Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
For more than two decades, Jeff Tamarkin has been one of the most
respected and prolific music journalists in the country. For 15 years
he was Editor of Goldmine, the "bible" of record/CD collectors. Prior
to that, he served as the first Editor of CMJ and as Editor of Relix.
He was also the first Editor of Grateful Dead Comix, and has written
for dozens of publications, including Billboard, Pulse, Creem, Mojo,
Newsday and ICE, and has contributed to the Guinness Encyclopedia of
Popular Music and the All-Music Guide. He has written the liner notes
for more than 50 CDs, including most of the Jefferson Airplane catalog,
as well as related CDs by Hot Tuna, Jefferson Starship and solo albums
by the members of those bands. Jeff has also served on the Nominating
Committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and as a consultant to the
Grammys. As a consultant to the Music Club CD label, he assisted in
releasing over 180 reissues and compilations, in styles ranging from
jazz to country to pop. Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of
Jefferson Airplane (Atria Books) is his first book. Published in June
2003, it is the first biography of this legendary San Francisco band,
and was written with the cooperation of all of the band members. Jeff
is currently the Editor of Global Rhythm, the leading magazine for
world music and global culture. He lives in Hoboken, NJ, with his wife,
the novelist and Boston Globe book columnist Caroline Leavitt, and
their son, Max.

Leading the conversation is Inkwell.vue host David Gans. David is a 
musician, writer, radio producer, and online raconteur who has spent 
many years doing for the Grateful Dead what Jeff Tamarkin has done 
for the Jefferson Airplane.
  

    
Thanks for inviting me into the Inkwell! Let's talk Airplane...
  

    
Great to have you!  We have been colleagues for decades, and in fact you were
my editor at Relix on a few occasions.

Am I correct in recalling that the Airplane were the first of the "San
Francisco Sound" bands to score big in the record business?
  

    
Well, I guess that depends on your definition of "San Francisco
Sound." The Beau Brummels actually preceded them to the charts with
"Laugh, Laugh" and "Just a Little" in early 1965, but they were more of
a pure folk-rock band. For that matter, so was the Airplane when they
first started out. They had a standup bass and their repertoire largely
consisted of folk and blues covers. Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, Jorma
Kaukonen, Signe Anderson and Bob Harvey (their first bassist) all came
out of the San Francisco folk scene, which was rather rich at the time.

But by the time they replaced Harvey with Jack Casady and Jerry
Peloquin with Skip Spence, they started to expand their sound, becoming
more electric (i.e., louder). They also began writing their own
material, which--due to a number of factors--took on that psychedelic
glow we all came to love. So if there is a San Francisco Sound, then
the Airplane, as defined by the music on their first and second albums
(Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and Surrealistic Pillow) was probably
responsible for its direction and for getting it out to the world.

But I'm not wholly convinced there ever was such a thing as a San
Francisco "Sound," per se. Although you can definitely find
similarities in the approach that Jorma, Jerry Garcia and, say, John
Cipollina or Sam Andrew took their lead guitar work, or even between
Casady and Phil Lesh, you can't really say that the Airplane, the Dead,
Big Brother and Quicksilver sounded that much alike. They all liked to
jam on a song, true, and had a general looseness in their onstage
attitudes, but vocally, for one thing, those four bands had almost
nothing in common. I would agree that there was a San Francisco
Attitude more than a San Francisco Sound.
  

    
Anyway, to continue where I left off, the Airplane was undeniably the
first of the San Francisco rock bands to score big in the record
business. They were the first to sign to a major label, RCA (the Beau
Brummels were on an indie label), and the Airplane paved the way for
the other SF bands to get deals. (Some of them, like Quicksilver,
weren't even sure they wanted to make records but they all eventually
did.)
  

    

> I would agree that there was a San Francisco Attitude more than a San Fran-
> cisco Sound.

Oh, I like that a lot.

