For your illumination, a shameful tale of gross and inexplicable prejudice. To wit, I spent most of my life refusing to give the Jefferson Airplane a break, because of what they would in time become—namely first the fishy Jefferson Starship, and then plain old loathsome “We Built This City on Rock’n’Roll” Starship. I was so busy judging the Airplane by their checkered future I never bothered turning back the page to take in these lyrics from Volunteers: “We are all outlaws in the eyes of America/In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fuck hide and deal/We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young.”
Those may be some of the most defiantly punk lyrics ever written, but I never heard them. How could I have? I was so anti-Jefferson Airplane I jokingly declared the anniversary of Altamont “Punch Marty Balin in the Mouth Day.” But just recently, goaded by some inexplicable impulse, I gave 1969’s Volunteers a listen. And I was dumbfounded by how goddamn day-glo good it was. From its plethora of cool vocals to Jorma Kaukonen’s brilliant guitar playing to its extraordinary lyrics, Volunteers is a triumph.
More overtly political than their karmically resigned compatriots in the Grateful Dead, and smarter-assed (and just plain smarter) than their brethren in CSN&Y, on Volunteers the Jefferson Airplane launch razor-sharp barbs against straight society, from sarcasm-laden opening track to inspirational closer. Whether you call them idealistic, naïve, or just plain deluded, the Volunteers-era Jefferson Airplane—Grace Slick on vocals, piano, organ, and recorder; Paul Kantner on vocals and rhythm guitar; Marty Balin on vocals and percussion; Jorma Kaukonen on lead guitar and vocals; Jack Casady on bass; and Spencer Dryden on drums and percussion—expressed a commitment to revolution and the radical transformation of American society.
Volunteers—the Airplane’s fifth LP—continued their move away from the early 3-minute psychedelic folk-rock constructs of “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” towards a more complex and harder edged sound. Volunteer’s cover features a great photo of the band—including a shirtless fellow wearing a Victorian lampshade on his head—in front of an American flag. And the album itself included the contributions of a plethora of counterculture notables, including Nicky Hopkins on piano, Stephen Stills on organ, Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar, Joey Covington (later to join the band) on congas and “chair,” David Crosby on “sailboat,” Ace of Cups on vocals, and Bill Laudner on lead vocals on “A Song for All Seasons.”
Volunteers opens with the magnum dopus, “We Can Be Together,” a plea for unity and declaration of war all in one. It opens with Kaukonen’s sinuous, razor-edged guitar lines, then Balin and Slick enter as a duet, singing the lines I quoted in the opening paragraph. While Kaukonen plays helter-skelter guitar and Hopkins contributes on piano, Balin-Slick sing, “Your enemy is/We/We are forces of chaos and anarchy/Everything they say we are we are/And we are very/Proud of ourselves.” That “we are very proud of ourselves” is pure gold, and they follow it up with, “Up against the wall/Up against the wall, motherfucker/Tear down the walls.” Kaukonen then launches into a brilliant and extended guitar solo while Balin and Slick go back and forth from pleas for togetherness to exhortations to tear down the walls.
“Good Shepherd,” a mid-tempo traditional arranged and sung by Kaukonen, opens with his series of ringing and echoing guitar riffs. He’s joined vocally by Slick in the second verse: “Can’t you hear my lambs a’callin’,” they sing, “Oh good shepherd, feed my sheep,” at which point Kaukonen launches into an epic and barbed guitar solo that Grace Slick sings over. Follow-up “The Farm” is most definitely a sign of its times—every longhair in America nurtured a fantasy of “going up the country” in the year 1969, to live off the fat of the land far from the prying eyes of “The Man”—and it succeeds wonderfully, thanks largely to Jerry Garcia’s rustic pedal steel guitar, Grace Slick’s honky tonk piano, and the urgent vocals of Slick and Balin, to say nothing of the vocal contributions of Ace of Cups and the mooing of some bovine backing singers. And the Airplane can’t help but give the song a surreal lyrical twist, singing, “Here comes my next door neighbour/Comin’ down the road/He always looks so regal ridin’ on his toad/Called Lightnin’…/He’s ten hands at the shoulder/And if you give him sugar you know/He’ll whinny like a boulder, yes he will.”
“Hey Frederick” is one far-freaking-out firestorm of a song, and opens with some piano (by Slick or Hopkins; both tickle the ivories on the tune), a series of mighty blasts from Kaukonen’s guitar, and Slick singing, “Either go away or go all the way in,” but into what? The melting psychedelic recesses of your blown mind? The produce section at the Haight-Ashbury supermarket? Then the song shifts gears, and Slick sings, “There you sit/Your mouth wide open” as Kaukonen muscles up some big power chords, that piano continues to play, and Dryden knocks out a tattoo on the drums. Then some motorcycles rev up and Slick really commences to wail as Kaukonen splits the song wide open with a solo guaranteed to bifurcate your mind while Balin shang-bang-a-langs on the tambourine. And what I want to know is, how is it this Kaukonen fella ended up toiling in relative obscurity in the perpetually overlooked Hot Tuna? Because he’s hot shit, which is what they originally wanted to call Hot Tuna, until some label exec gasped, “Oh, dear me, no!” Finally Kaukonen peters out and the drums and piano take over, but hold on… because here comes Kaukonen again, to squeeze every last toke of beautiful caterwaul out of his smokin’ hippie axe!
