Long John SilverJefferson Airplane was the first of the San Francisco psychedelic rock groups of the 1960s to achieve national recognition. Although the Grateful Dead ultimately proved more long-lived and popular, Jefferson Airplane defined the San Francisco sound in the '60s, with the acid rock guitar playing of Jorma Kaukonen and the soaring twin vocals of Grace Slick and Marty Balin, scoring hit singles and landing on the cover of national magazines. They epitomized the drug-taking hippie ethos as well as the left-wing antiwar political movement of their time, and their history was one of controversy along with hit records. Their personal interactions mirrored those times; the group was a collective with shifting alliances in which leaders emerged and retreated. But for all the turmoil, Jefferson Airplane was remarkably productive between 1965 and 1972. They toured regularly, being the only band to play at all the major '60s rock festivals -- Monterey, Woodstock, even Altamont -- and they released seven studio albums, five of which went gold, plus two live LPs and a million-selling hits collection that chronicled their eight chart singles. After 1972's Long John Silver, the Airplane split, with Slick and guitarist Paul Kantner forming Jefferson Starship, and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady playing together in Hot Tuna. The original lineup of Starship wound up reuniting for an album and tour in 1989.
The initial idea for the group that became Jefferson Airplane came from 23-year-old Marty Balin, a San Francisco-raised singer who had recorded unsuccessfully for Challenge Records in 1962 and been a member of a folk group called the Town Criers in 1963-1964. With the Beatles-led British Invasion of 1964, Balin saw the merging of folk with rock in early 1965 and decided to form a group to play the hybrid style as well as open a club for the group to play in. He interested three investors in converting a pizza restaurant on Fillmore Street into a 100-seat venue called the Matrix, and he began picking potential bandmembers from among the musicians at a folk club called the Drinking Gourd. His first recruit was rhythm guitarist/singer Paul Kantner, who in turn recommended lead guitarist/singer Jorma Kaukonen. Balin, who possessed a keening tenor, wanted a complementary powerful female voice for the group and found it in Signe Toly. The six-piece band was completed by bass player Bob Harvey and drummer Jerry Peloquin. Their unusual name was suggested by Kaukonen, who had once jokingly been dubbed "Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane" by a friend in reference to the blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Jefferson Airplane made their debut at the Matrix on August 13, 1965 and began performing at the club regularly. They attracted favorable press attention, which -- at a time when folk-rock performers like Sonny & Cher, We Five, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, the Beau Brummels, and the Turtles were all over the charts -- led to record company interest. By September, Jefferson Airplane was being wooed by several labels. At the same time, the band was already undergoing changes. Peloquin was fired and replaced by Skip Spence. Spence considered himself a guitarist, not a drummer, but he had some drumming experience. Also in September, Signe Toly married Jerry Anderson, who handled lights at the Matrix, becoming known as Signe Anderson. In October, Harvey was fired and replaced by Jack Casady, a friend of Kaukonen's. On November 15, 1965, this lineup -- Balin, Kantner, Anderson, Kaukonen, Spence, and Casady -- signed to RCA Victor Records. They had their first recording session in Los Angeles on December 16, and RCA released their debut single, Balin's composition "It's No Secret," in February 1966; it didn't chart. Meanwhile, Jefferson Airplane began to appear at more prestigious venues in San Francisco and tour outside the Bay Area. In May 1966, Anderson gave birth to a daughter, and caring for the child while performing with the band became a challenge. Meanwhile, Spence became increasingly unreliable as his appetite for drugs increased and was replaced in June by session drummer Spencer Dryden. Spence went on to form the band Moby Grape.