There are some early recordings of the Grateful Dead in which they sound
rather like the Beau Brummels, and like a lot of other bands of the time.  If
the Airplane sounded like that at all, it was only for about ten minutes.
(They never had that spooky organ, for one thing.)

The Airplane did sound a lot like some of the folk and folk-rock acts I heard
when I was reading Richie Unterberger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "Eight Miles
High" -- the baritone and the girl singer with a fairly wide interval between
their melody lines seem like an obvious model for the Airplane.

The only Airplane album I ever paid much attention to when I was a kid was
"Surrealistic Pillow."  I didn't know what to make of "After Bathing at
Baxter's" nor the ones that followed.  Now I hear them and I hear a lot of
very interesting stuff, but it didn't seem like very accessible music to my
teenaged pop (hippie wannabe) mentality.  Can you tell us a bit about how
they fared in the biz through those early years?
  

    
First, regarding the early recordings, I agree about the Dead/Warlocks
stuff--it would have fit very nicely on the Nuggets compilation. THey
were much more of a punky garage band than the Airplane.

JA didn't have as much of an R&B influnece--no Pigpen among their
ranks. They definitely had a blues influence, but that was mainly
Jorma, and he was more influenced by the acoustic country blues of Rv.
Gary Davis and Blind Blake than the hard electric blues that influenced
the Dead. Both Kantner and Balin (who were really guiding JA at the
beginning) had deep folk roots. Marty had just come out of a quartet
called the Town Criers that was doing the harmony thing that was
popular at the time, ala Kingston Trio, Rooftop Singers, Limeliters,
etc. Paul was also very much influenced by those groups, especially the
Weavers. So really, what JA did at first was to amplify folk
music--not unlike then contemporaries such as the We Five (you're
right--all of this is covered thoroughly in Richie's excellent books). 

But that entire phase didn't last more than six months or so. When
Casady joined the band, he and Jorma immediately started pushing the
electric envelope, as it were. And you're right, they never had that
spooky organ thing going (which I happen to love in the early Dead
material)--Airplane was strictly a guitar band.

OK, getting to your question about "the biz." Without re-writing the
first half of my entire book here, suffice to say that as soon as the
Airplane gained a little power at their record company, which occurred
once they sold massive qualtities of "Somebody to Love," "White Rabbit"
and the Surrealistic Pillow album, they pretty much took the bull by
the horns and decided they were going to call the shots with the next
album. For Takes Off and Pillow they had been assigned producers and
engineers by the label (and didn't get along very well with them), and
they had also been dealing with a very domineering, abusive manager who
tried as best he could to push them in a direction he thought they
should go in. 

So for the third album, After Bathing at Baxter's, they literally
decided to NOT go for a commercial album. They may in fact be the first
rock band that deliberately chose not to try to make a hit record.
We're into '67 here, Summer of Love and all that, lots of acid all over
the place, etc. The Airplane decided to just go into the studio and
make it up as they were along. And that's what they did. Baxter's was
their most experimental album, also their most psychedelic by a long
shot. It also happens to be my personal favorite, just because of that
looseness and chaos and experimentation (I'm weird like that--Anthem of
the Sun is my favorite Dead album, and I know the band hated it). 

Inaccessible? Some of it definitely is, like "A Small package of Value
Will Come to You, Shortly," which is a few minutes of trippy sound
collage. But some of the songs, like "Martha" and :Youn Girl Sunday
Blues," I think are very accessible and rather beautiful. Baxter's is
also where Grace really took off as a songwriter--her "rejoyce" is a
very complex, daring work.

So anyway, it worked--they didn't have as big a hit with Baxter's as
they did with Pillow. After that, with Crown of Creation and
Volunteers, I think there is both accessible and not so accessible
music.  And Bless its Pointed Little Head is nothing short of one of
the greatest live albums of all time. 

