Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Hwy, Wisconsin isn't all bad... it's the birthplace of The Onion!
  

    

From Rick Lieberman:


Hi, Jeff --

Do you have any info on the guitar/effect/technique Casady used for his
drone rhythm guitar on "Fat Angel"?  Was it a Vinnie Bell elec. sitar-type
thing or what?  I do remember he didn't use a pick when he played it.
Thanks!
  

    
I've been in Wisconson, yechhh!!!!

But the Onion is ok!   %)
  

    
As I posted above, I loved the book! But here are three minor quibbles
and queries for Jeff. 1. and 2. are just fluff, but 3. is interesting.

1. Was Aldous Huxley really a proponent of LSD (pg. 19)? He tripped 9
times, they say, on plant substances, but I don't recall reading that
he ever took or advocated LSD, and I'm fairly well read in Huxley.

2. Was G. Gordon Liddy really "one of Nixon's favorite henchmen"
(pg. 341)? I thought Nixon didn't even know Liddy existed until the
scandal broke. But I could have my Watergate history confused.

3. One thing the book didn't entirely convey was *why* the Airplane
were a more popular music act than similar and more musically
sophisticated contemporaneous acts. I have in mind the band It's A
Beautiful Day, who already had the 1975 Starship/Creach sound in 1968
(compare "White Bird" to "Fast Buck Freddy").
  

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

if so, i feel for you.<

No, fortunately. They tried to get me to move out there many times but
I wasn't going for it. I did visit a few times a year and it's just
not my kinda scene, although I did make some very good friends out
there. I just have trouble with a place where the nearest movie theater
is 40 miles away!
  

    
>Do you have any info on the guitar/effect/technique Casady used for
his
drone rhythm guitar on "Fat Angel"?  Was it a Vinnie Bell elec.
sitar-type
thing or what?  I do remember he didn't use a pick when he played it.
Thanks!<

No, I'm afraid I'm completely clueless when it comes to equipment. I
did have the band members run through what they used at various stages
of the band's run but I never got into the "Fat Angel" setup with Jack.
He's fairly accessible thugh if you'd like to ask him. I believe his
email address is on his web site, jackcasady.com.
  

    
>1. Was Aldous Huxley really a proponent of LSD (pg. 19)? He tripped 9
times, they say, on plant substances, but I don't recall reading that
he ever took or advocated LSD, and I'm fairly well read in Huxley.

2. Was G. Gordon Liddy really "one of Nixon's favorite henchmen"
(pg. 341)? I thought Nixon didn't even know Liddy existed until the
scandal broke. But I could have my Watergate history confused.

3. One thing the book didn't entirely convey was *why* the Airplane
were a more popular music act than similar and more musically
sophisticated contemporaneous acts. I have in mind the band It's A
Beautiful Day, who already had the 1975 Starship/Creach sound in 1968
(compare "White Bird" to "Fast Buck Freddy").<

I'll have to profess ignorance on questions 1 and 2 and if I'm wrong
I'll add those to the list of things that need to be adjusted if we go
into another printing.

As for It's a Beautiful Day, I think their lack of success can
probably be attributed to the fact that they were managed by Matthew
Katz, who also of course was the Airplane's first manager. By the time
Katz took on IABD he was the most hated man in the San Francisco music
biz, and none of the other major players, including Bill Graham and Tom
Donahue, wanted anything to do with him. So I would think they had a
hard time getting very far (although Graham did book the band) because
of their management. Katz also effectively killed Moby Grape's career
before it had a chance to get off the ground (and both of those bands
are still suffering today because of what he did to them back then).
The Airplane's early success didn't come until they'd dumped Katz and
taken up with Graham as their manager, and of course they also had
Grace and the two songs she brought over from the Great Society.

Also, although RCA was somewhat clueless regarding the kind of band
they had signed, the label did have a strong promotional department and
knew how to push the band to the media. So as soon as it appeared the
Airplane was going to have a hit record, RCA capitalized and got the
band major media placements. 
  

