Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow [Limited Edition Mono Remastered] (2015) [Vinyl]

Jefferson Airplane's fusion of folk rock and psychedelia was original at the time, in line with musical developments pioneered by The Byrds, The Mamas & the Papas, Bob Dylan, The Yardbirds, and The Beatles, among other mid-1960s rock bands. Surrealistic Pillow was the first blockbuster psychedelic album by a band from San Francisco, announcing to the world the active bohemian scene that had developed there starting with The Beats during the 1950s, extending and changing through the 1960s into the Haight-Ashbury counterculture. Subsequent exposure generated by the Airplane and others wrought great changes to that counterculture, and by 1968 the ensuing national media attention had precipitated a very different San Francisco scene than had existed in 1966. San Francisco photographer Herb Greene photographed the band for the album's cover art.

Some controversy exists as to the role of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia in the making of the album. His reputed presence on several tracks is denied by producer Rick Jarrard, but he is credited on the RCA label copy, as well as receiving credits on the Flight Log compilation and the Jefferson Airplane Loves You box set. In his sleeve notes for Early Flight - the 1974 compilation album of previously unreleased material - the band's sometime manager Bill Thompson writes only that Garcia was, "listed as 'spiritual advisor' on the album cover [and] played one of the guitars", on "In The Morning", a track recorded at the "Surrealistic Pillow" sessions, but first included on the album on the 2003 reissue. Garcia himself recalled in a mid-1967 interview that he'd played the high lead on "Today," played on "Plastic Fantastic Lover" and "Comin' Back to Me," and that he had arranged and essentially rewritten "Somebody to Love." He also played on two songs not released until the reissue ("JPP McStep B Blues" as well as "In the Morning") and may have played on "How Do You Feel." Kaukonen said that Garcia was essentially the producer who arranged the songs. A comment by Garcia about the music being "as surrealistic as a pillow" also reportedly inspired the album title.