{"id":1967,"date":"2016-01-31T15:41:56","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T20:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=1967"},"modified":"2019-09-12T14:31:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T18:31:46","slug":"whys-nobody-mourning-paul-kantner-jefferson-airplane-flies-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2016\/01\/whys-nobody-mourning-paul-kantner-jefferson-airplane-flies-forever.html","title":{"rendered":"Why’s nobody mourning Paul Kantner? Jefferson Airplane flies forever"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"imgres\"<\/a>

Paul Kantner in 2008, photo by Mike Krepka for The Chronicle<\/p><\/div>\n

Jefferson Airplane founding member Paul Kantner’s death<\/a> at age 74 on Jan. 28 has been met by a mainstream culture shrug compared to the celebratory attention paid rock stars dead in the past month including David Bowie<\/a>, the Eagles’ Glenn Frey<\/a> and Scott Weiland<\/a> of Stone Temple Pilots. Why?<\/p>\n

In one hour since posting this, I’ve been besieged with Facebook comments that mourning is indeed being done and cultural note taken, like\u00c2\u00a0this New York Times obituary<\/a>. A credible editor tells me there’s been more coverage of Kantner “by a pretty far margin” than of Frey. So, I’m pleased to stand corrected, and apologies for my\u00c2\u00a0glib headline.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kantner\u00c2\u00a0was a visionary, a prince of the Summer of Love<\/a> who in the late ’60s stirred the ears and fed the heads of an obstreperous generation. Initially a banjoist and 12-string guitar player, he was the man behind After Bathing At Baxter’s<\/a>,<\/em> one of the era’s most enduringly satisfying breakthrough albums.<\/p>\n

By most testimony, Kantner was a hard guy to deal with. “A sometimes prickly, often sarcastic musician who keeps his own counsel and routinely enrages his old bandmates” is how pop music critic Joel Selvin described him in a\u00c2\u00a02008 interview<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0in the Chronicle. In eulogies, Kantner’s former collaborators have nuanced\u00c2\u00a0their appreciation. As Marty Balin, the Airplane’s original impetus and most lyrical songwriter\u00c2\u00a0told Billboard<\/a>‘s Gary Graff: “He was a hard-headed guy to get along with and wouldn’t do anybody else’s music. We had to do what he could do, so that’s what we all did eventually. We pretty much just did Paul’s music. That’s all he wanted to do.”<\/p>\n

Jorma Kaukonen, the Airplane’s fearless guitarist, issued a statement<\/a> saying, “In my opinion Paul was the catalyst that made the alchemy happen. He held our feet to the flame. He could be argumentative and contentious \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 he could be loving and kind \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 his dedication to the Airplane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s destiny as he saw it was undeniable. Over the years he and I occasionally butted heads over things that seem trivial today.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Grace Slick, whose searing singing was the Airplane’s most obvious trademark and who had a daughter named China (b. 1971)\u00c2\u00a0with Kantner, simple Tweeted<\/a>, “Rest in Peace my friend. Love, Grace.”<\/p>\n

I never spoke to or met Kantner, but as\u00c2\u00a0a listener I think he\u00c2\u00a0deserves more applause. Although I caught the Airplane live during its rise in ’67 and its fall in ’71, those shows didn’t\u00c2\u00a0thrill me — it’s the recordings that still fuel my enthusiasm. I consider\u00c2\u00a0Baxter’s<\/em>, the Airplane’s third album, beyond category. Upon release in ’67\u00c2\u00a0it was unprecedented, attaining heights of incisiveness, conceptual sophistication and successfully experimental pop\u00c2\u00a0music comparable only to\u00c2\u00a0the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper,\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>released five months earlier. And today it still sounds hard, fresh, at moments profound.<\/p>\n

Baxter’s<\/em> is a studio creation flush\u00c2\u00a0of melodic drama and drive over 11 songs in\u00c2\u00a0five related\u00c2\u00a0suites, comprising soaring vocals, a sound collage, a wicked jam and exotic woodwinds arrangements. The tunes including “The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil,” “Martha,” “Young Girl Sunday Blues,” “Wild Tyme,” “The Last Wall of the Castle,” “rejoyce,” “Watch Her Ride,” “Won’t You Try\/Saturday Afternoon” are\u00c2\u00a0far from typical rockers or love songs, transformed by hot-wired guitar, Jack Casady’s bumptious electric bass, Spencer Dryden’s lowdown\u00c2\u00a0beat and the \u00c2\u00a0keening singing into the highly charged, open-ended realm labeled psychedelia.<\/p>\n