Takes OffFollowing a second non-charting single, Balin and Kantner's "Come Up the Years," in July, Jefferson Airplane released their debut LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, on August 15, 1966, just over a year after the band's debut. The album had modest sales, peaking at only number 128 during its 11 weeks on the Billboard chart. (A third single, Balin and Kantner's "Bringing Me Down," was released from the album, but didn't chart.) At this point, Anderson's commitment to her family led her departure from the group. Jefferson Airplane was able to find a strong replacement for her in Grace Slick, the lead singer for the San Francisco rock band the Great Society, which happened to be in the process of breaking up at the same time. Slick joined Jefferson Airplane in mid-October 1966, and by the end of the month, was with them in the recording studio. She brought with her two songs from the Great Society repertoire: the rock tune "Somebody to Love," written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick, the Great Society's guitarist, and her own composition, the ballad "White Rabbit," set to a bolero tempo, which used imagery from Alice in Wonderland to discuss the impact of psychedelic drugs. Both songs were recorded for Jefferson Airplane's second album, Surrealistic Pillow.
RCA did not release either of them as the advance single from the album, opting instead for the departed Spence's "My Best Friend" in January 1967; it became the group's fourth single to miss the charts. Surrealistic Pillow followed in February. It debuted in the charts the last week of March, and its progress sped up with the release of "Somebody to Love," the first Jefferson Airplane single to feature Grace Slick as lead vocalist. By early May, both the album and single were in the Top 40 of their respective charts; a month later, both were in the Top Ten. With that, RCA released "White Rabbit" as a single, and it too reached the Top Ten. Surrealistic Pillow became Jefferson Airplane's first gold album in July.
Meanwhile, the band, which, naturally, had attracted national media attention (much of it focusing on Slick's photogenic looks), began recording a new album and continued to tour. On June 17, 1967, they performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival, which was celebrated for introducing many of the new San Francisco rock bands (as well as the Jimi Hendrix Experience) and launching the "Summer of Love" in 1967. Jefferson Airplane's performance was filmed and recorded. Two songs from their show, "High Flying Bird" and "Today," were featured in the documentary Monterey Pop, released in 1968. The concert recording was heavily bootlegged and over the years has turned up on numerous gray-market releases as well.
After Bathing at Baxter'sThe nature of Jefferson Airplane's commercial breakthrough, and the nature of the band itself, restricted their commercial appeal thereafter. AM Top 40 radio, in particular, became wary of a group that had scored a hit with a song widely derided for its drug references, and Jefferson Airplane never again enjoyed the kind of widespread radio support they would have needed to score more Top Ten hits. At the same time, the group did not think of itself as a hitmaking machine, and its recordings were becoming more adventurous. Kantner's "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil," the band's new single released in August, featured him as lead singer with Slick and Balin harmonizing. It reached number 42 on the strength of the band's prominence. At the same time, the rise of FM radio, attracted to longer cuts and the kind of experimental work the group was starting to do, gave them a new way of exposing their music. Nevertheless, their third album, After Bathing at Baxter's, its songs arranged into lengthy suites, was not as successful as Surrealistic Pillow when it appeared on November 27, 1967, reaching the Top 20 but failing to go gold. Also notable was the diminished participation of Marty Balin, who co-wrote only one song, and now was being marginalized in the group he had founded.
Crown of CreationAfter Kantner's "Watch Her Ride," released as a single from After Bathing at Baxter's, stalled at number 61, RCA released a new Jefferson Airplane single written and sung by Slick in the spring of 1968. But radio was even more resistant, and "Greasy Heart" stopped at number 98. It was included on the band's fourth album, Crown of Creation, released in August. The title track got to number 64 as a single, and the LP, which featured more concise, less experimental tracks than After Bathing at Baxter's, marked a resurgence in the group's commercial success, reaching the Top Ten and eventually going gold. Jefferson Airplane's live appeal was chronicled on the concert album Bless Its Pointed Little Head, released in February 1969. In August, the group appeared at the Woodstock festival, and it was featured on the million-selling triple-LP soundtrack album to the resulting film in 1970, though it did not appear onscreen in the version initially released. The band's fifth studio album, Volunteers, appeared in October 1969 as its title song became a minor singles chart entry. Volunteers stopped short of the Top Ten, but it went gold in three months. On December 6, 1969, the band played at the Rolling Stones' disastrous Altamont free concert in California, its performance (complete with Balin's beating at the hands of Hell's Angels) captured in the 1970 documentary film Gimme Shelter.
