San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Jerry Slick — founder of S.F.’s Great Society rock band, filmmaker
Jerry Slick, a cinematographer and amateur sports car racer better known as the founder and drummer of the pioneering San Francisco ’60s acid rock band the Great Society — fronted by his thenwife Grace Slick — has died of cancer.
Slick died on St. Patrick’s Day, in bed in his Mill Valley home of 40 years, said his wife Wendy Slick. He was 80.
He was fresh out of film School at San Francisco State College in 1965 when he and Grace, his fashion model wife at the time, and his younger brother Darby formed the Great Society, named after the slogan of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. By 1966, the group evolved into Grace Slick and the Great Society, with her singing and playing guitar. Darby Slick was also on guitar, David Milner on bass, and Bard duPont on the saxophone and a variety of woodwinds. Other members came and went. The Great Society released three albums, all recorded in 1965 and ’66.
Grace Slick did not respond to The Chronicle’s requests for comment. In a Facebook tribute to his older brother, Darby Slick wrote: “You were the most underrated drummer in SF.”
As legend has it, Jerry Slick locked Grace in their bedroom and would not let her out until she wrote a song. A few hours later, she came out with “White Rabbit.”
In a recording at the Matrix on Fillmore, the soontobefamous song begins with a fourminute instrumental, with Jerry Slick pounding on his snare and cymbal and playing a flute part that sounds like a snake charmer. Finally, when the instruments are exhausted, Grace comes in with the words, “One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small.”
Grace Slick took “White Rabbit” and a song by Darby Slick called “Someone to Love” (later renamed “Somebody to Love”) with her when she left the Great Society to replace Signe Anderson as vocalist with the Jefferson Airplane. That was in 1966, and the Great Society did not survive her departure.
Neither did their marriage. After a lengthy separation, Jerry and Grace Slick divorced in 1971 and he went back to his main calling, as a cinematographer and maker of documentary and commercial films.
Gerald Robert Slick was born Aug. 8, 1939, to patent attorney Bob Slick and Betty Slick in Berkeley. He grew up in Palo Alto and attended the private Menlo School before graduating from Palo Alto High School. Grace Wing grew up in the same neighborhood in Palo Alto and attended Paly (as the high school is known). But it was only after Jerry Slick returned from service in the Army that he and Wing were married.
San Francisco film editor Tom Bullock met Jerry Slick when they both entered the film department at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) in 1963. Grace Slick was modeling for I. Magnin on Union Square, and they lived in the hills near campus.
“Every day, Gracie would come in and snooze under the cutting board after a long day’s modeling,” Bullock said.
By their second year in college, the Vietnam War was on and Jerry Slick’s main effort was a protest film called “Everyone Hits Their Brother Once,” filmed at their home.
After the Great Society ended and Slick returned to film, he narrowly missed a Hollywood break, said Wendy Slick. Director George Lucas interviewed him to be director of photography on a film he was working on, she said, but Jerry Slick had to turn the job down. Jerry Slick had ruined his shoulder pursuing his other passion, driving his MGB in races put on by the Sports Car Club of America, and couldn’t use a handheld camera as Lucas requested.
Gary Coates, a motion picture color editor who freelances for Pixar, met Jerry Slick 40 years ago when Coates was a lab technician at Palmer Films on Howard Street. Part of that job was fixing mistakes in cinematography, but Jerry Slick’s film never needed correcting, he said.
“Jerry and I go back to the photochemical era when the cinematographer really had to know the craft, how the lights work and how to pick the right lens, camera and film negative,” said
Coates. “Jerry was a pro with all that knowledge.”
Jerry Slick met his second wife, Wendy Blair, in 1979. She was a filmmaker who started the video department at College of Marin. Jerry Slick was overqualified for the entrylevel class, but he was looking to make the transition from film to video, to stay up with the times. Right away he was asking the instructor, 10 years younger, out on dates. She turned him down for a variety of professional and personal reasons. But Jerry Slick found a workaround by casting his instructor for his final class project. This got him both an A in the course and a date with Wendy.
They eventually moved in together into a house in Mill Valley. They then formed a husbandandwife production company called Slick Film. She did the directing, and he was the cinematographer. They shot promotional videos for Carlos Santana and the San Francisco Opera, and promotional films in the early days of Silicon Valley.
“Jerry was the preferred cinematographer for Steve Jobs,” said Wendy Slick. “All those corporate types liked him because he made them look good.”
Slick Film also produced both short and longform documentary films. A halfhour documentary they shot for ODC/Dance, called “The Long Run,” got picked up by PBS and was shown nationwide. His camera work was also in “Lou Harrison: A World in
Music,” a documentary on the composer by Eva Soltis that got a screening at the Castro Theatre.
Always quick with a oneliner or wry commentary, Jerry Slick was a regular feeder of quips and observations to Leah Garchik’s column in The Chronicle.
“He just had an unusual mind,” said Wendy Slick. “He saw things from a different point of view and always delivered more than what was expected.”
For years and years, Jerry Slick had his drum kit from the Great Society set up in the living room. He’d put on headsets and pound along to Fleetwood Mac and the Grateful Dead, two other bands formed by kids from the Peninsula.
“Jerry was a very interesting and lovely man, and he was a little crazy,” Wendy Slick said, with a laugh. “He cared desperately about everything, and that can be intense. It’s also wonderful. “
Survivors include his wife, Wendy Slick of Mill Valley, and brothers Darby Slick of Hawaii and Dan Slick of Santa Cruz. Donations in his name may be made to the Seva Foundation in Berkeley or Doctors Without Borders.
A private memorial is pending the easing of the shelterinplace order and coronavirus pandemic.
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF Instagram: sfchronicle_art