By that period, '67-'69, they were one of the most popular bands in
the country so they could pretty much get away with anything they
wanted. The record biz was just starting to figure out what rock was
all about and the amazing sales potential it had, so it left all these
crazy hippies alone. On the Airplane's first album RCA censored or
actually rejected three songs for silly reasons like using the word
"trips." By Volunteers three years later, they could get away with "Up
against the wall, mother----er" and RCA just sort of shrugged and went
off to sell the thing (and did a good job at that). 
  

    

> (I'm weird like that--Anthem of the Sun is my favorite Dead album, and I
> know the band hated it)

They hated it?  Where'd you read that?

(The Grateful Dead had a long history of dissing their own recorded works.
Sometimes they were right, e.g. "Steal Your Face," but sometimes, in my
opinion, they were being disingenuous and coy.  But the self-deprecation took
on the aura of legend, and an awful lot of Deadheads perpetuated the received
"wisdom" and badmouthed the records.  A mistake, in my opinion.)




> By Volunteers three years later, they could get away with "Up against the
> wall, mother----er"

It's okay to spell out "fuck" here, Jeff.
  

    

Please explain the etymology and meaning of the name "Pooneil."
  

    
>It's okay to spell out "fuck" here, Jeff.<

Well, that's a relief. You can never be too sure in a John Ashcroft
world! In one of RCA's many attempts to censor the Airplane they
wouldn't allow them to print the word motherfucker in the lyric sheet
to the Volunteers album, so the band made it "Up against the wall Fred"
instead (with all due respect to any Freds among us). From then on,
Fred was their substitute word for fuck. 

Re Anthem, I was always under the impression that the Dead (or at
least some of them, maybe it was just Phil) weren't happy with the mix
and the way so many sources were cobbled together. I always thought it
added to the record's uniqueness and psychedelic-ness myself. I never
had a problem with most of the Dead's albums, in fact, although I never
play later stuff like Go To Heaven. I even think the first album is a
gem. 

Pooneil. Paul Kantner combined two of his favorite entities, Winnie
the Pooh and the folk singer Fred Neil. Someone on the Starship's web
site recently asked him what the deal was with Winnie and Paul just
paraphrased that bit from the Bible. He wrote, ""LEST YE REMAIN AS A
LITTLE CHILD, YE SHALL NOT ENTER INTO & THRU THE WINDOWS OF
HEAVEN!!!(SIC)" Neil was a very big influence on Paul's songwriting.

As to why Paul chose to combine those two particular names in the
titles of two songs, ya got me. That's just one of those Paul things.
He does quote from Pooh in a couple of his song lyrics.

Fred Neil is really great, in case anyone isn't familiar with him. He
wrote "Everybody's Talkin'," the song that Harry Nilsson had a big hit
with (it was the theme from Midnight Cowboy) and also "The Dolphins,"
which a load of people covered. In fact, Neil had an album called Tear
Down The Walls, which kind of brings us full circle 'cause the Airplane
borrowed that phrase as one of the key lines in "We Can Be Together,"
which was on Volunteers. In fact, it directly follows the "up against
the wall" line.
  

    

> Re Anthem, I was always under the impression that the Dead (or at least
> some of them, maybe it was just Phil) weren't happy with the mix and the
> way so many sources were cobbled together. I always thought it added to the
> record's uniqueness and psychedelic-ness myself.

That "cobbled together" aspect was part of the concept!  It was straight outa
Mills College and the modern composers Phil and TC were into.  There was a
place called the Tape Music Center in SF, if I recall correctly, that later
moved to (or merged with ) Mills.  Ramon Sender, who still haunts these hal-
las as <rabar> I do believe, was part of that scene.

Anyway, "Anthem of the Sun" was _performed_ to stereo tape by the band and
Dan Healy.  They got all those pieces together and organized their tape
decks, then rolled the (recording) tape and let it fly.  There's place in
"Alligator" where one playback is slowing down while another is speeding up.

Phil remixed "Anthem" and "Aoxomoxoa" in 19971, but in the early '80s told me
he regretted it.  And if the original mixes hadn't been lost, the recent
reissues would have been of the original mixes.