Jefferson Airplane released one more single, the non-charting marijuana anthem "Mexico," in 1970 in its familiar configuration, but the turn of the 1970s brought great changes in the group. Already, Kaukonen and Casady, with assorted sidemen, had begun to play separately as Hot Tuna while maintaining their membership in Jefferson Airplane; they had recorded shows the previous September for a self-titled debut album issued in May 1970. Spencer Dryden was fired early in the year and replaced by drummer Joey Covington. At shows performed in October 1970, violinist Papa John Creach, who had been performing with Hot Tuna, first played with Jefferson Airplane. Creach was a journeyman musician decades older than any of the other bandmembers, and his recruitment was evidence of the ways in which the band's approach was changing. An even more radical change was the departure of Marty Balin, who left the band at the end of the fall tour in November.
The Worst of Jefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane did not have a new album ready for release in 1970, and RCA filled the gap with a compilation, sarcastically dubbed The Worst of Jefferson Airplane and released in November. The album went gold quickly and was later certified platinum. Issued on its heels was Paul Kantner's debut solo album, Blows Against the Empire, featuring most of the members of Jefferson Airplane as well as various other musical friends. Due to that long list of sidemen and the album's science fiction theme about a group of hippies hijacking a spaceship, Kantner co-billed the disc to "Jefferson Starship." As yet, there was no such entity, but Kantner would use the name for a real band later.
BarkHaving completed their recording commitment to RCA, Jefferson Airplane shopped for a new label, but was wooed back when RCA offered them their own imprint, Grunt Records. Grunt bowed with the release of the sixth Jefferson Airplane studio album, Bark, in August 1971. The album stopped just short of the Top Ten and quickly went gold. Covington, Casady, and Kaukonen's "Pretty as You Feel," later issued as a single, gave the band its final placing in the Hot 100 at number 60 early in 1972. Grunt issued albums by bandmembers including Creach and Hot Tuna, as well as discs by friends, but Jefferson Airplane remained its most successful act.
by William Ruhlmann
Albums:
Jefferon Airplane Takes Off (1966-2008)
The debut Jefferson Airplane album was dominated by singer Marty Balin, who wrote or co-wrote all the original material and sang most of the lead vocals in his heartbreaking tenor with Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson providing harmonies and backup. (Anderson's lead vocal on "Chauffeur Blues" indicated she was at least the equal of her successor, Grace Slick, as a belter.) The music consisted mostly of folk-rock love songs, the most memorable of which were "It's No Secret" and "Come up the Years." (There was also a striking version of Dino Valente's "Get Together" recorded years before the Youngbloods' hit version.) Jorma Kaukonen already displayed a talent for mixing country, folk, and blues riffs in a rock context, and Jack Casady already had a distinctive bass sound. But the Airplane of Balin-Kantner-Kaukonen-Anderson-Casady-Spence is to be distinguished from the Balin-Kantner-Kaukonen-Casady-Slick-Dryden version of the band that would emerge on record five months later chiefly by Balin's dominance. Later, Grace Slick would become the group's vocal and visual focal point. On Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, the Airplane was still Balin's group.
