In 1974, the ever-groovy Jefferson Airplane became the totally-spacey Jefferson Starship,
who then went on to become the kinda-overproduced Starship.
Here's a look back at the long, strange trip of Jefferson Starship, or whatever you want
to call them.
Jefferson Airplane is synonymous with Grace Slick.
The band's lead singer brought charisma, high-register vocals, and a genuine sense of menace to the
band's songs, be it as a creepy guide through Wonderland in "White Rabbit", or by bringing
the kitschy fun in "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now."
It's hard to imagine any version of the band getting anywhere without Slick... which is
odd, because she wasn't actually their first singer.
After a performance in San Francisco in the summer of 1965, singer Signe Toly was asked
to join the still-new Jefferson Airplane by founder Marty Balin.
Toly provided lead vocals on Jefferson's Airplane's debut album in 1966.
By the end of that year, she was out of the band.
The other members had their eye on a replacement, however: Sherry Snow of the San Francisco
duo Blackburn & Snow.
But she wasn't interested, so Slick got the job.
"I sort of knew their material, so it was a logical change from one band to another."
The greatest band names are the ones that can suggest the group's unique sound while
also maintaining an air of grandiosity and mystery.
Among history's best are the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and, of course, Jefferson Airplane.
As far as the latter is concerned, there's never been anyone in the band named Jefferson,
and they've never recorded songs about aviation.
So why that name?
Well, the true meaning of "Jefferson Airplane" is actually unclear, or at least unsettled.
The group named themselves when San Francisco blues musician Steve Talbot told member Jorma
Kaukonen of a fictional blues singer named Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane.
But the band, known for their songs laced with drug references, could also be named
after an item of marijuana paraphernalia.
A "Jefferson Airplane" is a '60s slang term for a "roach clip", a makeshift device used
to hold a joint so that the smoker doesn't burn their fingers.
Specifically, a Jefferson Airplane is a roach clip made by splitting a wooden match and
inserting the burning joint inside.
In 1966 and 1967, Jefferson Airplane released their first two albums, Jefferson Airplane
Takes Off and Surrealistic Pillow, among the most influential and quintessential '60s psychedelic
rock records ever made.
Matthew Katz was the band's first manager, briefly handling its affairs in 1965 and 1966
before he was fired.
But because he'd signed a five-year management contract in 1965, Katz believed he was wrongfully
terminated, and thus entitled to a portion of the money generated by the band during
the period he should've been managing them.
In particular, he wanted royalties for Takes Off and Surrealistic Pillow.
So in 1967, he sued the band for $2.5 million.
After 20 years of legal wrangling, the lawsuit was finally settled in May 1987.
The Superior Court Judge dismissed the case before it was set to go to trial, ruling that
Katz wasn't due any royalties after all.
The main reason, according to the judge, was that any courtroom proceedings would be tainted
by doubt, as it would be unreasonable, unfair, and almost impossible for participants to
accurately recall the finer points of their business dealings from two decades prior.
The 1960s saw the birth of major outdoor music festivals, which frequently featured multiple
stages and showcased dozens of bands.
These gigs basically defined the eras in which they were played, and are among the most historically
significant events of the mid-20th century.
Chief among them were the Monterey International Pop Music Festival in June 1967, Woodstock
in August 1969, and the Altamont Free Concert in December 1969.
And the only major band of the era to play all three was Jefferson Airplane.
"What did you do, Grace, in your off-hours at the festival?"
"Get it on."
"Does anyone want to answer for her?"
But getting this triple crown didn't come easy.
Altamont infamously ended in the death of attendee Meredith Hunter at the hands of the
Hells Angels, the motorcycle gang hired as security guards for the event.
Slick later told Rolling Stone:
"It was partially our fault."
How so?
According to Slick, Jefferson Airplane had previously staged free concerts in San Francisco
and had used the Hells Angels for security.
She explained:
"They never hurt anybody.
And they were good at it because people were afraid of them."
Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones liked the idea too, and signed off on what would turn
out to be a fatal suggestion.
Some urban legends endure for so long because they sound so plausible.
For example, it sounds totally reasonable that anti-establishment, boundary-pushing
rock stars like Grace Slick and Paul Kantner would have a baby and name her God.
Right?
Well, no.
According to Slick's memoir, Somebody to Love?, the facts are these.
In 1971, Slick, pregnant by her bandmate and lover Kantner, delivered a baby girl in San
Francisco's French Hospital.
As she held the newborn in the aftermath and afterglow, a nurse came into Slick's hospital
room, and asked the couple what their baby's name was.
Slick, noticing the nurse was wearing a crucifix necklace, blurted out:
"God.
We spell it with a small 'g' because we want her to be humble."
The nurse, curious if Slick was serious, asked her to repeat the name.
Slick had been kidding, but she confirmed the choice anyway, which the nurse haltingly
jotted down.
Slick later wrote:
"When [the nurse] was through filling in the irreverent name, she ran to the telephone
to call Herb Caen, the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper columnist."
The Chronicle published Slick's joke as fact, and the news spread around the world.
For what it's worth, Slick and Kantner's daughter is actually named China.
While still playing with Jefferson Airplane in 1969, bassist Jack Casady and guitarist
Jorma Kaukonen formed a bluesy side project of their own.
By the time their self-titled debut album was released, the band was known as Hot Tuna.
By 1974, Hot Tuna had released four albums, so clearly Casady and Kaukonen were obviously
having way too much fun to go back to Jefferson Airplane.
