Talk:Jefferson Airplane

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Contents

[edit] Science Fiction Obsession?

Is there a reason for this word choice? Unless Paul agrees with it, "science fiction interest" would be less derogatory.Jkolak (talk) 10:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Summer of Love

Why is Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club referenced with Surrealistic Pillow as an anthem to the Summer of Love? While this Beatles work was an important development in psychedelic music, which Summer of Love participants would have appreciated, the Summer of Love was a local San Francisco phenomenon related specifically to San Francisco bands.Jkolak (talk) 09:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bill Thompson

For some reason the page says that Bill Thompson became manager and was then replaced by Bill Graham. That's not quite correct. Bill Thompson had always had a hand in band management from the first days at the Matrix and didn't stop those duties when Katz or Graham were manager. Bill Graham was hired to replace Matthew Katz, and then Bill Thompson became full manager after Bill Graham was fired. Also, Bill Thompson was never road manager; Bill Laudner was the road manager. JoeD80 (talk) 02:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mansion

The mansion at 2400 Fulton Street is not quite in the Haight-Ashbury. The Haight-Ashbury is south-east of Golden Gate Park and the mansion is north of Golden Gate Park. It would more properly be labeled as in the Richmond District. JoeD80 (talk) 00:46, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Baxter's Cover

The house at 2400 Fulton Street was not purchased until 1968, so it is unlikely that the After Bathing at Baxter's cover drawn in 1967 has anything to do with it. Removed: features a whimsical re-imagining of the group's Haight-Ashbury house on Fulton Street JoeD80 (talk) 00:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] General

How unusual was their inclusion of a female lead singer at the time they began their recording career? Discuss.

I would say that being a female lead singer in a acid rock band with no other 
female musicians in the late 1960's was somewhat unusual.  (Big Brother and 
the Holding Company is the only other band that I can think of with a 
similar line-up.)  Keep in mind also, that Jefferson Airplane had more 
than one lead singer, and some would say that this was one of the major 
features of the so-called San Francisco sound.
I'd tend to agree, especially about acid rock, but it depends on how wide you cast your net for "rock groups". You can find any number of female led soul groups (Martha and the Vandellas spring to mind, but there are plenty of others, especially if you count singer + bunch of Stax/Motown session guys as a real band). But most accounts of the San Francisco hippy scene paint it as a pretty misogynist time, the guys dropped acid and played rock music while the women dropped acid, sewed, cooked and did the cleaning. -- User:GWO

Corrected the relationship between Grace and Darby Slick (in-laws via Darby's brother Jerry who was Grace's husband).


Is it really necesary to have a reference to gigs in Summer 2005? We're already in September 2005, and isn't this supposed to be an encyclopedia not a news/blog.

why are the external links at the top of the page??????

[edit] Correcton

Per Avalon Rick's World of Music (a music forum) and the album cover displayed there, the last official album of the original Jefferson Airplane was "Last Flight," not "Early Flight."

Last Flight is the name of a bootleg album of their last concert, not their official last album JoeD80 (talk) 00:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Biased

Doesn't it seem that this article is really biased towards Jefferson Airplane, especially in the "musical influence" secsion. I mean, JA got a section (or 2 secsions), but the Beatles got none.

--- I would hope that an article about Jefferson Airplane WOULD be "biased" toward Jefferson Airplane. Would your complaint be better served if the Beatles article had a "musical influence" section? I would include Coffin-King, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Elvis as well as others. Vanamoon (talk) 20:09, 2 February 2008 (UTC) ---

[edit] Needs editing

I think this article could improved by relocating some of the detail relating to specific albums to their own page. Also there is some duplication (i.e. references to "White Rabbit") which could be tidied up. Design 01:00, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Yep, the article still needs a lot of work; I'd love to see/contribute to articles about the albums. ProhibitOnions 23:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
I've copied, corrected, and amplified the Hot Tuna discography in the article about that group. It could be deleted here, with a reference/link to the other article. BillFlis 18:45, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RCA's many remasters