by William Ruhlmann
Tracklist:
1. Blues From An Airplane
2. Let Me In
3. Bringing Me Down
4. It's No Secret
5. Tobacco Road
6. Come Up The Year
7. Run Around
8. Let's Get Together
9. Don't Slip Away
10. Chauffeur Blues
11. And I Like It
Bonus Tracks
12. Runnin' Round This World
13. High Flying Bird
14. It's Alright
15. Go To Her (Early Version)
16. Let Me In (Original Uncensored Version)
17. Run Around (Original Uncensored Version)
18. Chauffeur Blues (Alternate Version)
19. And I Like It (Alternate Version) / Blues From An Airplane (Instrumental)
Surrealistic Pillow (1967-2008)
The second album by Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow was a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit like a shot heard round the world; where the later efforts from bands like the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and especially, the Charlatans, were initially not too much more than cult successes, Surrealistic Pillow rode the pop charts for most of 1967, soaring into that rarefied Top Five region occupied by the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and so on, to which few American rock acts apart from the Byrds had been able to lay claim since 1964. And decades later the album still comes off as strong as any of those artists' best work. From the Top Ten singles "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" to the sublime "Embryonic Journey," the sensibilities are fierce, the material manages to be both melodic and complex (and it rocks, too), and the performances, sparked by new member Grace Slick on most of the lead vocals, are inspired, helped along by Jerry Garcia (serving as spiritual and musical advisor and sometimes guitarist). Every song is a perfectly cut diamond, too perfect in the eyes of the bandmembers, who felt that following the direction of producer Rick Jarrard and working within three- and four-minute running times, and delivering carefully sung accompaniments and succinct solos, resulted in a record that didn't represent their real sound. Regardless, they did wonderful things with the music within that framework, and the only pity is that RCA didn't record for official release any of the group's shows from the same era, when this material made up the bulk of their repertory. That way the live versions, with the band's creativity unrestricted, could be compared and contrasted with the record. The songwriting was spread around between Marty Balin, Slick, Paul Kantner, and Jorma Kaukonen, and Slick and Balin (who never had a prettier song than "Today," which he'd actually written for Tony Bennett) shared the vocals; the whole album was resplendent in a happy balance of all of these creative elements, before excessive experimentation (musical and chemical) began affecting the band's ability to do a straightforward song. The group never made a better album, and few artists from the era ever did.
by Bruce Eder
Tracklist:
1. She Has Funny Cars
2. Somebody To Love
3. My Best Friend
4. Today
5. Comin' Back To Me
6. 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds
7. D.C.B.A.-25
8. How Do You Feel
9. Embryonic Journey
10. White Rabbit
11. Plastic Fantastic Lover
Bonus Tracks
12. In The Morning
13. J.P.P. Mc Step B. Blues
14. Go To Her
15. Come Back Baby
16. Somebody To Love (Mono Single Version)
17. White Rabbit (Mono Single Version)
After Bathing At Baxters (1967-2008)
The Jefferson Airplane opened 1967 with Surrealistic Pillow and closed it with After Bathing at Baxter's, and what a difference ten months made. Bookending the year that psychedelia emerged in full bloom as a freestanding musical form, After Bathing at Baxter's was among the purest of rock's psychedelic albums, offering few concessions to popular taste and none to the needs of AM radio, which made it nowhere remotely as successful as its predecessor, but it was also a lot more daring. The album also showed a band in a state of ferment, as singer/guitarist Marty Balin largely surrendered much of his creative input in the band he'd founded, and let Paul Kantner and Grace Slick dominate the songwriting and singing on all but one cut ("Young Girl Sunday Blues"). The group had found the preceding album a little too perfect, and not fully representative of the musicians or what they were about, and they were determined to do the music their way on Baxter's; additionally, they'd begun to see how far they could take music (and music could take them) in concert, in terms of capturing variant states of consciousness.
Essentially, After Bathing at Baxter's was the group's attempt to create music that captured what the psychedelic experience sounded and felt like to them from the inside; on a psychic level, it was an introverted exercise in music-making and a complete reversal of the extroverted experience in putting together Surrealistic Pillow. Toward that end, they were working "without a net," for although Al Schmitt was the nominal producer, he gave the group the freedom to indulge in any experimentation they chose to attempt, effectively letting them produce themselves. They'd earned the privilege, after two huge hit singles and the Top Five success of the prior album, all of which had constituted RCA's first serious new rock success (and the label's first venture to the music's cutting edge) since Elvis Presley left the Army. The resulting record was startlingly different from their two prior LPs; there were still folk and blues elements present in the music, but these were mostly transmuted into something very far from what any folksinger or bluesman might recognize. Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, and Jack Casady cranked up their instruments; Spencer Dryden hauled out an array of percussive devices that was at least twice as broad as anything used on the previous album; and everybody ignored the length of what they were writing and recording, or how well they sang, or how cleanly their voices meshed. The group emerged four months later with one of the rawest, most in-your-face records to come out of the psychedelic era, and also a maddeningly uneven record, exciting and challenging in long stretches, yet elsewhere very close to stultifyingly boring, delightful in its most fulfilling moments (which were many), but almost deliberately frustrating in its digressions, and amid all of that, very often beautiful.
