Pop and rockObituaryPaul Kantner obituary
Leading light in Jefferson Airplane and San Francisco’s Summer of LoveThe music of Jefferson Airplane was a key ingredient of the psychedelic aura shrouding San Francisco in the late 1960s, and the guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Paul Kantner, who has died aged 74, was one of the group’s chief architects. “Paul was the catalyst that brought the whole thing together,” said the Airplane’s guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. “The band would not have been what it was without him.”
After some early personnel changes, the classic Jefferson Airplane lineup announced itself definitively with 1967’s Surrealistic Pillow album. Proving that San Francisco’s new psychedelic sound, with its adventurous musicianship and free-flowing arrangements, could be both groundbreaking and commercial, the album spent a year on the Billboard 200 and produced two Top 10 classics in the US, Somebody to Love and White Rabbit, the most successful singles of the band’s career. The Airplane, with their anti-authority stance, espousal of drug culture and communal ideals, then cemented themselves at the epicentre of the Summer of Love with a stirring performance at the Monterey pop festival.
They enjoyed further album chart success in 1967 with After Bathing at Baxter’s (much of which was written by Kantner), and the following year with Crown of Creation, on which Kantner composed the title song. In August 1969 they played at the Woodstock festival and in November of the same year they released Volunteers. This was their most fully rounded album, including militant calls to arms in Kantner’s We Can Be Together and the title song Volunteers, as well as thunderous rock workouts in Hey Fredrick and the ecological flag-waver Eskimo Blue Day.
However, the last days of the 60s signalled the disintegration of the Airplane. They ended 1969 with an appearance at the disastrous Altamont festival, and the album Long John Silver (1972) marked the end of the band. Afterwards Kantner and the Airplane’s Grace Slick formed another group, Jefferson Starship, which also proved to be a great success.
Born in San Francisco, Paul was the son of Paul Sr, a travelling salesman and Cora (nee Fortier), who died when he was eight. His father sent him away to be educated by the Christian Brothers and then to a Jesuit school in Santa Clara. Paul much preferred the “liberal and forward-thinking” outlook of the former to the strict religiosity of the latter, and later adopted the slogan “question authority” as a mantra. However, this would not preclude him from taking an autocratic approach to his bandmates when he considered it necessary.
While studying at Santa Clara University and then San Jose State College he taught himself guitar and banjo, and set out to make a splash on the San Francisco folk circuit. Jefferson Airplane were formed in 1965, after the singer Marty Balin had met Kantner at the San Francisco folk club The Drinking Gourd. The original line-up included vocalist Signe Toly Anderson, Kaukonen, drummer Jerry Peloquin and a bluegrass-inclined double bass player, Bob Harvey. Their manager, Matthew Katz, bathetically dubbed their music “fo-jazz” (a mixture of folk and jazz).
Regular live performing soon brought changes, with Jack Casady coming in on bass – he was one of the most inventive and admired practitioners of the era – and the drum stool commandeered first by Skip Spence and then Spencer Dryden. In 1966 they released their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and sacked Katz. Two months later Anderson quit and was promptly replaced by Grace Slick, the privately educated daughter of an investment banker who had been singing with another San Francisco band, The Great Society.
The next three years saw the group reaching their peak, but by 1970 in-fighting was breaking out, and by 1971 both Dryden and Balin had left. In 1970 Kantner had signalled a possible new future for himself by embarking on a side project that led to a concept album, Blows Against the Empire, recorded with an ad hoc group of musicians he called Jefferson Starship and revealing his fascination with science fiction writers such as Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein.
When the Airplane folded, Kantner went on to record a pair of albums with Slick, who by then had become his partner, and with whom he had a daughter, China. Then he made Jefferson Starship into a full-time affair, and between 1974 and 1984 the group had five Top 20 US albums in succession, with 1975’s Red Octopus hitting No 1 and delivering the No 3 hit Miracles.
Kantner quit after their 1984 album, Nuclear Furniture, declaring himself unhappy with the group’s too-commercial direction. The band continued as Starship, best remembered for their 1985 chart-topper We Built This City, while Kantner went on to record a one-off album in 1986 with Casady and Balin as the KBC Band. In 1989 he was involved in a Jefferson Airplane reunion tour and album, and in 1992 he reignited Jefferson Starship. The band was still a going concern at his death, and their most recent album was Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty (2008), mostly comprising traditional folk and protest songs.
He is survived by China and by two sons, Alexander, from his relationship with his former partner Cynthia Bowman, and Gareth, with Karen Seltenrich.
Paul Lorin Kantner, musician, born 17 March 1941; died 28 January 2016
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