Forrest Richardson

Professor Rohler

3/26/03

Jefferson Airplane

In March of 1965 a San Francisco folk singer Mary Balin was inspired by the rock group The Byrds hit single Mr. Tambourine Man and decided to form a rock band of his own. He soon meet guitarists Paul Kantner and Jorma Kaukonen at a local San Francisco club called the Drinking Gourd. Through their local acquaintances the 3 musicians were able to recruit singer Sing Anderson, bassist Jack Casady and drummer Skip Spence.

The band made there first appearance on August 13 1965 at the Matrix in San Francisco. The band immediately became a popular, especially with the San Francisco youth, who were apart of the emergent counter culture of the time. The band played and lived in and around the height Asbury section of San Francisco, which was the western center of the movement.

They were signed by RCA in September of 1966 only 4 months after there initial formation. RCA was eager to capitalize on the growing San Francisco music scene and Jefferson Airplane was the first to sign a major contract for an unheard of amount of 25,000. There first album Jefferson Airplane Takes Off didn’t do as well as expected and RCA even refused to release the song Nights with your are fantastic trips, fearing the title was a drug reference, which it was

Soon after there first album the band decided to get ride of female singer Sign Anderson and pick up Grace Slick, the lead singer of a fellow bay area band called the Great Society. In October of 66 they began recording there second album, borrowing several tracks from Grace’s former band. In April of 1967 the band released Surrealistic Pillow, which was an enormously huge success making it all the way to #5 on the billboard charts. And the single Somebody to Love reached #3 on the singles charts. Its second single White Rabbit was released in June and became an anthem for the psycodelic era and counter culture. The song was a re-tooling of Alice and wonderland and held numerous drug references. Surrealistic Pillow makes the band famous overnight and they are featured in Life, Time and Newsweek Magazines. They are made out the be the San Francisco sound and a new generations of rock band. After Surrealistic Pillow the band releases After Bathing at Baxter’s a more experimental album that only reaches #17 on the charts. But in many way this album made them champions of the counterculture, because of there refusal to formulize their sound for commercial success.

In order to understand the importance of Jefferson Airplane you really have to look at several things that set them apart from other bands at the time. First off the band lived the communal lifestyle like a large majority of the 60’s youth. They practiced what they preached in a sense and still achieved commercial success . Free love and experimentation can be seen in most of there songs. White Rabbit-drugs, Triad –free love.

You also have to look at what was going on at time when they reached the height of there popularity. Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and the assignations of both president Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The band used its commercial success to address several of these issues as well as promoting there left wing political views in there lyrics.

The group achieved commercial success until about 1972 when there live album only reached #50. Finally in December of 73 the band breaks into two separate groups Hot tuna and Grace and Paul’s new band Jefferson Starship.

Links

- www.jeffersonairplane.com

- http://www.starship.pp.se/history/part2.html

- http://www.crecon.com/davidwomack/starship.html

- http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/default.asp?oid=3111

- http://www.mv.com/ipusers/owsley/airplane/

Links with MP3’s

- http://home.hiwaay.net/~brettr/jeffair.htm