But he sounded fantastic. Magnificent, actually. If you closed your eyes, you would think that sweet, soulful tenor that hit every high note effortlessly was being projected from the lips of the dynamic 23-year-old powerhouse who created the Airplane back in ’65 rather than the dour, 71-year-old emblem of the disillusioned that stood before us. I tried to tell him that, too, in the sparsely attended meet and greet that followed the show, but it was not received as intended. “Man, you sounded amazing,” I gushed. “If I was in another room I would have thought the singer was still in his twenties!” Marty regarded me cooly. “I’m not old,” he grumbled. “I’m still young.”
Marty was fooling himself, of course, but he was indeed young once upon a time, in a magical place called San Francisco that became the spiritual and geographical epicenter for a profound generational shift that was identified most prominently by youth and rebellion. Back then, he was a musical wizard of sorts who conjured up an assortment of other outsize talents that coalesced into a remarkable supergroup which later churned out tunes that defined and then transcended a singular genre of rock ‘n roll that would come to serve as a soundtrack for the zeitgeist of the times. Coming down from an all-night acid trip at Woodstock, the ethereally beautiful Grace Slick boldly proclaimed to an early morning audience, “It’s a new dawn.” And for a little while, at least, it seemed that way. It’s impossible to consider the phenomenon of the hippie counterculture and landmark moments of the mid-to-late sixties—from the Summer of Love to Altamont—without the iconography of Jefferson Airplane decorating the scenery, so deeply did the band cut a groove that inextricably bound it to the cultural and musical landscape of those years. And there’s no doubt that Marty’s fierce, towering vocals on “Volunteers” characterized the hard rock anthem of that epoch: “Look what’s happening out in the streets … Got a revolution, got to revolution …”
In a highly ambitious attempt at a single-volume definitive history of the Airplane—as well as all the many offshoots, collaborations, and solo endeavors it spawned—acclaimed music journalist Jeff Tamarkin knits together extensive interviews with exhaustive research to turn out Got a Revolution!:The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane [2003], a fast-paced, entertaining, if cliché-ridden and uneven account that succeeds more often than it falls short. That’s a mouthful, but then so is the book and the musical sensation that it chronicles.
And Tamarkin gets right to it. Conspicuous in its absence is a socio-history of the distinctive 1960s San Francisco scene that birthed the Airplane. Thus, readers unfamiliar with the cultural milieu of the pot-smoking hippies who were denizens of Haight-Ashbury and environs, as well as the antiwar politics of protest that vehemently stapled an element of rage to mantras of “peace, love, and drugs,” will come to this book with a decided disadvantage. The author turns first to Marty, who not only selected musicians for the Airplane but went on to promote it at a nightclub he co-owned called The Matrix that featured local groups such as The Doors, The Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The house band was Marty’s band. The first recruit was rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner. Lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen was next. The original bassist was replaced by Jorma’s buddy Jack Casady. Drummers came and went, but the longest lasting and most consequential was Spencer Dryden. The initial female vocalist was Signe Anderson, who left after having a baby. She was replaced by Grace Slick, who changed the entire dynamic of the band.
A former model and debutante, Slick brought good looks and a witty, wiseass stage persona to the game, as well as her soaring mezzo-soprano vocals that not simply attached a signature sound to Jefferson Airplane but came to define 1960s psychedelic rock. Grace also brought with her two tracks from her former band with her ex-husband, The Great Society, which would become big hits for the Airplane: “Somebody to Love,” and “White Rabbit,” a hallucinogenic homage to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland brimming with surreal imagery and not-so-subtle inferences to LSD, penned by Grace after an acid trip of her own. Grace’s intellectual depth and songwriting talent would prove a big influence on the band. But so too would her erratic personality.
It wasn’t long before factions formed and Marty lost control of his own band. Marty was a new-fashioned crooner of sorts, whose dulcet voice was wrapped around ballads and love songs. As the tunes took on a harder edge, the others came to reject Marty’s influence as poppy schlock. After a series of bed-hopping adventures, Grace settled in with Paul, and they had their own ideas about the direction the music should take. Jorma—whose first love was the blues—and his friend Jack formed another bloc. Spencer refused to play the game and just grew alienated. In time, he was fired. It was kind of a revolving door with drummers.
