Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

No one could have predicted…

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Bark louder, little dog.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

This fight is for everything.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / R.I.P. Paul Kantner

R.I.P. Paul Kantner

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Per Rolling Stone, “Jefferson Airplane Guitarist Paul Kantner Dead at 74”

Paul Kantner, founding member, guitarist and singer for Jefferson Airplane and Starship, died Thursday of multiple organ failure and septic shock. He had suffered a heart attack earlier in the week, according to San Francisco Chronicle. He was 74.

The musician had been in ill health in recent years, with Kantner suffering a heart attack in March 2015, according to the paper.

With Jefferson Airplane, Kantner helped pioneer the oft-imitated psychedelic sound: simple, fuzzy guitar lines steeped in dreamlike reverb. The group formed in 1965 and, within a few years, scored hits with “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit.” In their first run, five of the band’s seven albums went gold, including 1967’s Surrealistic Pillow and 1968’s Crown of Creation.

Verging on a breakup in the early Seventies, Kantner recorded a solo album, Blows Against the Empire, with Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick, crediting it to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship. The album was nominated for a Hugo Award presented to the best science-fiction and fantasy works. After formalizing the band Jefferson Starship, the band went on to greater commercial success than Jefferson Airplane, scoring platinum and gold records, including the double-platinum 1975 record Red Octopus. Kantner quit the group in 1984, but would rejoin in 1992 and continue to play with them until his death…

I’ll admit I’d forgotten that Hugo nomination. Further adventures, per SFGate:

… A sometimes prickly, often sarcastic musician who kept his own counsel and routinely enraged his old bandmates — they sued him for trademark infringement (and settled) after he started his own version of Jefferson Starship in 1991 — Mr. Kantner became something of a landmark on the San Francisco music scene, the only member of the band still living in town.

“Somebody once said, if you want to go crazy go to San Francisco,” he said. “Nobody will notice.”

Mr. Kantner was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 for his work with the Jefferson Airplane during the band’s glory years — from the breakthrough 1967 “Surrealistic Pillow” album through Woodstock and Altamont.

“We never made plans,” said Mr. Kantner. “Well, we made plans, but they went awry. It was good to have a plan in case they didn’t go awry.”

He maintained a strenuous touring schedule, performing regularly with some version of the Jefferson Starship name. His group sometimes included Balin, as well as David Freiberg of the Quicksilver Messenger Service, another leading Bay Area band from the ’60s.

“When I look back on it, that’s probably longer than any of the other bands I’ve been in,” Mr. Kantner said…

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  2. 2.

    hamletta

    It’s my mother’s fault. She was a little too old and too mommed to be a hippie. She did her best though. The epic tale of our voyage to discover America will be told among the offspring of my brother, who’s done his best to re-populate the Earth.

    Anyway, my mom died two years ago, and it seems like people her age are dropping like flies!

    Or maybe I’m just getting old, and my heroes are dying, like they do.

  4. 4.

    reality-based (the original, not the troll)

    Hey? Does anybody remember the work-around to get to earlier posts – if hitting the page numbers and the right arrows at the bottom of the page doesn’t work?

    been busy, missed a couple of days – need to catch up!

  6. 6.

    Radio One

    A great band. I’ve always felt it was kinda Grace Slick’s band, but Paul was a great guitarist and singer, and he will be missed.

  7. 7.

    PurpleGirl

    Goddess, I haven’t thought of the Airplane or Starship in ages. Freshman and Sophomore years of college I spent lunch almost every day with a group of people from the Newman Club at Mickey Fromkin’s apartment. We’d eat and play records — the Airplane, the Doors, and the Rolling Stones, don’t remember who else.

    I think the Airplane that we played the most was White Rabbit, with everyone playing air drums.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8LFNUr3vw

  10. 10.

    redshirt

    @BGinCHI: I saw them in concert, unfortunately, at the height of the song’s popularity. They opened with it – big opening – then played it at the end of the set, then came back on for an encore no one was asking for and played it again.