The album's 11 songs formed five loosely constructed "suites," that didn't ease listeners into those structures. Opening "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" (a Kantner-authored tribute to Fred Neil) amid a cascading wash of feedback leading to a slashing guitar figure, the band's three singers struggle to meld their voices and keep up. A softer, almost folk-like interlude, highlighted by Slick's upper-register keening, breaks up the beat until the guitar, bass, and drums crash back in, with a bit of piano embellishment. Then listeners get to the real break, an almost subdued interlude on the guitars, and a return to the song at a more frenzied pitch, the guitar part dividing and evolving into ever more brittle components until a crescendo and more feedback leads to "A Small Package of Value Will Come to You, Shortly." This brilliantly comical and clever percussion showcase co-authored by Spencer Dryden and the band's manager, Bill Thompson, is a million miles beyond any drummer's featured number in any popular band of that era, and it leads into Marty Balin's "Young Girl Sunday Blues," the most rhythmically consistent song here and one of a tiny handful of moments that seem to slightly resemble the band's past work. The aforementioned tracks comprise just the first suite, designated "Steetmasse."
"The War Is Over" suite opens with "Martha," the album's folk-style interlude, almost a throwback to the group's original sound, except that the listener suddenly finds himself in the midst of a psychedelic delirium, heralded by the dissonant accompaniment and a high-energy fuzztone guitar solo (spinning out sitar-like notes) coming out of nowhere and a speed change that slows the tempo to zero, as though the tape (or time, or the listener's perception of it) were stretching out, and the pounding, exuberant "Wild Tyme," a celebration of seemingly uninhibited joy. "Hymn to the Older Generation" is made up of Kaukonen's "The Last Wall of the Castle," an alternately slashing and chiming guitar pyrotechnic showcase that rivaled anything heard from Jimi Hendrix or the Who that year, and Grace Slick's gorgeous "Rejoyce," a hauntingly beautiful excursion into literary psychedelia, whose James Joyce allusions carry the Lewis Carroll literary allusions of the previous album's "White Rabbit" into startlingly new and wonderful (if discursive) directions and depths. "How Suite It Is" opens with the album's single, the lean, rhythmic "Watch Her Ride," whose pretty harmonies and gently psychedelic lyrics persuaded RCA that this was their best shot at AM airplay and, true to form on an album filled with contradictions, it leads into "Spare Chaynge," the crunching, searing, sometimes dirge-like nine-minute jam by Kaukonen, Dryden, and Casady that wasn't ever going to get on AM radio -- ever -- and, indeed, might well initially repel any Airplane fan who only knew their hit singles. "Shizoforest Love Suite" closes the album with Slick's "Two Heads," with its vocal acrobatics and stop-and-go beat, and "Won't You Try"/"Saturday Afternoon," the latter Kantner's musical tribute to the first San Francisco "Be-In" (memorialized more conventionally by the Byrds on "Renaissance Fair"); it features many of the more subdued, relaxed, languid moments on the record, divided by a killer fuzz-laden guitar solo.
Needless to say, this is not the album for neophytes -- "Spare Chaynge" remains an acquired taste, a lot more aimless than, say, the extended jams left behind by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, though it did point the way toward what Kaukonen and Casady would aim for more successfully when they formed Hot Tuna. But most of the rest is indisputably among the more alluring musical experimentation of the period, and Kantner's "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" and "Watch Her Ride," as well as Balin's "Young Girl Sunday Blues," proved that the group could still rock out with a beat, even if not so prettily or cleanly as before.