Tamarkin does a pretty competent job of animating the personalities involved so the reader gets to know them, but it’s evident that he had far more material on some than the others. We get up close and personal with Paul and Grace, replete with anecdotes galore, but there’s less nuance in his sketches of Jorma and the rest of the gang. Still, as a fan who has long admired the band, I found it discouraging to peek in on them behind the scenes. Once they tasted success, the Airplane purchased a seventeen-room mansion at 2400 Fulton Street in the heart of Haight-Ashbury for use as a communal residence and office space. There they proceeded to act like a bunch of spoiled rich kids with a Dionysian penchant for wallowing in sex, drugs, alcohol, and materialism. If the sex and drugs resonated on the streets, their behavior was otherwise vastly dissimilar to the ethic of the hippie counterculture they ostensibly represented. They exhibited almost no authentic sense of social consciousness. They had guns. They had a passion for expensive toys and reckless behavior. They were consumed with petty jealousies and rivalries. Their protest politics descended into a blind devotion to Mao’s China.
Of all of them, Grace comes off the worst: selfish, egotistical, unruly, provocative, grandstanding, a raging alcoholic given to violence—she once attacked Paul with a sword. The Grace who was fired from Jefferson Starship in 1978 for goose-stepping to mock a German audience was the same Grace at Fulton Street, just an older version. Some of her antics were entertaining—like when she schemed to slip acid into President Nixon’s drink when Tricia Nixon’s Finch college alumnae invite to a formal White House tea party included the former Grace Wing; she never got past security. Some were just crazy, like when she set out on an inebriated high speed street race with Jorma that sent her off the road into an embankment; the car’s driver side was crushed, but with no seat belt and the luck of a drunk, she incurred only minor injuries. In between such exploits, Grace delighted in promiscuity. Even in an age when free love was common, Grace took it to extremes, and she seemed incapable of fidelity to anyone. She managed to bed down with everyone in the Airplane—except Marty. Many observed that when the two performed together it was as if they were making love before a cast of thousands, but offstage Marty demonstrated no interest in her physically. When asked in an interview if he had ever slept with Grace, Marty famously said that he wouldn’t even let her—well, no need to repeat it here, you can Google it!
If Grace’s character seems to scrape the bottom, Marty’s floats near the top. Hardly a burly fellow, it was Marty who leaped off the stage at Altamont to protect a concertgoer being attacked by a Hell’s Angel, only to be beaten unconscious for his heroic intervention. If perhaps jealous of the way Grace seized the spotlight, and increasingly dispirited as he was sidelined by the others, his devotion to the band never flagged. But ultimately internal tensions got to him, and in 1971 he was the first to walk away. A year later, Jefferson Airplane was history.
Tamarkin should have closed out the volume when the Airplane ended, but instead he determined to chronicle every twist and turn of the successor bands and the various solo efforts ad infinitum—or at least until the 2003 publication date. The result is a diminished writing quality and a narrative that reads more like an extended Wikipedia entry. Disputes among members continue, personnel come and go, but it becomes a blur as the author himself seems to want to plow through all the years ahead and finally be done with it. It is unfortunate because the balance of the book detracts from the achievements of earlier chapters.
In 1989, Marty, Paul, Jorma, Jack, and Grace briefly reunited Jefferson Airplane, put out a new album, and embarked on a tour. My wife and I saw them live at Lake Compounce Festival Park in Bristol, Connecticut on September 4, 1989—with Hot Tuna as an opening act. I will never forget the thrill I experienced standing in the first rows under the stage with chills running up and down my spine during their live performance of “Wooden Ships.”
In 1996, the Airplane—including Spencer Dryden—was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and they performed live, sans Grace, who sat out the ceremony. Grace had retired shortly after the ’89 tour, and has since declared that rock is a “young person’s game.” She quit drinking and mellowed out markedly. As this review goes to press, Grace—who casts herself as “The Queen of Acid Rock and Art”—passes her time at 86 as a painter of rock legends and characters from Alice in Wonderland, with her work earning critical praise. Jorma and Jack, both in their 80’s, continue to tour with Hot Tuna. I have sat in on several of their shows in intimate venues; they never disappoint. Paul Kantner died at 74 on January 28, 2016, in a weird coincidence on the very same day that Signe Anderson passed away at the same age. Marty Balin died at 76 in 2018. In later interviews, he made clear that his recollections of the Airplane were bittersweet. There’s no doubt that he never really got the credit he deserved. My memory of him at The Kate, so downcast, yet lingers.
It’s been sixty-one years since the 1965 launch of Jefferson Airplane, but their music never gets old. Despite the shortcomings with Tamarkin’s book, I would still recommend it. And don’t forget to spin their albums while you’re reading.