    <scribbled by ceder Sat 26 Jul 03 09:40>
  

    
Do you mmean 'Sunfighter"?
  

    <scribbled by ceder Sat 26 Jul 03 09:33>
  

    
Thank you.  ;-)
I had the name wrong...
  

    
As far as Huxley and LSD, he did, I believe, take it with Humphrey
Osmond, and I also understand that when he realized he was dying he had
himself injected with some. Don't have cites for this, but I do have a
copy of Storming Heaven in the house. Which, of course, doesn't have
an index, dammit. 
  

    
Excellent topic and book. Great to see the JA getting some attention
again. They were one of my top 3 bands back in the day. I think their
straightforward and rowdy political orientation was one thing that set
them apart from some of the other bands of that era.

As to Huxley's LSD adventures, I found this article which compares his
last novel Island with his life experiences, and features comments by
his wife Laura:

>The Huxleys had taken LSD together while listening to Bach's Fourth
Brandenburg Concerto - as does the main character in Island - and
experienced "aesthetic revelations". 

But Laura Huxley is anxious to put her husband's relationship with LSD
into context, saying that between 1953 and 1963 he took the drug only
about 10 or 12 times, the sort of dosage that some people have taken in
a single week. His experiences are described in The Doors of
Perception (1953).

"Psychedelics are an extraordinary means if you use them very
carefully and religiously," she says.
[. . .]
In her memoir, This Timeless Moment, Laura Huxley describes how her
husband took LSD as he died.

"He had taken this moksha medicine in which he believed. Once again,
he was doing what he had written in Island, and I had the feeling that
he was interested and relieved and quiet." 

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/07/02/1023864731582.html
  

    
so  was the reunion tour in 89 musically good?

did i just see a bad show in los angeles?

and how many times are they going to be reissuing the first 5 albums on cd?

of course, i will be getting crown of creation and after bathing at baxters
the second they hit the local el pee shop......
  

    
Ah, my '89 memory.  More symbolic than anything else, watching them
perform "Volunteers of America" in front of the US Capitol during
a homeless demonstration in October of 1989.  That is, a demonstration
for the homeless.
  

    
One would be right in saying that Huxley's last words -- in a scribbled 
note to Laura -- was a request for an injection of LSD, which she gave 
him.

Hey, Jeff!  I'm logging in from Paris, where I am on my honeymoon, so I 
can only drop in here occasionally.  But I'm a great admirer of your work.  
Thanks for the inspiration and information over the years.

Just a couple of tiny ignorable questions:

Are there any out-takes from "Blows Against the Empire," as far as you
know?  And did anyone ever figure out how the wrong master of "Let's Go
Together" got used for the CD remaster of that wonderful album?
  

    
Hi Jeff ... looks like things are going swimmingly here.  I'm in
Minnesota and this is the first time I've had access to a computer. 
I'm reading along ... cheers!
  

    
One of the bands contemporary with Jefferson Airplane was Big Brother
and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin as the singer.  I really like
the songs she did with them, Lisght is faster than sound, Women is
losers, Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz.

I was disappointed when she left Big Brother and got her own band. 
She was praised for becoming more "authentic", but I liked her new
songs less.

Did anyone else have a similar reaction?
  

    
I didn't mis her band much. They never entirely learned to tune their
instruments.  But "Piece of My Heart" was definitely a Big Brother
song.

Of course, raw musicianship wasn't what these bands were about. They
were about building a concert stage in Ken Kesey's "Edge City" and
going "Furthur". About the zeitgeist: psychedelia, free love, and
brutal frankness in excoriating the failures of the Establishment.

Those were scary days, and the music was scary to march along to.
  

    
Well, Mercedes-Benz, with lyrics by Beat poet Michael McClure, was on 
Pearl, the album with the Full Tilt Boogie Band.

