Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco, California in 1965. A pioneer of counterculture-era psychedelic rock, the group was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve international mainstream success. They performed at the three most famous American rock festivals of the 1960’s — Monterey (1967), Woodstock (1969) and Altamont (1969) — as well as headlining the first Isle of Wight Festival (1968). Their 1967 record Surrealistic Pillow is regarded as one of the key recordings of the “Summer of Love”. Two hits from that album, “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”, are listed in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. (More from Wikipedia)
Jefferson Airplane was one of the major bands in the San Francisco Sound of the 1960’s. I once read frequent lead singer Grace Slick described as “the voice that launched a thousand trips”. She was not an original bandmember, however; Slick was previously in another San Francisco band called the Great Society. In the band’s entry in Allmusic, Richie Unterberger notes that the Great Society “were nearly as popular as Jefferson Airplane in the early days of the San Francisco psychedelic scene. Instrumentally, the Great Society were not as disciplined as Airplane. But they were at least their equals in imagination, infusing their probing songwriting with Indian influences, minor key melodic shifts, and groundbreaking, reverb-soaked psychedelic guitar by [Grace] Slick’s brother-in-law, Darby Slick.” In 1967, Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane and brought with her the Darby Slick song “Somebody to Love” and her own song “White Rabbit”. They became her new band’s biggest hit songs, with both reaching the Top Ten, and she became the most prominent member of the group.
“Jefferson airplane” is slang for a split paper match that is used to hold a marijuana cigarette when it has burned down too far to be easily held. Many people think that this was the origin of the band’s name, but (as I suspected years ago) the reverse is apparently the case. Bandmember Jorma Kaukonen has the real story about the band’s name; as quoted from a 2007 press release in Wikipedia: “I had this friend [Steve Talbot] in Berkeley who came up with funny names for people. His name for me was Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane (for blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson). When the guys were looking for band names and nobody could come up with something, I remember saying, ‘You want a silly band name? I got a silly band name for you!’”
Another major San Francisco band was Big Brother and the Holding Company; like pre-Slick Jefferson Airplane, they were already a prominent all-male band before Janis Joplin joined up.
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Jefferson Airplane continued issuing hit albums through the end of the 1960’s but was beginning to run out of steam, so its members began spreading out and working on solo albums and side projects. When Grace Slick was recovering from throat surgery, Hot Tuna was founded and had a oft-changing line-up of various members of the Airplane and others. Electric violinist Papa John Creach joined Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna at the same time.
“Starship” is a word that was gaining currency in this time period – not least because of the Star Trek television program that ran from 1966 to 1969 (now known as Star Trek: The Original Series) – and Jefferson Starship represented an appropriate updating of “Airplane” from the original band. Jefferson Airplane had other old-fashioned touches in their work as well. As reported in the Wikipedia article on the band’s first retrospective album, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane: “Original pressings had a 1918 vintage Victor Talking Machine Company inner sleeve and bore late 1920s vintage Victor record labels.”
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When Paul Kantner left Jefferson Starship in 1984, this last remaining founding member of Jefferson Airplane settled out of court with the other bandmembers that any use of the terms “Jefferson” or “Airplane” was forbidden unless all members of Jefferson Airplane, Inc. agreed. (You could tell that it wasn’t the 1960’s anymore when there is such a thing as “Jefferson Airplane, Inc.”). As a result, the 1985 album Knee Deep in the Hoopla was released under the name Starship. This band had more of a pop sound than either Jefferson Airplane or Jefferson Starship but was also the most successful: The first two tracks on the album, “We Built this City” and “Sara” hit Number One on the Billboard singles charts; and a third Number One, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” came out in 1987. When Grace Slick left the band for good in 1988, the last tie to Jefferson Airplane was severed.
(June 2014)