“Hey Frederick” is a tough act to follow, but the very pretty “Turn My Life Down” (which opens with a very Velvet Underground guitar riff) does its best, with Marty Balin’s tres smooth vocals (and Grace Slick’s occasional contributions), Stephen Stills’ Hammond organ, and Joey Covington’s congas all building to a crescendo followed by a brief Kaukonen solo. Then the vocals recommence until Balin and the Ace of Cups hit a high and mighty gospel note, which leads into one very hot Kaukonen solo that, along with Stills’ organ, takes the song out. Everybody knows “Wooden Ships,” or at least the CSN&Y version; the Jefferson Airplane’s features Nicky Hopkins on piano, one very distorted Kaukonen guitar, and the soaring and ethereal vocals of Kaukonen, Balin, and Slick. I’m not exactly certain where the “sailboat” is that David Crosby “plays” on the song, or how they managed to squeeze it into the studio, but Kaukonen’s guitar is killer, especially during the gonzo solo that dominates the final third of the song. And Slick’s vocals are a miracle; her voice rises to the heavens, every bit as piercing as Kaukonen’s guitar.
“Eskimo Blue Day” opens with some barbed-wire Kaukonen guitar and builds and builds until Slick comes in on vocals and recorder, to informally duel with Kaukonen’s guitar. “The reason I come and go is the same,” sings Slick, “You call it rain but the human name/Doesn’t mean shit to a tree.” And on it goes, Kaukonen keeping up a running commentary on Slick’s singing, until Hopkins’ piano briefly takes over. Then Slick’s vocals soar, and she’s joined by other voices, after which Hopkins bangs out some really big chords. Finally the band takes off on an antelope trot, Kaukonen blazing away and Balin banging madly on the tambourine, until the song ends in a series of thunder strokes. Question: Who is Bill Laudner? And what is he doing singing lead on “A Song For All Seasons”? A slice of pure country honk, “A Song For All Seasons” offers great group vocals and tasty ivory tickling by Hopkins, not to mention a snarky and satiric take on the infighting that was tearing the Airplane asunder. “While you’re climbin’ up the chart/Your band just fell apart” goes one line, while my personal fave goes, “I hear your manager skipped town with all your pay/And your lead singer’s bulge turns the censors grey.”
“Meadowlands” is a miniature prog-rocker featuring Slick on organ. A blessedly brief instrumental throwaway, “Meadowlands” is innocuous enough, although that said I’m not enamored enough by it to try to make out what the voices way in the background are saying. What closer “Volunteers” lacks in terms of the LP opener’s up-against-the-wall defiance, it makes up for in sheer velocity, with Kaukonen’s opening guitar sounding like a jet engine revving up. Balin, with the addition of some Slick backing vocals, sings, “Look what’s happening out in the streets/Got a revolution, got to revolution/Hey I’m dancing down the streets/Got a revolution, got to revolution.” And so it goes until Balin and Slick repeat, “We are volunteers of America,” at which point Kaukonen lets rip with one truly frenzied solo over which Balin cries, “Got a revolution!” Then the vocalists repeat they’re the volunteers of America, after which Kaukonen fires off another brief but frenetic solo, and Hopkins closes things with a flurry of piano.
Am I cursed to see tragedy everywhere? Because after Volunteers, it all went straight to hell. Balin and Dryden split afterwards, and the Airplane didn’t release another LP until the wretched mess that was 1971’s Bark. The band convened a final time (unless you count 1989 reunion LP, Jefferson Airplane, which I would advise against) to produce 1972’s Long John Silver, which proved to be a vast improvement on Bark. But the experience proved so unrewarding for all involved it effectively sent the Jefferson Airplane spiraling fatally earthward in a plume of smoke and flames.
In any event, I have learned my lesson. Never again will I write off the Jefferson Airplane because of what they would become—namely, the band that gave us “Miracles” and its immortal lines, “I had a taste of the real world (Just a drop of it)/When I went down on you, girl”—or treat them as the poor step-siblings of the Grateful Dead. Give me long enough and I might be able to devise a better boast than, “We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young.” But that’s as snotty apt a description of what a punk band should be as I’ve ever heard. No more famous band of punks—not The Sex Pistols, The Stooges, or even GG fuckin’ Allin—ever put it as well.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
