theshold where there are now expectations of manly responsibility based soley on first impression - I see children like this in the course of my day, tending telephone systems for institutions that care for those who will not mature mentally beyond childhood. It is tragic, heart breaking at first and then one realizes God's grace on this child, to never have to bear the weight of care for anything, forever alone in the wonder of a child's world, totally uninhibited, living in faith that he will be cared for come what may. I do not know the inspiration for this poem, but I once heard it was from the pages of the diary of Lather's care taker. No drug inuendos, perhaps used as an analogy of our generation during the nineteen sixties...My father used to cup his hands over his nose and mouth and by squeezing his nose, play his imaginary jazz trumpet to amuse and sometimes embarrass me when I was a child...There have been times I have, with pathos,related to Lather...when I have felt like a social characature of this child, seeing myself from the perception of others and mainstream society... 'normal' people, from whom I am sometimes self-alienated.

Duke Ellington wwrote"The DRUM is a WOMAN." Most of the ones who have aggravated me and the other colleagues for many years have one thing in common...they are like LATHER.

What band or orchestra could function without them?

What would the Catholic Church be without rhythm? This song (Lather) is one of the best on a great album which was called Jefferson Airplane's "Sgt. Peppers" as the album by the Stones called "Their Satanic Majesties Request." Ah, the sixties. If you can clearly recall them, then perhaps you were not actually there.

The song was about a 30 year old man who was mentally deficient. He was like a child. The song used the man's innocence to represent the coming of age of a generation, and not trusting anyone over thirty.

It's less than one year till I'm 30. When I hear this song (one of my favourites) it often makes me thoughtful and a bit sad about myself. I'm still childish and to have fun is most important to me. But when I'm around with younger people, I often notice that "social" life already began to change me. But I'm still young and I'll try to keep it!

Ps: I admire all of you who could see Jefferson Airplane live that time!

...once you learn that Grace Slick write the song about the then-lover, Spencer Dryden, the drummer of the band, who was the first member of the band to turn 30. And the band's bass player, the legendary Jack Casady, had actually been arrested on a California beach for lying about nude in the sand.

But I will always hear the darker, more disturbing interpretation.

was the motto of the generation (mine) who listened to Lather. At 30 I was smug that I was still smiling baby-wide, but at 57 the song does make me a little teary. While my "inner child" isn't too far beneath my wrinkling surface, it is kinda sad that they saddle you with all these idiotic responsibilities when you step into your "public life".
For the record, I still don't trust most people over 30 :)

This song is better than other airplane songs like white rabbit,plastic fantastic lover,today,etc.What a voice Grace Slick has got.This song is somewhat depressing though,but who cares when it's so good.

I've always thought that this song was about someone who had been in Vietnam and came back drugged out and insane. Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps and thrashing the air with his hands (helicopter sounds). And even the mosquito sounds; would've driven me insane to be there.

i agree, this song is so wonderfully vague and about many things as opposed to just a few. But there's a couple of references that can't be ignored that tie it to an interpretation involving a young at heart sole who delved to the depths and came out on the other side both changed and forever the same.

"He produces the finest of sound,
Putting drumsticks on either side of his nose,
Snorting the best licks in town,"

an obvious drug reference, snorting some halucynogen of one sort or another.

"And the children call him famous,
what the old men call insane,"

Probably building on his drug exploits, framing Lather as an agressive experimenter in drugs, to the extent that he has earned accolades from the the younger generation which values the experience and the condemnation of the older generation which condemns it.

BUt perhaps the most haunting line of all: "But that's all over now...."

Why? Why is it all over now?
First, the institutionalization imagery like his belongings being taken away and his mother sending him newpaper clippings, as if Lather were put away in somehting like an insane asylum (consistent with all the other references to his arrested development). This reading paints Lather as a casualty of his own excesses.
And another interpretation is that simply Lather has crossed the thirty year old threshold into that older, unhip generation, thus ending his life of being forever young.
Perhaps both interpretations are meant to be read into it.
And in a gesture of beautiful poetic justice, Lather, the forever bright-eyed endlessly inquisitive experimenter is trapped in youth forever. As haunting a thought as the mysterious ballad from which the tale is spun.

At first I thought the song was sort of cute, then I realized what the lyrics and song was all about.
I found myself shocked when all the images of the song came to my mind and I can truly say I like it more now although it's disturbing.

Lather is 30 years old and institutionalized. His mother sends him clippings of the sucesses of his childhood friends, one who is a prominent banker. A manifestation of his illness is the freedom and excitement he feels being naked.
The thrashing of his hands in the air is common with the autistic spectrum (called flapping).

He is in his own world happily making noises with his nose and drawing childish pictures.

This is his reality.

Like lots of good songs and poems this one takes a couple of different viewpoints as it muses on the topic of getting older. None of choices it presents are entirely satisfactory outcomes of aging or maturing. Provocative. At least it was before careerism took over as the most prevalent point of view. Of course the counterculture was a reaction to another more ancient wave of striving. Kudos to Grace for her insights captured inside of a haunting and enjoyable song. As the cockneys say, "All clever stuff."

Lather is one of those songs in which, like the finest of books, one can find something new hearing it again and again as one gets older. I first heard this when I was 17 and well into the drug/hippie culture. I'm now 51 and still living in left field, and this song has been there all this time, showing me something new.

For whatever reason Grace Slick wrote it, it has become something more than it was when she finished it. Kudos and gratitude to Slick for being.