by Bruce Eder
Tracklist:
1. The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil
2. A Small Package Of Value Will Come To You, Shortly
3. Young Girl Sunday Blues
4. Martha
5. Wild Tyme
6. The Last Wall Of The Castle
7. Rejoyce
8. Watch Her Ride
9. Spare Chaynge
10. Two Heads
11. Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon
Bonus Tracks
12. The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil (Alternate Version)
13. Martha (Single Version)
14. Two Heads (Alternate Version)
15. Things Are Better In The East (Marty's Accoustic Demo)
Crown Of Creation (1968-2008)
Crown of Creation appeared ten months after their last album, After Bathing at Baxter's, and it doesn't take the same kind of leap forward that Baxter's did from Surrealistic Pillow. Indeed, in many ways, Crown of Creation is a more conservative album stylistically, opening with "Lather," a Grace Slick original that was one of the group's very last forays (and certainly their last prominent one) into a folk idiom. Much of what follows is a lot more based in electric rock, as well as steeped in elements of science fiction (specifically author John Wyndham's book The Chrysalids) in several places, but Crown of Creation was still deliberately more accessible musically than its predecessor, even as the playing became more bold and daring within more traditional song structures. Jack Casady by this time had developed one of the most prominent and distinctive bass sounds in American rock, as identifiable (if not quite as bracing) as John Entwistle's was with the Who, as demonstrated on "In Time," "Star Track," "Share a Little Joke," "If You Feel" (where he's practically a second lead instrument), and the title song, and Jorma Kaukonen's slashing, angular guitar attack was continually surprising as his snaking lead guitar parts wended their way through "Star Track" and "Share a Little Joke." The album also reflected the shifting landscape of West Coast music with its inclusion of "Triad," a David Crosby song that Crosby's own group, the Byrds, had refused to release -- its presence (the only extant version of the song for a number of years) was a forerunner of the sound that would later be heard on Crosby's own debut solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name (on which Slick, Paul Kantner, and Casady would appear). The overall album captured the group's rapidly evolving, very heavy live sound within the confines of some fairly traditional song structures, and left ample room for Slick and Marty Balin to express themselves vocally, with Balin turning in one of his most heartfelt and moving performances on "If You Feel." "Ice Cream Phoenix" pulses with energy and "Greasy Heart" became a concert standard for the group -- the studio original of the latter is notable for Slick's most powerful vocal performance since "Somebody to Love." And the album's big finish, "The House at Pooneil Corners," seemed to fire on all cylinders, their amps cranked up to ten (maybe 11 for Casady), and Balin, Slick, and Kantner stretching out on the disjointed yet oddly compelling tune and lyrics. It didn't work 100 percent of the time, but it made for a shattering finish to the album.
by Bruce Eder
Tracklist:
1. Lather
2. In Time
3. Triad
4. Star Track
5. Share A Little Joke
6. Chushingura
7. If You Feel
8. Crown Of Creation
9. Ice Cream Phoenix
10. Greasy Heart
11. The House At Pooneil Corners
Bonus Tracks
12. Ribumbabap Rubadubaoumoum
13. Would You Like A Snack
14. Share A Little Joke (Mono Single Version)
15. The Saga Of Sydney Spacepig
Bless Its Pointed Little Head (1969-2008)
Jefferson Airplane's first live album demonstrated the group's development as concert performers, taking a number of songs that had been performed in concise, pop-oriented versions on their early albums -- "3/5's of a Mile in 10 Seconds," "Somebody to Love," "It's No Secret," "Plastic Fantastic Lover" -- and rendering them in arrangements that were longer, harder rocking, and more densely textured, especially in terms of the guitar and basslines constructed by Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady. The group's three-part vocal harmonizing and dueling was on display during such songs as a nearly seven-minute version of Fred Neil's folk-blues standard "The Other Side of This Life," here transformed into a swirling rocker. The album emphasized the talents of Kaukonen and singer Marty Balin over the team of Paul Kantner and Grace Slick, who had tended to dominate recent records: the blues song "Rock Me Baby" was a dry run for Hot Tuna, the band Kaukonen and Casady would form in two years, and Balin turned in powerful vocal performances on several of his own compositions, notably "It's No Secret." Jefferson Airplane was still at its best in concise, driving numbers, rather than in the jams on Donovan's "Fat Angel" (running 7:35) or the group improv "Bear Melt" (11:21); they were just too intense to stretch out comfortably. But Bless Its Pointed Little Head served an important function in the group's discography, demonstrating that their live work had a distinctly different focus and flavor from their studio recordings.
