Jefferson Airplane Today
Paul Kantner, Spence Dryden, and Bill Thompson are in the lounge at Wally Heider’s new studios in San Francisco. A few feet away, on the other side of a heavy door and an air closet, Jorma Kaukonen is adding another track onto a tune for the next Jefferson Airplane album. Marty Balin and Grace Slick are there to watch and listen.
Thompson, the Airplane’s manager, is trying to generate some ideas for an album title. So far, he says, there’s “Marbles,” which would go well with a color shot of “this shitty, ugly old Indian Peyote blanket that’s wrapped around a board, with marbles glued on it forming a face.” And there’s “A Flag for Your Window,” which would go with a black and white photo of a downer kind of scene. It’s a guy holding a newspaper on which is printed a full page size U.S. “flag for your window” (on national holidays, the San Francisco Examiner does that kind of a thing). Nearby is this old man wearing a ship-shaped hat made out of a sheet of newspaper. On his brim, the headline reads: “Eisenhower Is Dead.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know,” Kantner is saying, leaning back over the end of the sofa against the wall. “I think we oughta call it Squat on My Grunt.”
And Spence, thinner, darker, and hairier than ever, with a full black moustache ending where his sideburns pick up, is the first to stop chuckling. “Man, I really thing we should call it 2400 Fulton. You know, put a bunch of derelicts and freaks on the porch and put that on the album. That’s where its all gone down this year.” The salute-to-our-home-stead, After Bathing at Baxters riff.
The door opens, and Grace’s head pops out. She steps into full view, her right hand holding the heavy door ajar. She nods at Thompson with a short, perfunctory smile. “The doctor will see you next, sir.” She disappears.
And this is pretty much where the Airplane are at today. They’ve finished their sixth album now, and they’re into their fourth year as a musical unit. But despite the years and the trips and the successes and the madness, they’re pretty much the same old Airplane.
Grace Slick is still around, now a two-year veteran of rumors having her leave the group, and she’s as outrageous as ever. Just a couple of weeks back, she strolled into the elegant showroom of British Motor Cars, dressed in a loose silk ensemble and sandals, her befogged hair looking like a ball of sea weed held down by a headband. She joined a small gathering at a corner of the room, where a 1969 Aston Martin, tagged at $18,000, was resting in shiny blue splendor. “WOW, what’s that?” she cried. She was told, in a dismissing, who-are-you? tone, that it was an Aston, equipped with an automatic shift, just in. “FAR OUT!” she screamed. “That’s just what I want. I’ll take it!” And she did, paying for the machine in cash.
The rest of the Airplane is just as free-form and unpredictable, as always they’ve been. An album title, uppermost in most recording rock groups’ priority lists, will come, with time and little prompting, to the Airplane. (As it is, the strongest contender for the next LP’s title is Volunteers of America, with the cover art a photo collage put together by Grace and Kantner. The “Flag for Your Window” photo will probably be included in the montage.)
Unpredictable. Grace and Paul doing album cover art when it’s always been Dryden the hottest to do a cover; Grace and Paul, when Marty’s supposedly the most polished and proficient artist among the six.
The album’s taken the most time this past half-year; seven full weeks at Wally Heider’s new 16-track studies in San Francisco, plus a couple of weeks of mastering at the RCA studios in Los Angeles. But there’s also been an on-going legal battle with ex-manager Matthew Katz; a hectic concert swing in the southern and eastern reaches of the country, where Thompson and bassist Jack Casady were busted for being in a room where two joints were found; another bust while filming a segment for Jean-LucGodard; an irritating series of on-stage tangles with authorities, and the slow re-establishment of Jefferson Airplane as a native San Francisco group. All of these events have served, Thompson says, to bind the band closer together than ever.
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