Fact is, no other American band of that musically explosive era — not\u00c2\u00a0the Byrds, the Mothers of Invention, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, the Turtles, the Mamas and the Papas, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience or Dylan\u00c2\u00a0with Robbie Robertson and Nashville session players –\u00c2\u00a0had created a work of<\/p>\n

\"5150EgdwiiL._SS280\"<\/a>

After Bathing At Baxter’s. Cover art by Ron Cobb<\/p><\/div>\n

such esthetic reach and multi-faceted unity. According to Jeff Tamarkin, author of Got A Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane<\/a><\/em> and other chroniclers, Kantner was the one who worked\u00c2\u00a0through considerable distractions to pull it together. He was also central to the Airplane’s just as mordant if not so flowing followup\u00c2\u00a0Crown of Creation <\/a><\/em>and the more agit-prop\u00c2\u00a0Volunteers<\/a><\/em>\u00c2\u00a0before flying off\u00c2\u00a0to sci-fi land\u00c2\u00a0with his own Blows Agains the Empire<\/a><\/em>, and eventually Jefferson Starship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I stopped following\u00c2\u00a0Kantner’s career four decades ago, but a lot of the Airplane’s music, and most especially After B<\/em>athing at Baxter’s,<\/em> is indelible in my memory. However irksome\u00c2\u00a0Kantner may have been, I\u00c2\u00a0thank him for that.<\/p>\n

Of the Airplane\/Starship crowd, perhaps no one suffered more from Kantner’s ego than Marty Balin<\/a>, but he, too, attests\u00c2\u00a0in the value of his one-time partner’s ouevre.<\/p>\n

“It was unique,” Balin said to Billboard. “It was part of that era, part of that time. A lot of those songs still exist, still live on, still are good.” Amen and RIP — if that’s what you want — Paul Kantner.<\/p>\n

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Jefferson Airplane founding member Paul Kantner’s death at age 74 on Jan. 28 has been met by a mainstream culture shrug compared to the celebratory attention paid rock stars dead in the past month including David Bowie, the Eagles’ Glenn Frey and Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots. Why? In one hour since posting this, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/e7cbc12186cf547c494ff9a5efca081b.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-vJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1036,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2012\/09\/kennedy-center-honors-over-the-top-us-and-uk-bluesmen.html","url_meta":{"origin":1967,"position":0},"title":"Kennedy Center honors over-the-top US and UK bluesmen","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"September 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy, at age 75 as wild a guitar pyrotechnician as lives today, and the British dinosaur rockers Led Zeppelin, whose guitarist Jimmy Page stands in Guy's shadow, are being celebrated with Kennedy Center Honors, to be presented at a program at the Kennedy Center on Dec. 2.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/led-zep.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":105,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/07\/iphone_pandora_open_sesame_jaz.html","url_meta":{"origin":1967,"position":1},"title":"iPhone + Pandora = open sesame","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"July 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"According to Slate (formerly, Salon's) tech writer\u00a0Farhad Manjoo,\u00a0reviewing the iPhone makeover and cool third-party programs that optomize its potential,\u00a0the expense and hassle of securing the new device is worthwhile if only for\u00a0mobile access to Pandora.com. \u00a0 The personally-programmed radio site has captivated me, too --\u00a0Pandora's\u00a0Music Genome Project\u00a0reliably streams\u00a0known and unknown\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":79,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/03\/political_poetry_in_bedstuy.html","url_meta":{"origin":1967,"position":2},"title":"Political poetry in Bed-Stuy","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"March 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"They want the oil\/but they don't want the people,\" Jayne Cortez declaimed over and over again, her inflections expressing frank assessment, sheer disbelief, scathing cynicism and many nuances in between, without ever stipulating who \"they\" or \"the people\" are. She didn't have to, we all knew. 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But many\u00c2\u00a0commentators writing\u00c2\u00a0of his music -- including good ones like Marc Myers in Jazz Wax and Ben Ratliff of the New York Times -- have\u00c2\u00a0focused mostly\u00c2\u00a0on Coleman's breakthrough recordings from 1958 and '59,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"giants","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/giants.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":69,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/02\/top_10_2008_to_date.html","url_meta":{"origin":1967,"position":5},"title":"Top 10 2008 — to date","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"February 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The commercial record industry may be in free-fall, but fresh cds continue to arrive in hopes of review, in undaunted quantity. 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