This discussion was on my talk page but as the anonymous user did not reply I think I'll move it here instead, in case anyone has anything to add, or the new user looks here instead. It refers to my removal of a paragraph with the edit summary "Rm highly POV statement about RCA CDs that is untrue; in fact, they neglected the Airplane catalog until the 1990s, poor quality rereleases, some (Modern Times) still not available": ProhibitOnions 14:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your accessment of the RCA/BMG CDs. When you mention that Modern Times has not been released on CD, you are talking about a Jefferson Starship album, not a Jefferson Airplane album. My point was about BMG continually reissuing Jefferson Airplane material. (Besides, it is my understanding that Modern Times was issed on CD in Europe.)

If RCA did not constantly re-issue this material, why do I own three different copies of the JA albums from the 1960s on CD? I have the original CDs (issued in the 1980s), the "remastered" CDs of Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and Surrealistic Pillow (issued in the 1990s) which include stereo and mono versions of every track, and the newly remastered copies (released a year or so ago) with extra "bonus tracks." That is at least two copies of each album with a third copy of the group's first two efforts. --MCB 3/6/2006

Hello, MCB, and thanks for writing. Please consider getting yourself a username.
I don't know if you were following this in the 1980s, but RCA did a thoroughly shoddy job of re-releasing the Airplane catalog. By 1986-88, the entire back catalog of most other major artists had been properly remastered and released by other labels, often with bonus tracks. RCA, on the other hand, had only released Surrealistic Pillow (with horrible sound) and a long series of compilations that simply repackaged The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane. 2400 Fulton St in 1987 was the first sign that they might be planning to do something with the back catalog, but it was not followed by re-releases, despite selling reasonably well.
Anyone who wanted Crown Of Creation on CD before 1990 had to buy the Mobile Fidelity version, which sounded much better than RCA's releases but cost a lot of money. And when RCA finally did release some of the JA albums, they were made from LP masters, not the original tapes, and the mastering job was so poor that they recalled Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and After Bathing At Baxter's, something that no other major label has ever had to do. For the record, I bought these CDs and took part in the recall; for example, the tape speed at the beginning of "Two Heads" speeded up and slowed down, and the album cover on Takes Off cropped the words "Takes Off." (Allmusic refers to this obliquely here.)
Despite this, Bark and Long John Silver were not among the albums released, and it took till the mid-1990s (I think 1994) until they were; only then were all the main Airplane albums available. By then, RCA had taken interest in JA, and begun to release the CDs again, this time paying more attention to the mastering. So those of us who already bought them had to spend the money again to get CDs that actually sounded all right. And a decade later, they did the same thing with the bonus tracks, to generate further revenue from the series. Meanwhile, other albums from the Jefferson catalog remain unreleased.
(Besides, it is my understanding that Modern Times was issed on CD in Europe.)
No, it wasn't, and that still wouldn't let RCA off the hook. Modern Times is still part of the Grunt back catalog, and has never been released in the U.S. or Europe. It was only released on CD in Japan, an expensive and hard-to-find import if you are not Japanese. There are several other albums related to the Airplane that have never been released, such as Slick's Software, Wrecking Ball, and Dreams; and Kantner's Planet Earth Rock'n'Roll Orchestra. The Slick solo albums (apart from Software) were released on minor labels in Japan and are near-impossible to find. PERRO has never been released on CD. (I have a pirate CD of it; there must be some demand.) The Jefferson Starship albums that were the first to be released on CD, namely Winds Of Change and Nuclear Furniture, have never been released since, and are now worth lots of money.
At least they finally released Manhole and Baron Von Tollbooth And The Chrome Nun in the past five years in reasonably good editions (no bonus tracks, though, and there are signs the master tapes had degraded). But the Best Of Grace Slick package from 1998 suggests that RCA/BMG had long been sitting on the master tapes, but decided to go with another compilation instead, as they had done in the 1980s with the Airplane catalog. ProhibitOnions 10:42, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I found an original "Winds of Change" CD at Tower Records before they went out of business. Must have been sitting in the back for years. "Modern Times" and "Nuclear Furniture" I picked up as Japanese Imports. Grace Slick's "Dreams" album I found as a South Korean import. Paul Kantner burned me a copy of Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra and signed it too! JoeD80 (talk) 20:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Nothing's Gonna Stop Us has to get my vote for the most execrable pop shite ever made. They play it in my local supermarket - I have to run out, ears bleeding. Second on the list is "We Built This City" - 80s corporate sentiment at its worst, and a million miles from the 60s hippy ideal they started with. What were they thinking? Graham 08:57, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Grace Slick herself has listed this as a reason for getting out of the band.117.47.95.100 (talk) 09:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Change the Starship section!