by William Ruhlmann
Tracklist:
1. Clergy
2. 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds
3. Somebody To Love
4. Fat Angel
5. Rock Me Baby
6. The Other Side Of This Life
7. It's No Secret
8. Plastic Fantastic Lover
9. Turn Out The Lights
10. Bear Melt
Bonus Tracks
11. Today
12. Watch Her Ride
13. Won't You Try
Volunteers (1969-2011)
Controversial at the time, delayed because of fights with the record company over lyrical content and the original title (Volunteers of America), Volunteers was a powerful release that neatly closed out and wrapped up the '60s. Here, the Jefferson Airplane presents itself in full revolutionary rhetoric, issuing a call to "tear down the walls" and "get it on together." "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers" bookend the album, offering musical variations on the same chord progression and lyrical variations on the same theme. Between these politically charged rock anthems, the band offers a mix of words and music that reflect the competing ideals of simplicity and getting "back to the earth," and overthrowing greed and exploitation through political activism, adding a healthy dollop of psychedelic sci-fi for texture. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen's beautiful arrangement of the traditional "Good Shepherd" is a standout here, and Jerry Garcia's pedal steel guitar gives "The Farm" an appropriately rural feel. The band's version of "Wooden Ships" is much more eerie than that released earlier in the year by Crosby, Stills & Nash. Oblique psychedelia is offered here via Grace Slick's "Hey Frederick" and ecologically tinged "Eskimo Blue Day." Drummer Spencer Dryden gives an inside look at the state of the band in the country singalong "A Song for All Seasons."
The musical arrangements here are quite potent. Nicky Hopkins' distinctive piano highlights a number of tracks, and Kaukonen's razor-toned lead guitar is the recording's unifying force, blazing through the mix, giving the album its distinctive sound. Although the political bent of the lyrics may seem dated to some, listening to Volunteers is like opening a time capsule on the end of an era, a time when young people still believed music had the power to change the world.
by Jim Newsom
Tracklist:
1. We Can Be Together
2. Good Shepherd
3. The Farm
4. Hey Frederick
5. Turn My Life Down
6. Wooden Ships
7. Eskimo Blue Day
8. A Song For All Seasons
9. Meadowlands
10. Volunteers
Bonus Tracks
11. Good Shepherd (Live)
12. Somebody To Love (Live)
13. Plastic Fantastic Lover (Live)
14. Wooden Ships (Live)
15. Volunteers (Live)
Bark (1971-2011)
Bark, Jefferson Airplane's seventh album, was an album of firsts: it was the first Airplane album in almost two years, the first made after the arrival of violinist Papa John Creach and the departure of band founder Marty Balin, and the first to be released on the group's own Grunt Records label. It was also the first Airplane album made after the onset of that familiar rock group disease, solo career-itis. Rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner had released his Blows Against the Empire, and Hot Tuna, the band formed by lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady, had released two albums since the last Airplane group release, Volunteers. Bark, perhaps as a result, was not so much a group record as a bunch of songs made by alternating solo artists with backup by the other group members. (Did someone say White Album?) Kantner's tunes were science-fiction epics reminiscent of Blows; Kaukonen's "Feel So Good" and the instrumental "Wild Turkey" were indistinguishable from Hot Tuna music, while his lilting ballad, "Third Week in the Chelsea," was nothing less than his resignation from the band, rendered in song; while Grace Slick's two contributions were characteristically idiosyncratic. The album's surprise was "Pretty as You Feel," a chart single that emerged out of a jam between new drummer Joey Covington, Casady, and Kaukonen. All of which is to say that there were some excellent songs on Bark (as well as some mediocre ones), even if the whole added up to less than the sum of the parts.