> Neil had an album called Tear Down The Walls, which kind of brings us full
> circle 'cause the Airplane borrowed that phrase as one of the key lines in
> "We Can Be Together," which was on Volunteers. In fact, it directly follows
> the "up against the wall" line.

When I first heard The Fred Neil/Vince Martin album "Tear Dwn the Wwalls"
(recently reissued on CD by Collector's Choice), I thought the vocal blend
was an obvious precursor to the Airplane vocal sound.
  

    

Anyway, it's amusing to think of what power these wacko bands had over the
largely uncomprehending music biz people in those days, while at the same
time the suits would freak out over the use of the word "trips" in a song.
  

    
I prefer the original mix of Anthem too--whether it was a deliberate
attempt or an inspired accident.

As far as the power that bands like the Airplane had, that was just
another aspect of everyone making it all up as they went along. The
record labels (especially RCA, which had no real rock background
outside of Elvis) were largely clueless when the '60s kicked into high
gear and rock bands started to take matters into their own hands and
were happy to let the bands roll with their instincts as long as they
kept making money for the suits. There was no formula to creating a
successful rock record, so as long as those wacky kids bought the stuff
that these longhaired hippies recorded, the labels quickly learned it
was best to just leave them alone. Grace says something to that effect
in my book and she's right. RCA would have preferred that the Airplane
stick with the formula that gave them hits in "Somebody to Love" and
"White Rabbit," but when the band came back for album number three and
said we'd like to do it our way now, thank you very much, RCA had no
reason to think that the band's new ideas would be any less
commercially viable. The label had no experience with bands as
musically progressive as the Airplane--indeed, the concept of a band
evolving artistically was a new concept (ala the Beatles going from
Rubber Soul to Revolver to Sgt. Pepper during the same three-year
period the Airplane took to get from Takes Off to Surrealistic Pillow
to After Bathing at Baxter's. 

What the label didn't realize was that the band had no INTEREST by
1967 in making hit singles, that the game had changed dramatically in
the several months since they'd had those hits. So Baxter's, that third
album, was not nearly as successful as Pillow and no hit singles came
out of it, which left RCA wondering if this was such a good idea to let
the band loose in the studio but left the band perfectly satisfied
with the outcome. Baxter's also happens to be my personal favorite JA
album--the spontaneity and chaos and daring of it perfectly represents
to me the Airplane at their creative, anarchic peak.

Anyway, as you said, the suits were too busy worrying over what
four-letter words the band might be trying to sneak in (like "trip") to
stop and think whether there was actually an audience for what they
were now creating, which was a true blessing in disguise for the
Airplane because the band was able to get away with making a record
that was virtually unscathed by outside influences. They were assigned
a new producer for that record, Al Schmitt, their third in three
albums, but his entire approach was basically to give the band all the
artistic leeway that it needed, and to just make sure they could
realize technically what they were attempting to put down on tape. You
just don't get that in today's producer-dominated record biz.
  

    

What an amazing moment in history.  I guess that sort of thing happens in
every cultural revolution.

How did the Airplane fare on tour after they stopped worrying about hit
singles?
  

    
Short answer: Better all the time. By that time their reputation as a
live band had expanded far and wide, and for good reason: they became
one of the most amazing live acts out there. Like those other San
Franciscans who seem to keep popping up in this thread, JA was really a
live band first, despite their success as record-makers. Their
audience continued to grow until they split up--by 1972 they were
playing to more people than they had during their heyday. And that
audience only continued to get larger when they morphed into Jefferson
Starship. Meanwhile, of course, Hot Tuna built its own audience from
scratch, and were more than able to hold their own (which they still
do).
  

    

Speaking of Hot Tuna, one aching gap in your tale was the story of why Jack
and Jorma split up the first time.  Hot Tuna kinda went away for several
years, didn't they?
  