That didn't matter all that much to Kantner, who in 1970 had released his solo debut, a
concept album called Blows Against the Empire.
The plot involved hippies who steal a government spaceship and fly off to start a utopian society
on another planet.
It was officially credited to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, a play on the name
of his main band that reflected the record's science-fiction themes.
And once the Hot Tuna guys were out of the band, Kantner and company adopted the new
moniker to replace the old one, debuting it on the cover of the 1974 album Dragon Fly.
While Grace Slick is the face of Jefferson Starship and Paul Kantner is its most enduring
member, the band was founded by Marty Balin.
Balin began his musical career in the early 1960s folk craze, recording a couple of forgettable
genre singles before teaming up with a quartet called the Town Criers.
While playing the folk scene, he met Kantner, and after opening a club called The Matrix,
he founded Jefferson Airplane to act as its house band.
"There was a lot of people with fresh new ideas who came together, and like most great
movements, came together and started putting on a show."
Balin proved to be a musical journeyman.
After Janis Joplin's drug-related death in 1970, he quit drugs, and, not coincidentally,
left the band he had started a year later.
However, Balin was back with his old friends by 1975, by which point the group had rebranded
as Jefferson Starship.
Most notably, it was on the album Red Octopus that Balin wrote the group's biggest hit,
the laid-back soft rocker "Miracles".
Balin left Jefferson Starship in 1978 and re-started his long dormant solo career, scoring
a top 10 hit in 1981 with the lite-FM staple "Hearts".
Sadly, Balin passed away in 2018, but the man's music is still playing today.
Grace Slick has been known to cause some controversy in her time, and that was never truer than
in 1978.
While touring Europe with Jefferson Starship, Slick began suffering from severe stomach
illness.
Thought at first to be food poisoning, a doctor diagnosed a far more serious ailment, appendicitis.
However, the medic cleared Slick to perform that night, but she opted not to, and the
band canceled its show in Wiesbaden, West Germany.
While that certainly disappointed fans, her behavior at the next tour stop in Hamburg
downright enraged them.
In the hours leading up to the concert, Slick reportedly got extremely drunk in her hotel
room, triggering a booze-filled breakdown that involved throwing bottles, refusing to get
dressed for the show, and trying to get room service to bring her more drinks.
Somehow, Slick made it to the concert venue and hit the stage.
"Was that wrong?
Was that cruel?
Was it stupid?
Was it sarcastic?
Did it work?"
Remembering that she was performing for fans in Germany, the main aggressor of World War
II, Slick mocked the crowd for the country's role in the war, and made repeated references
to the Nazi regime.
It was such an ugly incident that Paul Kantner asked Slick for her resignation.
Three years later, however, she was back in the band.
So how did Jefferson Starship morph into the extraordinarily '80s pop band Starship?
Because a judge decreed it, of course.
See, Paul Kantner had formed Jefferson Starship out of his solo album, Blows Against the Empire,
and saw the band through several hit albums.
But that was a problem for Kantner.
In the band's biography Got a Revolution!, Kantner said:
"I think we would be terrible failures trying to write pop songs all the time.
The band became more mundane and not quite as challenging and not quite as much of a
thing to be proud of."
Evidently, the rest of the group didn't agree, and in 1984, Kantner was so aghast at the
Jefferson Starship album Nuclear Furniture that he stole the master tapes until he could
convince the band to a more agreeable final mix.
Shortly after that incident, Kantner left the group and took the name with him.
Being the only original member of Jefferson Airplane left at that point, he sued to prevent
his bandmates from ever performing under any name with "Jefferson" in it.
So the band lopped off that word and soldiered on as Starship.
The '60s technically ended on January 1st 1970, but some might say the spirit of the
'60s ended in 1985, when Starship released "We Built This City."
The song hit #1 on the Billboard pop chart, but not without some industry assistance.
Helping boost airplay on radio, stations had the option to sub out the song's many San
Francisco references with localized versions of the song, re-recorded by Starship-soundalike
jingle singers.
But despite its success, "We Built This City" is one of the most loathed songs in history.
Many have called it the worst song ever, and even one of the song's original writers isn't
all that fond of what it became.
Bernie Taupin, best known as the lyricist partner to Elton John, penned the song's first
iteration, which he told GQ:
"[It was] a very dark song about how club life in L.A. was being killed off and live
acts had no place to go."
Then Austrian record producer Peter Wolf took over, and changed the song completely.
The rest is history.
To make the band's many lineup changes even more complicated, Jefferson Airplane reunited
in 1989...while Starship were still together.
The new Jefferson Airplane came about from a 1988 performance in San Francisco by splinter
group Hot Tuna, with special guest Paul Kantner.
Unbeknownst to Kantner, the rest of the band had invited Slick to play a song.
Slick later told the New York Times:
”We hadn't even talked for a year, and we were battling legally.
The idea was that I'd just sneak in, stand at the side of the stage and come out and
sing 'White Rabbit' and see what Paul did.
Paul never got the joke, but he liked it, the audience liked it, and that's how it started.”
Kantner had recently reconnected with other Jefferson Airplane members in the short-lived
KBC Band, and it was easy to recruit Marty Balin, who was suffering from a fallow point
in his career.
Only drummer Spencer Dryden sat out the reunion, so the band hired John Mellencamp's drummer
Kenny Aronoff.
But despite a year in which fellow '60s stalwarts The Who and Paul McCartney staged successful
comeback tours, the newly reformed Jefferson Airplane didn't fly with music fans.
A new album, Jefferson Airplane, sputtered out on the album chart at number 84…and
that was that.
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