Grace Slick Takes Chick-fil-A Money and Donates it to LGBTQ Organization

Grace Slick doesn’t like Chick-fil-A, but she’ll happily take their money and do what she wants with it.

In an essay published at Forbes.com, the 77-year-old former singer of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship said that Chick-fil-A licensed one of her songs, “Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now,” for a commercial. Initially she planned to refuse the offer over the company’s well-publicized views on gay rights, but she said she agreed so she could donate the money to a group that supports LGBTQ communities.

“I am donating every dime that I make from that ad to Lambda Legal, the largest national legal organization working to advance the civil rights of LGBTQ people, and everyone living with HIV,” Slick wrote for Forbes.com. “Admittedly it’s not the millions that WinShape has given to organizations that define marriage as heterosexual. But instead of them replacing my song with someone else’s and losing this opportunity to strike back at anti-LGBTQ forces, I decided to spend the cash in direct opposition to “Check”-fil-A’s causes – and to make a public example of them, too.”

(The WinShape Foundation is the non-profit organization started by the founders of Chick-fil-A.)

Slick insists in her piece that she’s not making excuses for “selling out,” but rather setting an example of other artists.

“See, I come from a time when artists didn’t just sell their soul to the highest bidder, when musicians took a stand, when the message of songs was ‘feed your head,’ not ‘feed your wallet.’ We need that kind of artistic integrity today, more than ever,” Slick wrote.

Many of Slick’s songs have been used commercials and movies. Back in 1967, Jefferson Airplane composed radio jingles for Levi Jeans (video below). The Starship song “Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now” was used in the 1987 Kim Cattrall, Andrew McCarthy film Mannequin.

BONUS: Watch Slick speak to KQED’s Evening Edition back in 1977.