The fact that there is a section on here for Starship and that Starship is mentioned in the "years active" section of the summary on the top right of page suggests that this was somehow the same band. There should perhaps be a seperate page for Starship and the Jefferson Airplane page can have a link for it. I think it confuses people and makes casual readers think that Starship has something to do with Jefferson Airplane. The only member of Starship that was ever in Jefferson Airplane was Grace, and she wasn't a founding member. The legacy of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship has been tarnished by Starship and the format of this page only contributes to it. --Diamondthieves 22:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

While the opinion of an unregistered user isnt going to carry much weight around here, I've got to agree that it should be made clear that Starship and Jefferson Starship are two entirely different bands with insanely different musical styles. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.122.93.108 (talk) 19:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC).
I've added the various line-ups of the incarnations of Jefferson Airplane-Jefferson Starship and the successor bands to this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.6.38.147 (talk) 07:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC).
They aren't entirely separate bands though - The band lineup only lost two people between the albums Nuclear Furniture and Knee Deep in the Hoopla, but Craig, Pete, Grace, Mickey, and Donny were still there. They used the same staff (Skip Johnson, Bill Laudner, Jacky Kaukonen); The Grunt Records label was used until 1987; Bill Thompson continued to be their manager all the way to 1991; The Greatest Hits album includes songs from Freedom at Point Zero all the way to Love Among the Cannibals. JoeD80 (talk) 20:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Personnel section

There has to be a way to clean up the personnel section. It takes up WAY too much space.-- Reaper X 04:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

09:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)117.47.95.100 (talk)== Grace Slick's competition ==

Yes, Grace Slick did have some sort of competition during this time. Janis Joplin was her main female competition, according to a textbook called Popular American Music: from Minstrelsy to mp3. - (cgarcia 20:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC))

--- Yes, but it was just silly. They are really soooo different. There is so much noise in the popular press, I don't believe this nonsense would be missed if it was ignored. It hardly compares to say, W.C. Fields obsession with competing with Charlie Chaplin, for example.Vanamoon (talk) 20:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC) ---

I think their sense of sisterhood in participating in the scene was more important than any sense of commercial competition which was contrary to their values.117.47.95.100 (talk) 09:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent Major Edits

Why has this article been significantly altered without any discussion? Mainly, the creation of an entirely separate Jefferson Starship page and the subsequent removal of all of that information from here, in addition to insertion of non-POV wordings such as Jefferson Starship mutating into Starship, were all done without any explanation by user Dunks58 and others. I intend to revert these changes if there is not an adequate explanation posted to the talk page.

76.1.234.107 22:12, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Somebody to Love too Good Heart

[edit] Re: recent edits

My apologies for not discussing this with the community -- I'm still finding my way around these negotiation issues, learning the referencing techniques, etc. BTW I will add the required reference footnotes as soon as possible. Anyway I'm sorry if I trod on any toes with this.

I felt that an expansion and revision of the material on the Airplane was called for, since it hadn't had any major work done on it for some time, and I have access to a lot of info about the group that I felt would be of value and have a strong interest in the band.