I like all her stuff really.
  

    
I loved "To Love Somebody" on Pearl.
  

    
I seem to recall that Spencer Dryden is on bad terms with the rest
of the Airplane members. What happened there (if anything)?
  

    
OK, I'll try to respond to a bunch of stuff at once here. I just got
home from a very satisfying week of book promo stuff in the Bay Area
and while it's always nice to be home I'm aching for that 60 degree
weather and fog right now--my kinda summer.

Anyway, first, big hellos to Steve Silberman and David Freiberg.
Thanks for checking in from points beyond. You guys have both inspired
me in your own ways as well!

I'll start with the last question, regarding Spencer. It's a long,
complicated story (as is everything Airplane) but in short, Spencer
began a relationship with Grace shortly after they both settled into
the band. As Grace was the "star," she wielded more power in the band
than the others (try as she might to not have that power) and whoever
was her boyfriend at the time got a lot of that residual power by
default. Spencer certainly took advantage of that and there were times
that he and Grace threatened to quit the band if things didn't go their
way--particularly, they said that if the band didn't fire Bill Graham
as manager, they were out. So Graham was fired and Bill Thompson became
manager (he was given the task of firing Graham, which he likens to
firing King Kong), but Paul, especially, held a grudge against Spencer
for decades over that. In fact, when the Airplane did their '89
reunion, the reason Spencer wasn't asked to join was because Paul still
held the Graham canning against him. 

Anyway, as soon as Grace and Spencer split up as a couple, and she
started hooking up with Paul, Spencer was kicked out of the band. Grace
may have been a strong woman, but in some matters she deferred to
whoever her man was at the time, so she allowed Paul to make the
decisions regarding who was in and out of the band. Jorma and Jack were
OK with the decision to fire Spencer because they didn't think he was
a strong enough drummer to head into the harder direction they wanted
to take the band. I think most of that stuff between Spencer and the
others has since been ironed out by the parties involved (Spencer just
sat in for a few songs at one of Paul's gigs and I know he went to see
Tuna recently). 

Re Janis: My own personal favorite Janis era is the Big Brother
period. I don't think she ever had more passion than what you get on
Cheap Thrills and the Monterey Pop fest.

Steve, I'm not familiar with any Blows outtakes but it wouldn't
surprise me if some turn up. BMG has Bob Irwin going through the vaults
and he's already turned up some other unreleased gems. If there is
anything, he'll find it. I have no idea where that alternative "Let's
Go Together" came from but BMG at the time said that that was supposed
to be the one that was going to be on the album and that it was on the
master tape. Nonetheless I think purists would agree that it should be
a bonus track and that the version that really did make the original
Blows LP should be restored to its rightful position next time this is
reissued.

Re why BMG keeps reissuing the catalog: I guess each new generation of
employees at a label feels they can do a better job than the one
before. But having worked with three different incarnations of the BMG
reissues department now, I can honestly say that the folks redoing the
catalog now are the first to really get things right. The sound is
amazing and they've got some great bonus tracks. 

Re '89 reunion shows. I only saw one, at Radio City, but I sure
thought they were good. I would have preferred that they not use all
those extra musicians, and some of the new songs at the time were weak,
but when they kicked into classic JA material they did a great job
with it.

More soon...gotta go unpack.

Jeff
  

    
 I'm really enjoying your book, thanks for a look at one of my favorite
bands.
 I was fortunate to see JA several times from '68-'71 and the "89 show in
Radio City too.  Fillmore East was my main venue in the early days.  It
always seemed to me that JA was more "practiced" than the GD in those days.
JA shows didn't meander like GD often did.  Was te JA approach to live shows
more (for lack of a better word) "professional" than other SF bands at the
tim, perhaps due to the financial stake or the RCA influence?
  

    
i would love some blows outtakes

my blows (as is my first pull up) are on those yellow rca discs that were so
think....but they play so well!