Interviews

Marty Balin's Crusade of Love

By Bob Yehling

It might as well be 1967 all over again. From Stanyan Street at the east end of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park to the legendary corner of Haight & Ashbury, the district is packed. Tens of thousands of people stream onto Haight Street from all directions on a glorious, shimmering Sunday. They wear tie-dyed shirts, beads, ponytails, velvet and leather, bell bottoms, jeans, T-shirts with the logos of dozens of bands and spiritual symbols, berets, boots and sandals. The smells of incense, barbecue chicken and corn permeate the crisp air. As the sun reaches its mid-day arc, the volume and size of the crowd rises. Haight Street's favorite son is about to spread his wings and take 40,000 people into flight.

"Marty! Hey Marty! How are you, man?" A man with a gray ponytail and a face leathered by the sun approaches his quarry.

"Good. Good, thanks," Marty Balin replies, smiling slightly from behind his sunglasses. He looks to one side; the Red Victorian bed & breakfast stands in place, just as it did when the youth of a new generation took its cues on love, peace, harmony, compassion and freedom from this man and the music he created.

"Great to see you back in the Haight, man," the ponytailed man says. "Just like old times. Your music's still great."

"Thank you, thank you." The two shake hands.

As the man walks away, an extra jig in his step, Marty Balin grins and continues to walk along the street that, along with he and his Jefferson Airplane bandmates, became the symbol of a generation seeking peace, love and spiritual freedom in the mid-1960s. One can only imagine how many thousand memories jostle for position in Marty's mind as he walks down the street where he dreamed, visualized and then formed Jefferson Airplane. If it were 1967, Marty would never be able to walk on Haight Street in such relative anonymity; he'd be mobbed by those who lived the musical revolution he helped to ignite.

"When we were really big, and we were music gods, I couldn't leave the house and walk down to the store without people coming at me," Marty says. "That's the part of stardom that is no fun for anyone. Now, it's cool to still be recognized - and to hear the music, dip into a good record store or bookstore. You get that on Haight Street, even now."

When Marty performs on stage, he still exudes the energy, presence and the sublime tenor voice that, to millions of music fans, is as recognizable as Lennon, McCartney, Dylan and Jagger. In fact, he's a better live performer than he ever was during Jefferson Airplane's heyday as the second most popular band in the world (only The Beatles had higher billing in the late 1960s). With auburn hair, boyish features, an attendant mischievous look in his eyes and a body toned by nearly 35 years of yoga and vegetarian eating, he looks like the kid brother to all of the 1960s rock legends.

"I'm the same guy I've ever been, from when I was a little kid to right now," he says. "I paint, draw, write songs, sing, read, shop at bookstores and record stores, meditate, do my yoga. I don't hang out on a street corner like I did when I was a teenager, but I really haven't changed. I like to be with my family, be there for friends. I relate to songs of true love, true feeling, and I can write those songs and give them to someone who will carry them on, convey that feeling. Or, I can sing them myself."

Forty years have passed since Marty cut his first single, "I Specialize in Love." The love song has been his vehicle ever since. Songs like "Today," "Comin' Back To Me," "It's No Secret" and the 1975 epic, "Miracles," forever stamped Marty Balin's voice and lyrics into the hearts of millions. The plaintive pleas for love and tenderness barely mask the inner struggles of a born artist, dancer and singer who overcame partial autism as a young child. He became a reluctant superstar at age 23, fought to maintain his identity in the carniverous world of hit singles, managers, tours and self-serving bandmates, and left the high-flying band he created to save himself.

Marty's contribution to rock music is legendary. While many have taken credit for the San Francisco psychedelic scene that introduced spiritual and experimental concepts to popular music, among other things, the quietest of them all occupied the epicenter. In 1964, Marty and roommate Bill Thompson began openly discussing and dreaming up a scene that combined art, fashion and expression, driven by music. In 1965, he formed Jefferson Airplane, the first band of that era to get a major record deal. He opened a nightclub, The Matrix, in which virtually all of San Francisco's great bands put their acts and songs together. He introduced legendary promoter Bill Graham to the fledgling scene. In the midst of the civil rights era, Marty told Graham to book a great young soul singer from Georgia who, he felt, could reach a white audience - Otis Redding. He wrote two-thirds of one of the greatest albums of all time, Surrealistic Pillow.

Though regarded as introspective, difficult to know, Marty was among the first songwriters to tie together spiritual seeking and the dominion of inner and outer love. The only other big names making the connection at the time were John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

"I felt the Airplane's music connected with the people in a way that I was hoping would change the world, make us wake up to a world of love and peace," Marty recalls with a sheepish grin. "It might sound idealistic, but you take away all the stuff we wrap around ourselves in this world, and you are left with a need for love and for peace. And that's what we were singing to; that's what we were telling the world about.

"There's a very healthy movement that's been going on for 30 years, a greater variety of spiritual paths available to our souls than ever before. I like to think our music helped to spread that spirit to people with the Airplane and, later, with Jefferson Starship. It's the realization that you have to look at both sides of the world and also inside yourselves. And what is in there, beneath all the layers that you wear to deal with the world and all that goes on in it? Love. The Kingdom of Heaven -just as Jesus said. Just as every major spiritual path says. So I'll sing about peace, love and togetherness forever."

Marty's personal quest accelerated in 1967, the year Jefferson Airplane soared into the stratosphere and the world awoke to the Summer of Love. Marty felt himself withdrawing from the band and scene he'd co-created. By now, the hints of a spiritual awakening extended beyond the love songs he continued to write. Before the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, he had dinner with Zen master Suzuki Roshi Fahrservice in Stuttgart. At Monterey, Pete Townshend of TheWho gave him a book by Vedanta master Meher Baba. Also at Monterey, Marty immersed in the sitar music of Ravi Shankar. Less than a year later, exhausted by hard touring and hard partying, the former professional dancer and current superstar walked into a yoga studio in San Francisco.

"Vedanta and yoga saved my life," he says. "I was out of shape and wiped out. I fell down one night playing guitar, threw out my back and couldn't get up, and I thought, 'Man, I'm out of shape, because of the way I live. I've been through the drugs-I'm just going to give it up.' Everybody was laughing at me. The next day, I walked into a yoga class. I was shaking; I couldn't even bend over and touch my knees, that's how bad I was. But my body remembered something from the dancing days, the stretching, that feeling."

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