Last Updated on 27 January 2026 by Massimo M.
After Bathing at Baxter’s is the third album produced by Jefferson Airplane and was released in 1967.
Fresh from the artistic triumph of Surrealistic Pillow, album released the previous year, which had consecrated Jefferson Airplane as the godfathers of acid-rock, Grace Slick and associates, instead of continuing following the exclusively lysergic vein, decided to devote themselves to a new and unprecedented sound research.
The success achieved by the band allows Kantner and associates to be able to enjoy a certain operational freedom. The band then rents a villa which becomes the recording studio but also the place to test their technical and creative ability and their imagination. Not only that, fully adhering to the hippy philosophy, the band also experiences six months of completely community life.
After about six months of these experiments, the result was published. The title of the new work is After bathing at Baxter’s and it is one of the key albums of the decade together with other works published that same year such as Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles or Are you experienced? by Jimi Hendrix.
After bathing at Baxter’s was composed with an imaginative and overwhelming parade of musical pieces made of ballads, hypnotic melodies at times even arabesque, all seasoned with a rich variety of traditionally full-bodied rock pieces supported by a solid texture made of acid guitars , distorted and deliberately dissonant. In short, as strongly desired by the band itself, it is a work that shows the talent of the individual members of the group starting from Kantner’s undoubted compositional skills to arrive at the powerful and charismatic voice of Grace Slick, without forget the fundamental contribution of the rest of the band.
The title chosen for the disc is a sort of manifesto of the group. In fact, according to what is written in the official biography of the Baxter group, it was the code name used by the members of the group for LSD and acids in general. So the title alludes to the fact that he created the record after having a feast on hallucinogens.
The fact of more or less openly declaring use of hallucinogens was a fairly common practice at the time. Evidence of this fact can be found, for example, in some covers of the Grateful Dead or in the famous “light shows” held at the time by Pink Floyd.
After bathing at Baxter’s is however a structurally much more complex album than the previous Surrealistic pillow to>. In this record the band abandons the “song format” that wanted the publication of songs of three or four minutes at most and organizes the track list by grouping their own compositions into five mini-suites of variable duration. The pieces are deliberately recorded trying to maintain a solution of continuity and a logic of sequentiality between the individual tracks. The result is that you hear one great song, which makes listening extremely enjoyable.
The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil it is the piece that opens the dances in which all the creativity and technical expertise of Paul Kantner are highlighted, all supported by the voice of Grace Slick, increasingly indispensable to the compositions of the Airplane. Dedicated to the author of Winnie the pooh and folk singer Fred Neil this song was also chosen to be released as a single. While not reaching the commercial impact of previous songs such as Somebody to love, the single reached a good position in the main US and UK sales charts.
However, the song that turns out to be the most interesting of the entire album is a composition by Grace Slick, Rejoyce, inspired by the works of Joyce, in particular by Ulysses. The song is superbly interpreted by the singer who ironically uses Joyce’s writings to argue about war and the paradoxes associated with it. In fact, Slick herself said during an interview, about the meaning of Rejoyce: ” …I also thought my generation would understand the dark humor of the song, the idea of a mother saying how wonderful her son is because he’s killed a lot of people. Sort of a disgusting wartime fad.”
The cover of After Bathing At Baxter’s is entrusted to Ron Cobb, who, in line with the ideas of Jefferson Airplane, shows a world torn apart by capitalism. The illustration created by Cobb represents a house-shaped plane flying over a city that has become a place where waste is deposited and, at the same time, people live there in a disturbing scenario, also evidently the result of the capitalist system perpetuated by the mechanism consumer money. The image probably wants to allude to the band’s ability to recognize the rottenness of the society of the time and to the desire to get away from everything that the Flower Power revolution was peacefully contesting at that moment. In fact, we must not forget that Jefferson Airplane had personally and thoroughly experienced all aspects of the so-called hippy revolution.
This piece is After bathing at Baxter’s which, therefore, cannot be missing in any self-respecting rock record collection.
The disc was released in 1967 by RCA Victor, catalog number LSP 4545, in the USA and in 1968 also by RCA Victor in the United Kingdom. The first pressing has the RCA Victor black label with the dog at the top. The Mono version of After bathing at Baxter’s was also released with catalog number LOP-1511.
- side A
- Streetmasse
- The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil
- A Small Package of Value Will Come to You, Shortly
- Young Girl Sunday Blues
- The War is Over
- Martha
- Wild Tyme
- Hymn to an Older Generation
- The Last Wall of the Castle
- rejoyce
- side B
- How Suite It Is
- Watch Her Ride
- Spare Chaynge
- Shizoforest Love Suite
-
- Two Heads
- Won’t You Try / Saturday Afternoon
A remastered version of the disc was released in 2003. The following bonus tracks have been added to the original track list.
- The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil – Live long version
- Martha (versione mono)
- Two Heads (versione alternativa)
- Things Are Better In The East (versione demo)
Immediately following Things Are Better In The East begins a piece recognizable as an instrumental version of Young Girl Sunday Blues uncredited in the liner notes. This is a hidden bonus track.
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