by William Ruhlmann
Tracklist:
1. When The Earth Moves Again
2. Feel So Good
3. Crazy Miranda
4. Pretty As You Feel
5. Wild Turkey
6. Law Man
7. Rock And Roll Island
8. Third Week In The Chelsea
9. Never Argue With A German If You're Tired Or European Song
10. Thunk
11. War Movie
Long John Silver (1972-2011)
The final Jefferson Airplane studio album -- if their half-hearted 'reunion' from 1989 isn't (and really shouldn't be) counted -- presented yet another alteration in the band's lineup. Not only would Long John Silver (1972) be the second project minus co-founder Marty Balin (vocals), who left after Volunteers (1969), but Joey Covington (drums) also split before the long-player was completed, forming his own combo, the short-lived Black Kangaroo. Covington contributes to a pair of Paul Kantner's (guitar/vocals) better offerings "Twilight Double Leader" and "The Son of Jesus," while Hot Tuna kinsman Sammy Piazza (drums) lends a hand to Jorma Kaukonen's (guitar/vocals) whimsical "Trial by Fire." Eventually, Turtles' and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young percussionist John Barbata (drums) would fill the drummer's stool for the remainder of the Airplane's rapid descent. He would likewise make the transition alongside Kantner, Grace Slick (piano/vocals) and Papa John Creach (violin) into the brave new world of Jefferson Starship. Even more so than on their previous platter, Bark (1971), the material featured on Long John Silver rather blatantly exposes the two disparate factions to have emerged from the once unified Airplane. The Kaukonen/Jack Casady (bass) offshoot -- à la Hot Tuna -- and Kantner/Slick, whose Blows Against the Empire (1970) from two years earlier clearly pointed to the exceedingly cerebral approach evident on Slick's indistinct "Aerie (Gang of Eagles)" and "Easter?," or the mid-tempo meandering of Kantner's "Alexander the Medium." The edgy, blues-infused rocker "Milk Train" is one of the few standouts on Long John Silver, giving Creach a platform for his ever-adaptable and soaring fiddle. Quite possibly the heaviest selection on the package is the Slick/Kaukonen co-composition "Eat Starch Mom." Appropriately, it concludes the effort on a positive charge with the Airplane hitting on all cylinders before landing the craft (for all intents and purposes) the last time. When the LP hit store shelves in the summer of 1972, it became instantly notorious for the cover that transformed into a cigar (read: stash) box. The inner sleeve went as far as reproducing the image of tightly compressed domestic ganja, replete with sticks, seeds and stems. by Lindsay Planer
Tracklist:
1. Long John Silver
2. Aerie (Gang Of Eagles)
3. Twilight Double Leader
4. Milk Train
5. The Son Of Jesus
6. Easter?
7. Trial By Fire
8. Alexander The Medium
9. Eat Starch Mom
In 1970, the world got its first taste of the original pothead pixie, Daevid Allen's Gong, as Magick Brother was released in France on the BYG label. Allen's wife, Gilli Smyth, penned all the tunes on the album, and Allen's now-classic "Ph.P." drawing style graces the inside of the gatefold. Leaning a little toward the pop end of the spectrum, Magick Brother is a fairly light album, devoid of the blatant psychedelic/hippie qualities which shine through so brilliantly on the later Camembert Electrique. Smyth's "space whispering" makes its debut on the opening track, though the album is not as spacy as it is ethereal. "Gong Song" is a highlight, with lyrics describing a pothead pixie who came down from the planet Gong to sing his green song -- the roots of the Gong myth. Allen's guitar sound is a bit flat and hollow throughout the project, dynamics taking a back seat in most of these recordings. He relies on distortion and various guitar augmentations, but this all works quite well in the context of the collective sound. Much of the vocal harmonizing on the album is typical of many '60s pop troupes and sounds fairly dated today. Didier Malherbe's sax and flute playing spices up this mostly pop-oriented prog rock outing, helping to make this a cut above the radio norm. Although this is an interesting release, especially for its status as the first Gong project, it is not typical Gong and is not recommended as a starting point for sampling the band's recordings. by David Ross Smith
