Jefferson Airplane
at Woodstock 1969
Scheduled as Saturday's headliner, Jefferson Airplane played an 8 a.m. Sunday morning set after massive delays, with Grace Slick's voice cutting through the dawn.
Jefferson Airplane — Woodstock 1969
Jefferson Airplane were scheduled to be Saturday's headliner at Woodstock 1969, but the cascading delays that pushed The Who's set to 5 a.m. meant the Airplane didn't take the stage until approximately 8 a.m. Sunday morning. They were mistakenly introduced as "Jefferson Airship."
The band was formed in San Francisco in 1965 and had achieved enormous success with their 1967 album "Surrealistic Pillow," which reached #3 on the Billboard 200 and contained the Top 10 hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit." Grace Slick's haunting, powerful vocals defined the psychedelic era.
Their Woodstock performance, delivered to a crowd that had been awake all night, was one of the festival's most surreal moments. Grace Slick's voice soaring over a field of 400,000 people at sunrise remains one of the great images of the era. "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," performed as the morning light broke, were among the most powerful moments of the entire festival.
After Woodstock, Jefferson Airplane continued to evolve, eventually splitting into Jefferson Starship and then Starship. Grace Slick remained the common thread until retiring in the early 1990s.
Jefferson Airplane was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Did Jefferson Airplane Play at Woodstock?
Yes. Jefferson Airplane took the stage at around 8 a.m. on Sunday, August 17, 1969, after being pushed back from their scheduled Saturday headliner slot by hours of cascading delays. Their eight-song set included "White Rabbit," "Somebody to Love," and "Volunteers," performed to a crowd that had been awake through the night.
Was It Jefferson Airplane or Jefferson Starship at Woodstock?
It was Jefferson Airplane. Jefferson Starship didn't exist yet in 1969 — the band formed in 1974, five years after Woodstock, when Grace Slick and Paul Kantner assembled a new lineup out of the original Airplane's later years. Only Jefferson Airplane, in its original form, performed at the festival.
Drummer Spencer Dryden died on January 11, 2005. Keyboardist Nicky Hopkins died on September 6, 1994. See all Woodstock performers who have passed →