Reviews

Takes Off (1966)

A well-crafted debut record, but it's terribly derivative. The group was still under the thumb of founder and then-chief songwriter Marty Balin, who is credited on all the original tunes. His master plan was to rip off the Byrds' smiley-faced folk rock sound. But the group fell just short of Roger McGuinn's exciting electric 12-string guitar and David Crosby's seamless tenor harmonies (see Love for an even more obvious rip-off effort). And they're tight but tepid when they're covering blues and folk standards like "Chauffeur Blues" and "Tobacco Road" - by contrast, Eric Burdon and War burned the house down with the latter song. Nonetheless, there are some strong tracks here that point to the mature hippy pop formula the Airplane perfected only a half-year later, like Balin's great love song "It's No Secret." Everyone's solid, especially Kaukonen; Spence shows flashes of songwriting brilliance on "Don't Slip Away" and especially the "Eight Miles High"-like "Blues From An Airplane"; and Casady's trademark rumbling bass lifts some pedestrian material like "Run Around." The new CD re-release includes a version of "Runnin' 'Round This World" with edited lyrics, which the record company kept off the original LP anyway. The complete track surfaced on Early Flight.

Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

About a half-dozen great records came out almost at once right before Sgt. Pepper's, and this was one of them. Having sucked up Grace Slick from a rival San Francisco band called the Great Society, the Airplane was suddenly packed with competent pop-rock songwriters - and they were also primed to jump on the nascent flower-power movement, having stoked themselves to the gills on every substance they could get their hands on, and then moved en masse to a Haight-Ashbury mansion. At this point, however, they were still cautious and commercially-oriented enough to stick with the classic three-minute pop song format. Jangly, occasionally folky guitarwork (some of it courtesy of Jerry Garcia), Casady's thunderous bass, and blurry group harmonies define the sound, and it works, over and over again. Slick's classic "White Rabbit" (inspired by Lewis Carroll, among other things) and "Somebody To Love" (written by her ex-husband's brother, Great Society leader Darby Slick) are just the best examples among many, including Skip Spence's left-over "My Best Friend" (it's a shame the group lost him), and Balin's "3/5 Mile In 10 Seconds" and "Plastic Fantastic Lover." All of it sounds dated, though; the Airplane's folk roots were still strongly evident, and they hadn't mastered any of the studio trickery they later would employ to such ridiculous extremes.

After Bathing At Baxter's (1967)

An intentional disaster. The Airplane went for the loosest, most spaced-out and effect-laden production they could approximate on their otherwise-routine pop songs, added some dreadful jams and sound collages, and segued all the tracks together, hoping to spew forth an American Sgt. Pepper's. Sound effects, weird percussion, incoherently poetic lyrics, and blazingly psychedelic guitars crop up everywhere, and not always to good effect. But the record's salvaged by three things: some catchy songwriting, mostly courtesy of Kantner ("Young Girl Sunday Blues"; "Wild Thyme"; "Won't You Try"); a few interesting, freakily aimless piano-driven experiments by Slick ("rejoyce"); and historical relevance - no one else up to this point had demonstrated quite so much acid-induced gall. The emergence of Kantner's songwriting turned out to be a pivotal event for the group, as he continued to dominate their records until the Airplane broke up five years later.

Crown Of Creation (1968)

Despite endless studio tricks - there are sound effects, distorted, screeching guitars, and layered overdubs on almost every song - Crown Of is just a rehash of After Bathing, with Casady again proving himself to be the only genuine instrumental virtuoso in the band (title track, and everywhere). It's much more carefully produced than its predecessor, with long jams being sacrificed completely to make room for an even greater slew of catchy pop tunes dressed up as freaky peace-and-love anthems (the 3/4-time "Lather," one of Slick's best psychedelic tunes; "If You Feel"; "Ice Cream Phoenix"). The ominous title track says it all: screamingly apocalyptic, like the album cover, it was clearly intended for the Top 40 charts anyway. And then there's the famous cover version of "Triad," the song that precipitated David Crosby's departure from the Byrds; although Slick is forced here to really sing for once, she can't capture any of the tension and creepy, soaring melody of Crosby's original, long-unreleased version. Despite all of my catty comments, I have to admit that the album is a good solid listen and better than what the band was later able to produce.

Bless Its Pointed Little Head (1969)

This is the only easily accessible documentation of the Airplane's famous live jamming, if you like that kind of stuff - their other recorded performances are either unenlightening, thanks to their relentless early-era professionalism (Monterey), or hard to find (none of the official Woodstock records really gives the band its full due). Many of the selections are tedious, like the 11-minute jam "Bear Melt," complete with improvised lyrics. But there are a couple of interesting, if again overlong oddities - the traditional blues "Rock Me Baby," with Kaukonen's vocal and guitar (it pales in comparison to Hendrix's earlier Monterey version), and Donovan's "Fat Angel." And there are a bunch of stronger tunes, mostly from Surrealistic Pillow, that are performed somewhat faithfully, but with enthusiastic embellishments ("Somebody To Love"; "Plastic Fantastic Lover"). And finally there's the longish version of Fred Neil's "Other Side Of This Life," some good old-fashioned rock 'n' roll fun with Casady charging along like a herd of elephants. The studio version of this concert staple was an A-side, but I don't think it appeared on an LP.

