JA: "Thirty Seconds Over Winterland"

Original released on LP Grunt BFL1-0147

(US, April 1973)

By the summer of 1972, the Jefferson Airplane were on their final approach to the eventual evolution that would produce Jefferson Starship, arguably the most drastic difference being the absence of Jorma Kaukonen (guitar, vocals) and Jack Casady (bass), both of whom were several years into Hot Tuna, a project that began as a musical diversion for the pair and rapidly developed into a permanent roots rock unit. Released in April of 1973, "Thirty Seconds Over Winterland" (cleverly named after the Mervyn LeRoy-directed 1944 film "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo") would become the Airplane's swansong. Included were seven tracks taken from the band's last tour of the 1970s, specifically, August 24 and 25 at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago and the last two gigs the Bay Area combo played in its native San Francisco on September 21 and 22, fittingly held at the band's longtime stomping grounds of the Winterland Arena. Only Kaukonen, Casady, and Paul Kantner (guitar, vocals) remained from the first lineup. They are joined by Grace Slick - who took over from Signe Anderson just prior to the recording of 1967's landmark "Surrealistic Pillow" - and violinist Papa John Creach. Former Turtles and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young drummer Johnny Barbata had come aboard in the previous year, and the latest addition was Quicksilver Messenger Service co-founder David Freiberg, whose contributions at the time were primarily vocal. The bulk of the effort was drawn from 1971's "Bark" and 1972's "Long John Silver". Although they were still performing "Somebody to Love," "Volunteers," and "Wooden Ships" in concert, a cursory stab at "Crown of Creation" is the earliest cut on this package that harks back to their acid rock persona. Despite some questionable intonations from Kaukonen on "Have You Seen the Saucers," the opener quickly establishes the Jefferson Airplane's harder edge. Kaukonen's "Feel So Good" is the jewel in this otherwise thorny rock & roll tiara. The tune stretches over ten minutes, spotlighting Casady's quake-inducing contributions and Creach's unmistakable fiddle. Speaking of Papa John, he shines on the propelling "Milk Train," featuring a seminal lead from Slick. (Lindsay Planer in AllMusic)

You're Only Pretty As You Feel...

Original released on LP Grunt FTR 1001

(US, September 1971)

Dealing with the album "Bark" is a difficult one at best.  It’s complex, beginning with the cover. What you see today on a CD is not what appeared when the album first came out. The album came in a brown paper bag, the size of a grocery shopping bag, with the letters JA boldly emblazoned, the logo taken from the A&P Grocery Store chain. Inside of this bag, on the cover of the sleeve, was a print of a dead fish, as if it had been wrapped in this bag. It was also a nod to the work Andy Warhol was doing with his soup cans, and everyday objects as art. But more then that, was the term of the day ‘my bag.’  By having this, one was in effect saying "I’m into your bag, your trip, I’m on your side." And all three of those statements were presented on this record. If I’m not mistaken, this was the first album released under the Jefferson Airplane’s new "Grunt" Label. Most people didn’t get what "Grunt" meant. A grunt was a foot soldier, and they were called grunts because of the sound they made when attempting to stand up under the heavy load of their backpack [actually we called it an Alice Pack, if you were in the war], and the Airplane saw, or at least wanted to present themselves as the foot soldiers in the war against the Nixon Administration. This was one of the first ultra-thin flexie discs, the vinyl was very thin and flexible compared to the heavy discs that came before.  But the concept didn’t work very well, and later albums were released on much heavier vinyl.

The album had no contextual feel to it, as the others did, either in the music or the message. "Pretty As You Feel" was the hit, but even that song held disguised meanings. One might be that the band was only as good as they felt they were, and they certainly didn’t feel really good about themselves as they were on the verge of breaking up. A change of name for the band to The Jefferson Starship was in the workds; hoping to reflect a newer, swifter vision of themselves and their music. The track "Law Man" stands the test of time, where Grace representing the band takes their last political stand against the powers that be. "Rock And Roll Island" is a great rockin’ song, though it foreshadows a lonely place, were rock and rollers might go, separating themselves from the world. "Wild Turkey" is amazing, but not as a Jefferson Airplane song, it showed what was to come with the side project of Hot Tuna.  The Airplane was crashing, San Francisco was falling apart, the counter culture had become mainstream, the war ragged on, and serious drugs use had infected the band, not to mention the dissolving of Grace’s personal relationship. The band was moving in two directions, and this was tearing it apart. On one hand there was Grace Slick and Paul Kanter, and on the other was Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen. The band could not be relied upon to show up, or worse, be in shape to perform live. There was an event in Germany where Grace just railed the audience for being the losers of the World War II [Nazi’s] because she was so drunk and high. Everything seemed to be crumbling, getting high was no longer fun, it was serious. Dark drugs and rip-offs were more common then ever, it was the winter of Flower Power and there would never be a spring to bring it all back to life. Even with all of this, the music is tight, well thought out and constructed in a considered manner. Some of the best results come from hearing the beginnings of Hot Tuna ... man, they were a great jamming band. While the good songs could have just as easily been placed on either the previous or next record, the body of work stands on it’s own merit, and is a reflection of the times that must be viewed in its contextual nature and atmosphere of the times. (in RateYourMusic)

"White Rabbit" By THE JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

R.I.P. MARTY BALIN 

(30 January 1942, US Cincinnati > 27 September 2018, US Tampa)

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE: The Last One

Original released on LP Grunt FTR 1007

(UK 1972, July 20)

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" 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. (Lindsay Planer in AllMusic)

JA - "Volunteers"

Original released on LP RCA Victor LSP 4238

(US, November 1969)

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. (Jim Newsom in AllMusic)

JA First Live Album

Original released on LP RCA Victor LSP-4133

(US, February 1969)

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. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

JA "After Bathing at Baxter's"

 Original released on LP RCA Victor LSO-1511

(US 1967, November 29)

The Jefferson Airplane opened 1967 with "Surrealistic Pillow" and closed it with this "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. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

JA 1ST ALBUM

Original released on LP RCA Victor LPM/LSP 3584 RE (mono/stereo)

(US 1966, August 15)

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 Balin's group. ("Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" was released as RCA 3584 on August 15, 1966. It was reissued as RCA 66797 on January 30, 1996, as a CD that contained both the stereo and mono versions, and that added back the track "Runnin' 'Round This World," which had been deleted from all but initial copies due to the sexual and perceived drug references of the line "The nights I've spent with you have been fantastic trips." But the included version still eliminated the word "trips.")

WALLPAPER: "Jefferson Airplane, 1966"

Original released on LP RCA Victor LSP 3766

(US, February 1967)

The second album by Jefferson Airplane, this "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. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

JA CROWN OF CREATION

Original released on LP RCA Victor LSP 4058

(US, September 1968)

In the past, I've expected great things from Airplane, one of the biggest American groups, but their albums have been a mixture of good and bad material. At last, they take off in this new album. Abandoning the pretentious abstract music of thei last effort, the Airplane have gone back to the style of a year ago and sound all the better for it. The album opens with "Lather", a weird, slightly menacing sound, full of atmosphere, reminiscent of "White Rabbit", a single released about a year ago which should have been bought by the million but wasn't. Once again Grace Slick, the beautiful lead singer and writer, puts everything into this song. Each track is full of interest. This in one of those rare albums where every song comes off. The rest of the group back Grace's singing perfectly and it is a pleasure to listen to them: yhey really know how to play and complement each other so well.

(in New Musical Express, December 14, 1968)

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE - White Rabbit (1967)

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE - Somebody To Love (1967)

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE - Pretty As You Feel (1971)