Jefferson Airplane's
"Crown of Creation"

Many of the lyrics for the (magnificent!) song "Crown of Creation" (on the 1968 album of the same name) were creatively adapted by the late Paul Kantner from John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic novel "Rebirth". (Here's a lipsynced version on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968). If you know the song, the following passages should seem very familiar (page numbers from my 1978 Ballantine paperback edition). It adapts very well to 60's counterculture :-).

(p 168) "Your work is to survive. Neither his kind, nor his kind of thinking, will survive long. They are the crown of creation, they are ambition fulfilled, they have nowhere more to go. But life is change, that is how it differs from the rocks, change is its very nature...Soon they will attain the ability they strive for, in the only form it is granted--a place among the fossils"

(p181) "In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise; in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction"



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