The day after the Woodstock musical festival in 1969, the Jefferson Airplane performed two songs on the Dick Cavett Show. What I find touching about their rendition of “We Can Be Together” is that they seem to be in dialogue with one other, standing close together, sometimes with their back to the audience, as if playing the music for each other, and somehow protecting one another from stress and criticism. There is a sense of quietude as well as intensity. But it is their closeness that sets this apart from other rock performances on TV.

And here is an interesting fact: it was the first time the words “fuck” and “motherfucker” escaped the censors on TV. In many venues the Jefferson Airplane substituted the word “Fred” for the “f” word and the “mf” word. But their including the original lyrics on the Dick Cavett Show seems logical: Cavett was a brilliant, liberal interviewer in a time of radical anti-war protests, social experiments, and fights for social justice.

So here’s the video. And I’ve copied the lyrics beneath it.

“We Can Be Together,”
by Paul Kantner

We can be together
Ah you and me
We should be together

We are all outlaws in the eyes of america
In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fuck hide and deal
We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young
But we should be together

Come on all you people standing around
Our life’s too fine to let it die and
We can be together

All your private property is
Target for your enemy
And your enemy is
We
We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves

Up against the wall
Up against the wall motherfucker
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls

Come on now together
Get it on together
Everybody together
We should be together
We should be together my friends
We can be together
We will be

We must begin here and now
A new continent of earth and fire
Come on now gettin higher and higher
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Tear down the walls
Won’t you try