Grace Slick and Chick-fil-A make for some strange bedfellows.
Slick, possessor of one of the biggest mouths in rock, is an avowed leftie, famed in part for her radical antiwar stance in the late 1960s.
Chick-fil-A draws fire on a regular basis for its right-wing affiliations, notably its ministry wing the WinShape Foundation, which has routed millions of its profits to Biblical Christian groups opposed to gay marriage.
So when Slick agreed to license the Jefferson Starship hit “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” to the Georgia-based fast-food franchiser, it raised a few eyebrows. Certainly during the Grammys telecast of a week back.
Another ’60s sellout? Nah. Slick had a plan, one she just shared in a blog post on the web site of capitalist cheerleader magazine Forbes.
“I am donating every dime that I make from that ad to Lambda Legal, the largest national legal organization working to advance the civil rights of LGBTQ people, and everyone living with HIV,” Slick wrote for Forbes.
Slick swears she wasn’t in retreat — or in CYA mode:
“You might think I’m writing this just to cover my ass for allowing a company whose practices many find morally objectionable to use Starship’s music. Well, I haven’t covered my ass since the day I was born (except, maybe, in a pair of white Levi’s),” Slick wrote. (Jefferson Airplane made a Levi’s commercial back in the day, below.)
Slick, who spends most of her time on her paintings these days, elaborated on the Chick-fil-A money’s U-turn:
Admittedly it’s not the millions that WinShape has given to organizations that define marriage as heterosexual. But instead of them replacing my song with someone else’s and losing this opportunity to strike back at anti-LGBTQ forces, I decided to spend the cash in direct opposition to “Check”-fil-A’s causes — and to make a public example of them, too. We’re going to take some of their money, and pay it back.
WinShape was started in 1984 by Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy. Its activities also include scholarships, summer camps and youth-support programs. In 2012, it said it was retreating from the political debate over same-sex marriage.
“Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” was written by Albert Hammond and Diane Warren. It was used as the theme song to the romcom “Mannequin.” Slick sang the 1987 hit single with Mickey Thomas.
Ha ha – nice one Grace 🙂
People should have a right to practice their own perversions with their willing adult partners in the privacy of their own homes just like people should have a right to practice their own religion. Unfortunately, we are living in a time where instead of respecting each others rights and taking a “live and let live” attitude toward those who are different than ourselves, we’ve all banded together in our respective tribes, lawyered up and gone to war with each other. Hardly the peace and love spirit that was the foundation of the cultural revolution that inspired the music and art our tribe loves so much.
Grace has always been as crazy as she was beautiful and I’ve always loved her for both. She has a right to sell her art to whomever wants to buy it and give her money to whomever she wants, even to groups who hire lawyers to sue little bakeries who don’t want to bake cakes for people whose lifestyle violates their religious beliefs or photographers who don’t want to take their pictures for religious reasons.
There was a time when people had a right to refuse doing business with whomever they wanted and in those cases you just took your business elsewhere. I got harassed by a pool hall owner in 1970 because he didn’t like the flag patch I had on the rear end of my jeans. He was a WW2 vet. I didn’t sue him. I just took my business someplace else in the spirit of not wanting to “push my trip” on him.
The problem these days is EVERYBODY wants to push their trips on everybody else when we should all just live and let live. Grace has a right to do what she wants with her money and her art, but this situation brings to my mind these lyrics, “if you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is buddy you’ll have to wait”.