Volunteers (1969)

Something of a departure from the band's earlier sound, which might not have been a good idea. There are a couple of hummable, but by-now obligatory Kantner pop songs with an increasingly political bent, like the listless "We Can Be Together" and the brief, fairly exciting, rabble-rousing title track. But the rest of the record is all over the place: a straight-faced traditional acoustic folk song ("Good Sheperd"); an embarassing country-western sendup ("A Song For All Seasons"); yet more plodding, melodically inscrutable Grace Slick lunacy ("Hey Frederick"); a creepy organ segue ("Meadowlands"). And then there's the infamous cover of CSN's "Wooden Ships," so sloppy and lethargic that it's even more of a let-down than the earlier "Triad." The band was still solidly commercial at this point, but they were already far past their creative peak, and they lost it entirely on the next several records.

Early Flight (rec. 1966 - 1970, rel. 1974)

Not a "real" Airplane record, this is a compilation out-takes and single-only tracks. Still, it's kind of fun. The three Takes Off-era songs have that professional, but starry-eyed Byrds-like quality so many fans like. Then there's a very routine, but pleasant six-minute blues jam with Kaukonen on vocals, Jerry Garcia on guitar, and John Hammond on harmonica ("In The Morning"). But the real high points are two other Surrealistic Pillow rejects: the fine, and very characteristic pop song "J.P.P. McStep B. Blues," and the high-energy rock song "Go To Her," which is one of the best things the band ever did - from the roaring group vocals to the sinister lead guitar to the driving rhythm section. Meanwhile, the low points are three unimpressive tracks from 1970: a disorganized quasi-blues ("Up Or Down"), and both sides of a flop single that's mercifully brief, but musically aimless and loaded with extraordinarily bitter political lyrics ("Mexico/Have You Seen The Saucers").

The First and Definitive Tribute to Jefferson Airplane (June 14, 2003)

I have in my treasure-trove of personal memorabilia a letter from a friend, postmarked from San Francisco in September 1965, where he describes hanging out with a newly formed band with the strange name of "Jefferson Airplane" and auditioning to be their lead singer. He didn't make the band; thus, when their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, was released in mid-1966, he was not on it. My local record store didn't carry it, and no one who worked there had ever heard of them. How things would change within less than a year, when a song called "Somebody to Love" was all over the radio and Jefferson Airplane was all over television.
Jefferson Airplane was a swirling mass of contradictions. Their fan club slogan, "Jefferson Airplane Loves You," was perfect for the Summer of Love, yet the band was split into two, sometimes three, contentious camps. Their politics were extreme radical left; they made no bones about embracing Red China, yet if they had ever appeared in that country, they would have undoubtedly wound up underneath some tanktread. They also embraced, and utilized, the capitalist system in their business dealings to the hilt. And while espousing an idealistic communal style that publicly eschewed materiality, they were poster child Stretchlimo Vermietung Hannover limousine liberals. Their music was by turns brilliant and crap, with some of it standing up after hundreds of listenings over three and one-half decades, while others were unlistenable from Day One. Yet their influence on the culture for several mad, insane years was undeniable.
Jeff Tamarkin chronicles the entire process from the beginning to the present in GOT A REVOLUTION!, which is a history of Jefferson Airplane (and its offshoots) collectively and its members individually. It is an amazing work on a number of levels. Tamarkin was able to obtain the cooperation of almost all of the individuals directly or indirectly involved, and he deals with conflicting versions of events colored by time, perspective, and drug-induced illusion. He is an unabashed fan of the band - to even contemplate a work of this scope and complexity, one would have to really love, or really hate, them - yet his account of the band, if not the times in which they lived, is surprisingly objective. Grace Slick and Paul Kantner come off the worst, in terms of their wild and destructive behavior, and yet even they possessed some redemptive qualities, outside of whatever musical talent they were blessed with.
Tamarkin additionally does an excellent job of tracing the history of each member of the group, the events surrounding them, and the band members' individual and collective discography. I was constantly and continuously impressed with Tamarkin's accuracy with respect to events involving the band. Though not directly in any of the events that he describes, I was a bystander at several of them (the infamous Akron Rubber Bowl concert of 1972 being but one) and his ability to put the reader into the setting while getting it right is incredible.
While he occasionally lets his worldview color secondary events (the Black Panthers were, alas, not the innocent victims he infers them to be, and Ronald Reagan's presidency couldn't have ignored AIDS for several years before declaring the condition a national emergency in 1981 because he wasn't elected until 1981), he does get everything about the Airplane right while including, well, damn near everything, from Grace Slick's notorious appearance in blackface on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, to the infamous record jacket cupcake tracing, to Marty Balin, valiantly but in vain, single-handedly taking on a contingent of Hell's Angels while the band played on.
A history of Jefferson Airplane was overdue; that the first one should also be the definitive one is a tribute to Tamarkin and his work. It is impossible to read GOT A REVOLUTION! without going to the record collection and pulling out records with titles like Surrealistic Pillow, Crown of a Creation, Volunteers, and After Bathing at Baxters, and listening to them over and over again. If they are not a soundtrack to a life, they are at least the theme of it. And GOT A REVOLUTION! is the story of it. Highly recommended.

by Bookreporter.com
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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