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Jefferson Airplane (Music)

 Jefferson Airplane (Music)
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 Jefferson Airplane (Music)
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 Jefferson Airplane was an American psychedelic rock band from San Francisco, originally active from 1965 to 1972.According to Jorma Kaukonen, the name came from a friend of his, Steve Talbot, who jokingly dubbed him "Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane" as a parody of the sort of nicknames that Blues musicians often adopted (possibly with actual blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson in mind). When no one else could think of a good band name, Kaukonen remembered Talbot's joke and shortened it appropriately. (This didn't stop fans from circulating the rumor that the name actually referred to an impromptu method of holding a too-short marijuana joint.)Jefferson Airplane started out as a Folk Rock band with a sound similar to The Byrds and The Lovin' Spoonful. Their original lineup consisted of Marty Balin (the band's founder and initial leader) and Signe Anderson on lead vocals, Jorma Kaukonen and Paul Kantner on guitar, Bob Harvey on bass, and Jerry Peloquin on drums, although Harvey and Peloquin didn't last long and were quickly replaced by Jack Casady and Alexander "Skip" Spence on bass and drums respectively. Casady's bass, noted for its volume and versatility, would prove pivotal in gravitating the Airplane away from its folk roots into a decidedly heavier and more psychedelic sound. The Airplane would release one album (Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, 1966) with this lineup before Spence moved on to form Moby Grape (and subsequently suffered from mental illness, dying in 1999), and Anderson left to raise a family.They were replaced by Spencer Dryden (nephew of Charlie Chaplin) and iconic front-woman Grace Slick, the latter having just left another group called the Great Society which had opened for Airplane at some gigs. Now the band's "classic" lineup was set, and with the release of their 1967 album, Surrealistic Pillow, Jefferson Airplane established themselves as leading proponents of a hard-and-heavy offshoot of the Psychedelic Rock genre known as "acid rock". Fuelled by the top ten singles "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" (both written by and/or featuring the vocals of Slick, decisively shifting leadership of the group away from Marty Balin), "Pillow" rapidly became one of the best-selling and most culturally-influential albums of the Summer of Love, although the Airplane would struggle to replicate this level of success in future: their following album, the harder-rocking and more esoteric After Bathing at Baxter's, was largely considered a financial disappointment despite the moderate chart success of its lead single "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" (a Kantner composition partially based on Winnie the Pooh). The album likewise featured a noticeably-higher number of songs written by other band members (particularly Paul Kantner, who subsequently became the group's arguable lead songwriter for much of its remaining lifespan, and Jorma Kaukonen), shifting the group away from Marty Balin's folk-influenced love songs into a more diverse ensemble act, amalgamating Kantner's fantastical acid-rock anthems, Slick's experimental psychedelic pop and Spencer Dryden's Syd Barrett-esque avant-garde interludes with Balin's folk ballads and Kaukonen's excursions into roots and blues rock. This approach would be continued by the later albums Crown of Creation and Volunteers, which, in yielding such well-known hippie anthems as "Wooden Ships", "Good Shepherd", "Volunteers" and "Lather", secured the Airplane's prominence within the San Francisco scene for the remainder of the decade. During this period, the group also became the only band to both play at all three of the most famous rock festivals of The '60s (Monterey, Woodstock, and Altamont), and to headline the inaugural Isle of Wight Festival.Unfortunately, Jefferson Airplane seemed to run out of steam with the onset of The '70s; Dryden was fired in early 1970 (replaced first by Joey Covington and then by former Turtles drummer John Barbata) due to his mounting cynicism over the San Francisco counterculture scene, and Balin, disillusioned with the psychedelic scene after both the death of his close friend Janis Joplin and an incident at the 1969 Altamont Free Concert (in which he was assaulted by a group of Hell's Angels bikers after leaping from the stage to aid a victim of crowd violence) increasingly withdrew from the group creatively; he would ultimately quit in 1970. Kaukonen and Casady, meanwhile, formed the blues jam band Hot Tuna as a side project shortly prior to Dryden and Balin's departure, which would become an increasingly successful live act by 1971, depriving the duo of much of their former creative investment in the Airplane. Kantner and Slick, simultaneously, gravitated into a relationship, forming a "faction" that increasingly dominated the band during the early seventies (and produced a number of solo albums, among them the ambitious Blows Against the Empire, which marked the earliest use of the "Jefferson Starship" moniker). Lacking Balin's mediating influence, the remaining members increasingly descended into conflict, rendering their albums increasingly less cohesive. After continuing with a series of revolving members (including violinist Papa John Creach and, for their final concert, vocalist David Freiberg, a longtime friend of Kantner's), Jefferson Airplane finally and unceremoniously called it a day in 1972. Kaukonen and Casady subsequently committed to Hot Tuna full-time and furthered their reputation as a cult staple before their dissolution in 1977, while the remaining members (Kantner, Slick, Barbata, Freiberg and Creach), alongside several new personnel, collaborated on a number of more experimental albums (generally released under Kantner and Slick's names) and eventually reformed in 1974 as Jefferson Starship, arguably both a successor band and a distinct group.The classic lineup of Jefferson Airplane (save for Dryden, who was excluded as Kantner still held a grudge against him for his role in firing one of their managers in 1968) reunited for one last album in 1989, contemporaneously with the final days of its distant successor Starship's lifespan. The album was not very well-received, but the tour supporting it was a big success. By then at the age of 50, Slick chose to retire from the music industry, saying that 'all rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire'; her sole public appearances in the following decades were sporadic guest performances with the live reincarnation of Jefferson Starship. Papa John Creach died from heart failure in 1994, and the Airplane reunited once more in 1996 for the induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; this time Dryden participated while Slick was absent. Skip Spence died from lung cancer in 1999, Spencer Dryden died in 2005 from colon cancer, and Joey Covington died in a tragic car accident in 2013. In 2016, Paul Kantner died from multiple organ failure and septic shock following a heart attack, and Signe Anderson died from COPD on the same day as Kantner. Marty Balin passed in 2018.
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