FEATURE ARTICLE
Paul Kantner: Keeping the Airplane/Starship Aloft
by Seth Rogovoy(PITTSFIELD, Mass., July 11, 1997) -- Call Paul Kantner at his home in the city where he was born and bred and gained fame as a co-founder of Jefferson Airplane, and the man who perhaps more than anyone else is identified with that city and the acid-rock sound that bears its name, answers not "Hello," but "San Francisco."
Indeed, if San Francisco had a voice, it would probably be that of Kantner's: fast-talking, irreverent, brash, engaged, literate in a non- academic fashion, even a little bit conspiratorial.
"We live on very fractured ground," said Kantner in a recent phone interview, explaining in part what makes for his city's unique mind-set. "At any given time we're ten minutes from death. And so people make, I think, a choice out here of living a little more for the moment than maybe you should, more than most people do."
For over 30 years, Kantner and a group of like-minded San Franciscans have been transforming their uniquely fractured vantage point into rock music, in recordings and on tour as Jefferson Airplane and its successor group, Jefferson Starship.
Under the guise of Jefferson Starship, and along with fellow Airplane co-founders Marty Balin and Jack Casady, Kantner headlines "The Pirates Ball," a triple-bill of vintage San Francisco rock, tonight at 8:30, at the Studio on North Street. Also on the lineup are former Grateful Dead keyboardist and Tubes co-founder Vince Welnick, with his group, Missing Man Formation, and JGB, featuring former members of the Jerry Garcia Band, which was a side project led by the late leader of the Grateful Dead.
The Jefferson Starship will include guitarist Slick Aguilar, vocalist Diana Mangano, keyboardist T. Lavitz and former Tubes drummer Prairie Prince. The group's repertoire draws from the complete Airplane/Starship catalog, as well as new material. Missing Man Formation plays from the Grateful Dead songbook and other classic-rock tunes, as does JGB, led by organist Melvin Seals, with vocalists Gloria Jones and Jackie LaBranch and drummer Donny Baldwin.
Jefferson Starship's roots go back to 1965, when Kantner and Balin formed Jefferson Airplane at Balin's San Francisco nightclub, the Matrix. Originally a folk-rock band that included Casady, guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and vocalist Signe Anderson, the group first garnered fame after Grace Slick came aboard, bringing with her the hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit."
These songs, as well as others including "It's No Secret," "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers," became counterculture anthems, and the Airplane as much as any group played a leading role in the so-called Summer of Love, with headlining appearances at the groundbreaking Monterey Pop, Woodstock and Altamont music festivals.
Kantner looks back on all this with a mixture of nostalgia and scorn. "We still don't realize that we were a part of something bigger," he said. "And we've been castigated for that from everybody from the Berkeley Politics Day people in those days to the establishment and everybody else these days. It's like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stuff. Nobody thinks about that very seriously. If you get too famous in town and get it into your head, they sort of run you out of town or tell you to go live in Los Angeles or something."
Not that Kantner is immune to the idea that the Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco scene as a whole left an important legacy. "Our legacy is just to explore the world around you," he said. "That's what I teach my children. There's a vast planet out there -- explore it. Find things that are positive and work and function, and do them."
Part of the reason Kantner remains aloof from the trappings of rock stardom after all these years is that it was never his intention to be a famous, commercial musician. "Music happened to be one of the functions that was going on at that time that many of us got drawn into," he said. "You see a lot of art students doing that sort of thing, even today.
"But rock stars who want to be famous for being rock stars are, like, pathetic. I mean, what else do they do? They tour, they make a record, and then they tour and make another record. And then they tour and make another record and do publicity sometimes. And that's about it. And that would be so tedious. When rock and roll bands start writing songs about how it is on the bus, you know they're doomed. Because that's not what it's about.
"Rock 'n' roll should be sort of dangerous. When rock 'n' roll is safe and sane, it's just not rock 'n' roll. It should be breaking certain laws. And it should be about challenging certain borderlines and going beyond certain pales, if you will. And when it doesn't, a lot of rock 'n' roll -- or what they call rock 'n' roll now -- to me is like network television. You know what you're going to get, sometimes you even like it, but it's safe."
Kantner found the model for his role as a rock 'n' roll provocateur early in life in, of all places, parochial school.
"When I was in Catholic school, in the sixth grade, I discovered the concept of the devil's advocate," he said. "When somebody nominates a saint for sainthood, there was a guy in the church, a priest, who goes around looking for all the stuff wrong with him. In that sense he's the devil's advocate. When I came upon that position I thought, `well, this must be my place in the sphere.' I'd found my little niche. Just to bug people the way they should be bugged."
If you would like to purchase any of Jefferson Starship CDs on-line, please click on the SoundStone logo to the right.
[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 11, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
music news, interviews, reviews, et al.
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