Grace Slick

Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing; October 30, 1939) is an American musician and painter whose musical career spanned four decades. She was a prominent figure in San Francisco's psychedelic music scene during the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.

Initially performing with the Great Society, Slick achieved fame as the lead singer and frontwoman of Jefferson Airplane and its spinoff bands Jefferson Starship and Starship. Slick and Jefferson Airplane achieved significant success and popularity with their 1967 studio album Surrealistic Pillow, which included the top-ten US Billboard hits "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love".

With Starship, she sang co-lead for two number-one hits, "We Built This City" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now". She has released four studio albums as an independent artist. Slick retired from music in 1990, but continues to be active in visual arts. In 1996, Slick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Jefferson Airplane.

Grace Barnett Wing was born on October 30, 1939, in Chicago, to Ivan Wing, an investment banker, and Virginia Barnett Wing, a retired singer. Her parents met while they were both students at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1949, her younger brother Chris was born.

Her father's work required the family to relocate to San Francisco, and then Palo Alto. Wing attended Palo Alto Senior High School, then transferred to Castilleja School, a private all-girls school in Palo Alto. Despite not being academically gifted, she attended Finch College in New York City from 1957 to 1958, and the University of Miami from 1958 to 1959, majoring in art.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.