    I feel like I’ve already been to Hell and know what to expect.

  12. 12.

    M. Bouffant

    @Radio One: Not really. The first J.A. album had a different female singer (Signe Toly Anderson) but the rest of the band was the same from ’67 ’til they broke up.

    Surrealistic Pillow was the first damn record I bought, almost 49 yrs. ago. I may be starting to leave middle age.

  14. 14.

    kdaug

    Can we get a break from musicians dying in 2016? Less yhan a month in.

    I’d recommend hiding your guitars and/or drumsticks, folks, at least for the next 11 months or so.

  17. 17.

    BGinCHI

    @Frankensteinbeck: Sorry now that I’d never clicked through your handle to see that you write children’s books. They look really terrific, and when my son gets a few years older I look forward to getting them for him.

    I’m currently trying to move from independent press to major press and it’s very slow going. I have an amazing agent, though, so I’m being patient (or pretending to be, actually).

  20. 20.

    satby

    Never missed an Airplane or Starship concert back in my concert going days. It’s a shame that a lot of the wild times are catching up to rockers now that they’re hitting their late 60s and 70s. They gave a lot of happy memories to many people.

  21. 21.

    Zinsky

    I never cared much for the Jefferson Airplane. Except for “White Rabbit”, most of their songs were unmemorable and boring. I always remember White Rabbit also as one of the shortest songs ever to hit the Top 40 at only 2:32, but who’s counting? Still, another pioneer of the rock era passes on, which is sad and reminds me again of my mortality.

  25. 25.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @kdaug: My objection stems from that fact that I turn 70 in February, and every time I read about their deaths, and note their ages, lines like these start echoing in my head.

    Because I could not stop for Death –
    He kindly stopped for me –

    (Emily Dickinson, for those whose education book learnin’ did not include it.)

    In a related note, reading about the GOP debates last night brings Ozymandias to mind.

    I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
    Nothing beside remains: round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  26. 26.

    Ex Libris

    Apropos of nothing, I always thought “Grace Slick” was just about the best rock name ever – like “Bronko Nagurski” for football.

  30. 30.

    laura

    @satby: Hot Tuna did an electric set at last fall’s Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass and TORE IT UP! 45 minutes of blistering guitars.

  33. 33.

    Paul in KY

    Many people disparage the ‘Starship’ phase & compared to Jefferson Airplane, not near as deep a catalog.

    However, ‘Jane’ is one hell of a song.

    RIP, Paul.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    @satby:

    I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I was complaining. I just don’t think Kantner would have gotten as far as he did without Jorma. Now, I couldn’t say the same thing about Marty Balin…

  35. 35.

    J R in WV

    @satby: Jorma owns a farm near here, and has music festivals all summer long there. Friends are invited to play with him weekend nights. Actually over the river in Ohio, but still…

    He figured out a way to have a normal musical life without adulation of groupies, people treat him just like a talented neighbor.

  39. 39.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Paul in KY: I discovered just recently that Grace Slick did the vocals on those animated number sequences on the early “Sesame Street” (the ones that went “onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightNINEten…”). Also, Kantner and Slick had a daughter (China) together. There’s an anecdote that they were originally going to name her “god”, with a small “g”, because they wanted her to be humble about it…

    ETA: @Zinsky: “Somebody To Love” is a damned good piece of tune-smithing, as well.

  40. 40.

    BruceJ

    @p.a.: Sob…I once called into a radio station to request ‘Volunteers’ and they played some POS Charlie Daniels Band thing.

  41. 41.

    Momus

    Thank you, Ms. Laurie, for the clip from Silent Running (one of my favourite Bruce Dern vehicles). Interesting that many of the above fans of “White Rabbit” don’t seem to know of the lengthy (seven or so minutes, if memory serves) raga-tinged version of the song on “Grace Slick and The Great Society“, the group she was in before Jefferson Airplane.

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