Grace Slick and Tricky Dick

Updated: Jun 1, 2022

"Tricky Dick needs a little acid."

When the hippie and counterculture movements were reaching their zenith in 1969, Richard Nixon was inaugurated as President of the United States. Nixon was the absolute antithesis of these movements with his rigid laws and lavish expenditures on seemingly pointless efforts. He and his family represented everything the hippies despised: straight-laced traditionalism and unquestioning adherence to the rules. The hippies' disapproval of Nixon, however, was nothing compared to the disdain he felt towards them. Nixon loathed anyone who opposed him. He hid his hatred for hippies, minorities, and the poor (categories that tended to overlap) behind laws and projects he claimed would save the nation. His “War on Drugs” was more of a direct attack on hippies and people of color than it was ever an attack on drugs.

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”* - John Ehrlichman, former Nixon domestic policy chief

The budding youth grew to hate the establishment, but few people practiced antiestablishmentarianism more firmly than Jefferson Airplane’s Queen of Acid Rock, Grace Slick.

In the 50s, Grace Slick was Grace Wing - a student at Finch College in New York City. Finch was an all-girls school in Manhattan's Upper-East Side, one of the most expensive real-estate districts in America. Its student body represented the affluent young women of America and its tuition was amongst the highest in the country. Slick, or Wing, only attended Finch for a single year, from 1958-59. This is perhaps the only commonality she shared with Tricia Nixon, who also attended Finch for one year, nearly a decade later.

By 1970, however, Slick was far from the typical Finch girl. While they wore mod skirts and blazers, pearls adorning their long pale necks and stiff bouffants sitting atop their heads, Slick was raising hell as a vocalist for the infamous Jefferson Airplane. She gained notoriety not only for her powerful voice, smooth and hot as molten glass, but also for her forthright politics, unassailable confidence, and sharp wit. She used her gift for song to advocate against bigotry and hatred, feeling it was her responsibility as a musician to stand up for what she believed in. This made her an icon in the eyes of many, but to the FBI she was a domestic security risk whose name would be placed on a blacklist.

Slick had guided the Airplane into the world of psychedelia while similarly advocating the use of LSD. Slick, like many others, employed LSD to open the mind and see beyond the constraints of reality. A running joke among her peers was the idea of giving tight-laced conservative Nixon a taste of acid. In April of 1970, Slick was granted the opportunity to do exactly that.

Grace had received an invitation, addressed to Grace Wing, for a Finch Alumni Tea Party hosted by Tricia Nixon at The White House. It seemed no one had connected the dots between Finch’s Grace Wing and the notorious Grace Slick. Her mind raced at the possibilities, “I think Tricky Dick needs a little acid.”**

Slick and Abbie Hoffman outside of the White House | source: https://abbiehoffman.tumblr.com/post/29564699350/grace-slick-and-abbie-hoffman

Slick accepted the invitation and recruited Abbie Hoffman as her plus-one and partner in crime. Hoffman was another outspoken activist and a prominent leader of the Flower-Power movement. He was a radical, a member of the Chicago Seven, an ardent protester of the Vietnam War, and the personification of counterculture (as well as the victim of Pete Townshend's boot). He represented everything Nixon rejected, and for that reason, he too was identified as a domestic security risk.

Hoffman and Slick hatched their plan: Slick would smuggle in 600 micrograms of LSD - enough to send Nixon to the moon - and hide it under her fingernail. Then, when the coast was clear, she would gracefully wave her hand over Nixon’s teacup and dump the drug into his drink, sending him on the trip of a lifetime.

Slick dressed Hoffman up in a suit, smoothing back his unruly hair in the hopes that he would blend in with the rest of the preppy husbands. Together, they strode into the Tea Party - and together, they were immediately sent out. It seemed Slick’s efforts had been in vain - Hoffman was recognized instantly. Security risks, it appeared, were not welcome in the White House.

"Mr. Hoffman, conservatively dressed and without his beard, said he was Miss Slick's 'bodyguard and escort,' but a White House Policeman would not permit him to enter the grounds, saying, 'This is strictly for females.' Mr. Hoffman brought out a black flag emblazoned with a multicolored marijuana leaf [the flag of the Yippies] and hung it on the White House gate. It was quickly removed by a White House policeman. The singer and Mr. Hoffman ran across the street and were driven away by a member of the Jefferson Airplane."*** - The New York Times

Grace would soon come to learn that even if she had been allowed in, her plan was foiled from the start - Richard Nixon hadn't attended the event. She would also express gratitude that she had been denied entry, for it had saved her from one of two insufferable fates: the terrible repercussions of drugging the president or an afternoon spent in the company of Tricia Nixon and the rest of the prim and proper Finch socialites.

In 2011, Slick recalled her notorious plan, stating: “LSD was new then. It opened up our heads and gave us new insight into the fact that reality isn’t just one thing. That excited us. But it’s also terrifying if your head isn’t in the right place. So in hindsight, our advocating for LSD was kind of dangerous.”**