Jefferson Airplane / Jefferson Starship should be one of the most influential bands ever in R & R history.

Marty Balin left.

Micky Thomas was better than Balin. A good Southern boy wailer.

Journalist Bill Wyman begs to differ:

[quote] These guys didn’t put out great albums. They barely put out listenable albums. But they were there when the counterculture created itself and at the center of one of the most vibrant and influential scenes of the day, and provided, for good and ill, an appropriate soundtrack for the time, which the band saw up close and personal. (Singer Balin was punched by a Hell’s Angel at Altamont.)

Grace needed retirement money, hence “We Built This City.”

They should’ve quit after Red Octopus and maybe their legacy would look very different.

Love the airy, breezy 70s songs, "With Your Love", "Count on Me", and "Miracles". They always sound like warm sunshine.

The last good song I remember from them was 'Find Your Way Back.' Everything after was dreck.

r3, linking the pretentious douchery that is Vulture. That's rich, hon.

I only really liked a couple of their songs but White Rabbit was the song of the counterculture. Whenever I hear it, it takes me right back to the late 60s.

Fuck these assholes, they're stupid and they don't know what they're talking about.

Grace Slick sang the shit out of Jefferson Airplane/Starship songs. She had a great rocker's voice that didn't get enough credit.

Jefferson Airplane got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame just last month. Jorma, Jack and Grace all showed up. Grace looked better than I would've thought, she hasn't been seen in public in awhile.

The Airplane: yes. The Starship: not so much. As long as Marty Balin was still on board, the craft was still flightworthy ("Red Octopus," "Spitfire," "Earth"). After that, there are few touchdowns worthy of applause.

Grace Slick is an awesome vocalist, and worthy of whatever kudos she gets. Jefferson Airplane will always be among my favorite bands. I wouldn't conflate the Airplane and the Starship, however. They're two very different acts, IMHO.

Grace was always known to outrageously quotable. She wanted Abbie Hoffman to crash a White House Tea hosted by Tricia Nixon, and the plan was to spike the punch with LSD. Her autobiography is the best I've ever seen from a rocker.

[Quote] The Starship: not so much

As I wrote not talking about "Starship."

Good, not great. Slick was a privilege kid anyway.

I think jefferson starship gets totally unfairly overlooked. they suffer from not being more like their predecessor, and from association with the band that followed them. but they are neither -- they are in fact a great late 70s AOR band. Their singles were played on classic rock radio all the time, much like Journey, yet time has forgotten them. I'd put "Jane", "Find Your Way Back", "Winds of Change" against anything of the genre released in the same era. I'd even go as far to include "No Way Out".

I listened the heck out of Surrealistic pillow. My fav song listed below. I’ve always thought Grace Slick was the inspiration for Aeon Flux. Her voice, her character.

It’s very hard to not say ‘Today’ is my fav, those two songs are both so beautiful. Of course no one will ever pass forget White Rabbit.

Yes, R5, I absolutely agree. Their 70's songs are beautiful. I never cared for their songs after those. Marty Balin knew how to sing those love songs.

r14, A lot of them come from that. How do you think they get their feet in?

R3 funny list. He puts Stevie Nicks solo induction as the most unearned. 😳😲

My favorite is After Bathing At Baxters, except for that short gabble "song" which I think was made to make fun of the censorship fight they had with the studio. Saturday Afternoon is great, and next is Crown of Creation. I love House at Pooneil Corners.

I don't blame Grace Slick for the Starship stuff in the 80s one bit. Yes the songs were hokey but she didn't want to spend the rest of her life on the oldies circuit. She was in her forties and at the end of the line for top 40 radio play and making a lot of $$$ in the business, so she took the opportunity and ran with it, got a bunch of hits, a bunch of sold out tours and made a pile of $$$ to retire on. And that's exactly what she did - she retired from the music business at the end of the 80s and has been living VERY comfortably in Malibu for the past 30-plus years.

Paul Kantner and Marty Balin were still playing shitty gigs until they dropped dead because they couldn't afford to retire. Grace had the right idea.

R14, so what? How did that have any effect on her voice as a rock singer?

There's nothing actually wrong with having parents who are/were comfortably well off. Are you insane?

They had that great tone of Bay Area 60s - the hippy dippy psychedelic groove with a big menacing reminder of bad acid trips, napalm in Vietnam, the gritty and grim underbelly of counterculture.

The truth is hurting some people.

I was just listeniing to this BEST OF which collected tracks up through 1971 ............ fucking love it.

R5 agree. White Rabbit and Want Somebody to Love are enough to earn them a place in R&R history.

Jane is such a great song - I had forgotten about it until this thread.

We liked Fleetwood Mac a lot more.

Marty Balin was great though. Great voice. Mickey Thomas was a huge downgrade.

I always was a fan of Marty Balin's voice. It acquired a more commercial /corporate rock sound when he left and Mickey Thomas joined the band. But Mickey was a different style singer, and very gifted voice. Hear him on Jane and Sara to appreciate how far he can take a song. I hated We Built This City, but their later songs still sold records and sold out arenas.

Here's Mickey Thomas before joining Jefferson Starship, with his incredible lead singing on the Elvin Bishop hit, Fooled Around and Fell in Love.

