Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylYnzAWTq6Y&list=RDylYnzAWTq6Y&start_radio=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnJM_jC7j_4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EO9g6zetVQ 

1.  Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor

Slick drew directly from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking‑Glass, using their imagery—pills, potions, mushrooms, shifting size—as metaphors for curiosity and altered perception.  She viewed the books as inherently surreal and subversive long before they were associated with psychedelic culture. 

Slick later noted that these stories were often read to children without adults acknowledging their strange, mind-bending themes, which made them perfect vehicles for questioning authority and “accepted” reality

2.  A critique of parental and social hypocrisy

One of Slick’s stated motivations was calling out hypocrisy—particularly parents who warned children about drugs while celebrating fantastical stories filled with chemical transformations.  She argued that many classic children’s tales openly depict altered states, yet adults pretended otherwise. 

The song’s famous closing line, “feed your head,” was intended as a challenge to think independently, not a literal instruction to use drugs. 

3.  Musical inspiration: Boléro and Miles Davis

Musically, Slick was inspired by Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain and the structure of Ravel’s Boléro—a slow, relentless crescendo that builds tension without a traditional chorus.  She intentionally chose a dark, marching rhythm to give the song a sense of inevitability and confrontation.

She famously wrote the song on a cheap, partially broken upright piano, composing the lyrics first and then shaping the music around their intensity.

4.  The San Francisco counterculture

Finally, the song reflected the broader Haight‑Ashbury ethos of the mid‑1960s: distrust of authority, rejection of conformity, and the belief that personal awakening often requires stepping outside socially approved boundaries.  Slick has said the song was meant to feel unsettling rather than comforting—a deliberate contrast to the peace‑and‑love clichés of the era.

In short

Grace Slick wrote “White Rabbit” as a literary-driven, anti-conformist statement—using Alice in Wonderland to expose hypocrisy, encourage curiosity, and push listeners to question who controls knowledge and truth.  Its psychedelic reputation grew naturally, but its core message was always about intellectual rebellion and self-awareness, not escapism.