Editing Surrealistic Pillow (section)

=== Release and reception ===

"My Best Friend" was released as the first single in January 1967 but reached only #103 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart.  The album was initially slow to take off until the release of "Somebody to Love" in March. Heavy radio play took the song into the Billboard Top 5, aided by the group's first national TV appearances on ''The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'' on May 7 and ''American Bandstand'' on June 3, the former featuring a facsimile of the group's swirling light show — the first time the average American had seen such effects. 

The album entered the Billboard Top 10 in May and peaked at number three on August 5, with the help of the follow-up single "White Rabbit".  "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" peaked respectively at number five and number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and remain the band's only Top 40 hits. 

''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 through the 1960s into the Haight-Ashbury counterculture. Subsequent exposure generated by the Airplane and others wrought great changes to the counterculture. By 1968, the ensuing national media attention had precipitated a very different San Francisco scene than had existed in 1966. 

In retrospect, the album has attracted near-universal acclaim. Music historian Jeff Gold, writing in the book ''101 Essential Rock Records'', lauded the album's musicianship — particularly the playing of Kaukonen and Casady — and stated his belief that Jefferson Airplane "remade pop history" with the album.