R3, the first requirement for being a rock critic is to have your head up your ass.

The Airplane’s Bless its Pointed Little Head is one of the greatest “live” rock albums.

great!

.........

Grace's vocals are great in this.

This was always on MTV.

Loved this album cover when I was a kid.

love!

^love Grace’s foray into disco “Love Too Good.”

R19, I can't believe Nirvana is in the top 10 or that Elvis is ahead of James Brown.

Always loved this bizarre little song, and it shows off Grace's voice.

[quote]Mickey was a different style singer, and very gifted voice. Hear him on Jane and Sara to appreciate how far he can take a song.

Agreed. I don't care what anyone says, this was one of the most gorgeous ballads of the '80s:

R19 - that Vulture article about the Hall of Fame was one of the best music articles I've ever read. I was screaming the roof off when he got to the ones he felt weren't deserving. Home run!

Jefferson Airplane/Starship weren't much. They're not deserving of any worship. Paul Kantner was an asshole and so is Grace Slick.

Yeah r43 most legendary musicians were assholes. Go listen to Celine Dion you fucking cunt.

Grace is immortal. White Rabbit is a definite song of the late 20th Century. It will be listened to for hundreds of years.

Grace quit JS in 78, after a disaster of a show in Germany. She was too sick to go on - and drunk - so she started harassing the audience about WWII. She stuck her fingers in some guy's nose, and was singing 'Who won the war?', She left, and didn't return until the MTV age started. Mickey was not Marty; he had that soulful voice, but Marty founded the original group, even though Grace and Paul Kantner all but reduced him to a supporting player. When Balin left, Airplane crashed, and the success of Jefferson Starship was not secure until Marty signed on, and his ballads made the hits.

Grace, though, was the one who could get press. Some good, a lot bad. She sang one JA concert, dressed as Hitler, including the moustache, and sang every song in a German accent. The rest of the band was furious with her. But they needed her.

Lol! ^^^

R40 - I agree. I'm a massive Jefferson Airplane fan, but I think the Sunfighter album, credited to Paul Kantner & Grace Slick is stronger than pretty much any album put out by JA. Their album with David Frieberg, Baron Von Toolbooth And The Chrome Nun, is almost as good.

It never ceases to amaze me that Jefferson Airplane's singles did nothing commercially over here in the UK.

Jefferson Starship stink to high heaven, and Starship are a musical atrocity.

[quote]Jefferson Starship stink to high heaven,

No they don't. Miracles alone is a gem of a song. Love Too Good should've been a big hit.

[quote] Grace is immortal. White Rabbit is a definite song of the late 20th Century. It will be listened to for hundreds of years.

Old timer, your brain is fried, probably from all that acid you did in the 60s. Grace Slick is not "immortal", she's an old cunt that only acid heads like you worship. As for "White Rabbit", well, I don't think it's even played on oldies stations anymore.

r49 I'm actually a Gen Xer, in my forties. Piss off. You still hear White Rabbit all the time.

Grace invested her money into real estate. That's how she was able to retire so comfortably.

[quote] I'm actually a Gen Xer, in my forties. Piss off. You still hear White Rabbit all the time.

"Hear White Rabbit all the time?" In your druggie head, maybe. Anyway, your brains are fried from something. Do fuck off.

R41

I agree. Do you remember when they used that song in I think a tv movie where the woman is a surrogate mother and falls in love with the baby, named Sarah, and runs off with her? I think it was based on a news story at the time and I thought was very touching the way they used it.

Here's a copy of White Rabbit on Youtube, uploaded 7 years ago, it has over 7 million views during that time. I don';t think it's a song that is going away anytime soon.

Other than "Somebody to Love", "White Rabbit" and "Volunteers", the Airplane's music ranged from forgettable to unlistenable. I agree with critic Bill Wyman.

They kind of remind me of Procol Harum in that regard. Everybody was high on acid and thought they were phenomenal, when in reality, they had one or two phenomenal songs, and literally nothing else to recommend them.

Jefferson Starship at least had a decent number of memorable tunes: Ride the Tiger, MIracles, Fast Buck Freddy, With Your Love, Count On Me, Runaway, Play On Love, Love Too Good.

All those San Francisco bands from that era were pretty shitty musically. Janis Joplin was criticized for ditching Big Brother and the Holding Company but she did the right thing. As a band they had "energy" but they were very sloppy musicians.

[quote] Here's a copy of White Rabbit on Youtube, uploaded 7 years ago, it has over 7 million views during that time.

So what. . There's a remastered version of "Hey Jude" on YouTube that was uploaded FOUR years ago and has gotten 55 MILLION views. And "Hey Jude" still gets played on the radio. Poor "White Rabbit" can't compete.

Starship?? Ahem NO

They just weren't that good. They should have stayed a SF band.

When Chick-Fil-A used White Rabbit in one of its commercials Grace donated the money she made from it as the writer to an LGBT charity.

Not sure how influential they were as opposed to influenced, OP.

Love them, tho.

When Jack and Jorma split to form Hot Tuna, I think many fans of Jefferson Airplane 'took sides'. Definitely hurt Airplanes sound and cut their fan base.

They all made amazing music.

"White Rabbit" is a masterpiece