I would argue that the logic of moving the info about Jefferson Starship to a new article is self-evident, and no less justifiable than setting up a separate article about Hot Tuna. The main article is about Jefferson AIRPLANE, after all, and since Starship was basically an entirely new band -- originally featuring only Slick and Kantner from the previous group, and later only Slick -- it seemed wholly appropriate (to me) to set up a separate, related article on that band.

Also, the very lengthy details about personnel and recordings of Jefferson Starship / Starship IMO made the Airplane article waaaay too long and very messy.

However I don't understand your objection re: the "non-POV wordings"? What is non-POV about the word 'mutated'? I'd be happy to subsitute 'evolved' but I still don't understand why this particular wording is a problem?

Dunks 03:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't only Kantner and Slick. John Barbata, David Freiberg, and Papa John Creach were all in the Airplane and joined Jefferson Starship when it started. Paul Kantner was in the band from 1965 - 1984; They used the same office staff between Airplane and Starship (Jacky Kaukonen, Bill Laudner, Pat Ieraci); Jefferson Starship continued to use 2400 Fulton Street as a base of operations until 1985. JoeD80 (talk) 20:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] President Jefferson

Does the band has anything to do or named after President Thomas Jefferson? WooyiTalk to me? 22:07, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

--- I believe that is a valid point. While the myth I have always heard is that a "Jefferson Airplane" was a the name of roach clip, I believe the spirit of Thomas Jefferson was a big inspiration to the band who sing so much about Revolution. Many of us of the time where believers that the "time was right for validation revolution", inspired by actually being awake during civics class and then shocked by the anti-democratic behavior of the Johnson and then Nixon era. Some of us even considered smoking marijuana a act of revolution, to free the mind from the cage of the Establishment.

May we never, never, "get fooled again".Vanamoon (talk) 20:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC) ---

They were named after Blind Lemon Jefferson JoeD80 (talk) 20:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

More specifically, the person who nicknamed Jorma as Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane was thinking of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was only a humor element in the mind of the person assigning the nickname. I'm sure that the values of Thomas Jefferson were not on anybody's mind in the Airplane.117.47.95.100 (talk) 09:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:BATE.jpg

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[edit] Dryden

Was Spencer Dryden fired or did he resigned, at one point it says he quit, but when discussing the 1989 reunion it says he was fired. Also it says on All Music Guide that he was fired, but was going to quit. What's the answer here? 75pickup (talk · contribs) 05:11, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that, too. I just watched the Fly Jefferson Airplane video, which is chock full of fairly recent interviews with most of the major Airplane members. In one of interviews with Marty Balin, he said that the band was getting more rock oriented, and needed a more powerful drummer. The impression I came away with was that Dryden was fired. Balin also stated that Skip was let go when he missed a practice or gig (I'll have to rent the video again to check this out). bizzwriter (talk · contribs) 21:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The band has said they fired Dryden many times and he quit many times and he kept rejoining. In the end, I think Dryden quit after the experience at Altamont. -- Spence was indeed fired because he missed a gig -- he had decided to drive down to Mexico instead. JoeD80 (talk) 20:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

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[edit] A call for a specific improvment

"Sometimes I feel so uninspired". There needs to be change to indicate that the bands first two "Big Hits", "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" where performed by "The Great Society" before Grace left that band and joined Airplane. The evidence is on the album, Conspiquious by it's Absence" a Great Society live album. "Somebody to Love" was written by Grace's brother-in-law and the band's lead guitarist, Darby Slick. The original version of "White Rabbit" featured a long improv section at the beginning with solos by Darby on guitar (he had a very unique style that no one has duplicated) and Grace on oboe at first and then recorder toward the end. I am not how to do this to the high standards of Wikipedia. I am studying the Manual of Style, but in the meantime, I thought I would throw this out to the community.

Go ride the music!

Vanamoon (talk) 20:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citations & References

See Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the <ref(erences/)> tags Nhl4hamilton (talk) 05:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)