    
Yes, they did split in the late '70s and reunited in 1983. I didn't
really address the reasons in the book because they involved personal
matters. Long story short, a lot of stuff was going on with Jorma's
wife's health and he needed to deal with that, and in the process he
and Jack basically took a needed break from each other. There was no
major rift but J&J were also having issues with each other by that
point, and the time off allowed them to do other things musically and
to heal their own relationship, wich has been strong ever since. I know
a lot of fans weren't too pleased with some of the things J&J did
during this period, i.e., Jack's SVT and Jorma's White Gland/Vital
Parts, but after so many years of getting locked into playing a certain
kind of music, they both felt they needed to break out and try other
things. Which, incidentally, they are both currently doing as well,
although they're keeping Tuna active while they explore other areas.
  

    

What do you think of Jack's solo debut, which just came out a couple of weeks
ago?
  

    
I personally like it. It's called Dream Factor and it's on Eagle Rock
Records. Jack is a song person first and foremost and for this album he
didn't want to do some jam band/showoffy bass muso type album. He
basically hooked up with a bunch of fine musicians and singers,
including Paul Barrere or Little Feat, Ivan Neville, the guys from Box
Set, Fee Waybill of the Tubes, Jorma, Warren Haynes and others, and put
out a rock record that's comprised of well-crafted well-played songs.
One instrumental, but no big bass solos or anything like that. I've
heard a few complaints from fans that were hoping for more of a display
of Jack's musicianship, but he really didn't want to do a Hot Tuna
type record. I also happened to love SVT, Jack's punk band, in the late
'70s, and I know a lot of Tuna/Airplane people hated to see him doing
that.
  

    

Let's talk a bit about the diversity of these musicians.  Like That Other
Band from the Sixties, the Airplane amalgamated a number of different in-
fluences and created something that no one else could have done.
  

    
Hi Jeff ...

Loved the book ... "it was like a flashback, man ..." :-)

I'm a year or two older than you and JA appeared in my listening space
pretty early ... I was enthused with psychedelia but not a "band fan"
type, though I saw JA a couple of times, including one obscure concert
you noted in the book, Jorma jamming with the Dead at Rochester, NY
(1970).

So although I remember the grapevine stories about JA you cleared up
a lot of puzzles for me that were left hanging decades ago!

Have a few observations, including some minor nit-picking. Mind if I
share?

Oh, and you didn't answer my Burning Question :-) Why did Casady
always wear shades? Was he just making a fashion statement, or does he
have some retinal or pigment pathology with his eyes?
  

    
Jeff,

Did you ever write for a magazine called Record Review.  It came out on
newsprint.   I've been with you for years, especially Relix and Goldmine.  I
think Goldmine is one of the best magazines ine the world along with Mojo.

I just finished the book last night and you did a great job.  Lots of very
distructive personalities in this band.  I have to run but I hope to talk
more this weekend.

Dan
  

    
I did write for a magazine called Record Review, one of the many late,
lamented music mags.

As for Casady, I don't know of any eye problems. He doesn't wear the
shades offstage so I'm guessing maybe he just doesn't like the lights
in his eyes. 

David, will get to your question asap--still running around doing book
promo stuff and I have to run. More soon. 

Thanks all for joining in this chat. Looks like it will be fun.
  

    
record review was a great magazine, it was one of the first that did in
depth articles on a groups output.

reading the book has made me want to scope out some of the hot tuna albums.

i do have first pull up then pull down on vinyl.

i recall the reunion show i saw at the greek in los angeles as being just
horrible shit, yet the book treats the show as being okay...the only good
part i remember is the hot tuna segmenta.....although i didn't realize jorma
was strung out at the time.

i would love to spend a session at jorma's guitar camp.

can we make this topic visible or is there a reason it is retired?
  

    
when you worked at goldmine, did you have to live in wisconson?

if so, i feel for you.
  

    
Hi Jeff! Just checking in and will say more after I've caught up
with the previous postings.