Former Jefferson Airplane vocalist Grace Slick says Fleetwood Mac are too old to rock’n’roll – but she has no problem with the Rolling Stones continuing.
And she’s taken a pot-shot at her own later career, saying she should have left Starship a decade before she finally did.
She retired in 1989, aged 50, and she’s frequently argued that musicians who choose to perform rock and rap should bow out at a similar age.
Now Slick tells WENN: “There’s something about old people singing rock’n’roll lyrics that bothers me – it just doesn’t match.
“I saw a film of Fleetwood Mac doing something, and I was okay as long as I didn’t look at them. I couldn’t look at them. They sounded great, and if I looked away and imagined young people singing I was okay with it.”
She continues: “The only so-called old people I’ve seen that I thought ‘that still works’ is the Rolling Stones. They did a thing that was filmed in a park in Great Britain, and the way they acted, the way they sang, the musicianship, just worked really well.”
Slick is 76, while Mac age between 67 and 72 and the Stones are between 68 and 74 years old.
She remains uncomfortable with her 1980s success including Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now and We Built This City. “Starship gags me,” she says. “I don’t like to sing songs that other people wrote, simply because I don’t necessarily agree with it.
“I’m lying if I say ‘Nothing’s gonna stop us now’ – a truck will stop you instantly, and 52% of people who get together get a divorce. What do you mean, ‘Nothing’s gonna stop us now’? It’s bullshit. And there’s no city built on rock’n’roll.”
Slick, who’s pursued a career in fine arts, reflects: “I went 10 years past where I should have gone. I should have stopped at about 38, 39.”
