One Act Play Starring Jefferson Airplane

Article published in Hit Parader, October 1967

One Act Play Starring Jefferson Airplane | The interview is supposed to be with Grace Slick and Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane, but when you walk into the smoky motel room you find not only Grace and Marty but also Spencer Dryden, Jack Cassidy and Paul Kantner along with Bill Thompson, their manager, a public relations man and two other writers. This type of scene is an interviewer’s nightmare because thoughts and questions get bounced around like tennis balls, generally landing out of bounds before they can generate information.

Eighteen eyes watch the tape recorder being assembled amid cartons of cold uneaten food on the motel table. Eighteen ears absorb the first question, “Is the group happy with ‘After Bathing at Baxter’s,‘ the latest album?” and the melee starts.

Spencer: I think that we found more of our real sound on the third album, but it still has a long way to go and I’ve had second thoughts about the album. I know that it does not connect with the mass public.

Paul: It does loud. If you turn it up loud, it does, but nobody has a loud set.

Spencer: Hey man, you have to wear headphones.

Paul: I played it on small record players and the bass is the first to go.

Spencer: I don’t think it is commercially successful.. What is commercial success? It is sound that you can hear, distinguish and relate to, that’s what makes singles, that’s what sells records. The kids that we play for, what do they yell for? “White Rabbit” and “Somebody To Love.” Why? Because that’s what’s programmed, that’s what they know.

Granted, there are kids who do like the music, do take it home and listen to the albums and love the band. But I’d still say they’re in a minority. I’ve talked to kids, they say, “What’s happened to the band, why are you doing this?” I think maybe we went too far too fast. We may have gone too far too fast, but I can’t be ashamed of anything we’ve done. I can’t look back and say it’s been a bad experience.

Paul: “Baxter’s” was like our first album.

Spencer: We spent a lot of time in the booth just finding out things that we never really had time to do before. Before it was always we’re the guys out there, they’re the guys in here, there’s a big piece of glass between the two. This time it was more of a collaborative thing. It took us six or seven months to record, off and on. We’d go out for concerts and come back and record for a week. We went in there with the idea – that’s one of the things we fought for with RCA —that we want time to record, we don’t want to be shoved. The first album that this band made was recorded in one or two weeks. That was it, man, there’s your first album, the first chance to be heard by the public, and you just go in there and do it. It came out raw. The second album was put together methodically by a man who probably likes Al Hirt.

One Act Play Starring Jefferson Airplane

Paul: Well, he knows how to make commercial records.

Spencer: Right, he knows how to get that scene down. That’s Rick Jarrard. The thing is that Rick really didn’t allow any leeway for real creativity. The stuff was there, it just came off a little slick or varnished.

Paul: Studio-ish. “Baxter’s” is a lot more like what we do on stage. It’s very stage.

Marty: I like it. The way I look at it is that the newest thing that happened last year was the sound from England and I think the Airplane was the first band to give its instrumentalists a chance to show what they could do, and I think they showed their musicianship. I think that we had to think of that more than just writing “great ditties.”

H.P: How old are the people in the group?

Grace: Oldest group in the country. Spencer: Between 25 and 30.

Bill Thompson: Between 23 and 29.

Spencer: Oh God! Management, cover yourself with two black cloths and a gag.

Thompson: That’s the truth. Why lie?

Spencer: Because it’s easier to say between 25 and 30. People don’t identify with the numbers 23 and 29 as easily as they do with 25 and 30.

Paul: Make them learn to identify with them. They have as much right to be identified.

Spencer: I’m tired of trying to make people learn things. I would rather show them. I would rather bend a little bit to get the guy on my side, then put the big hook in.

Paul: What an amazing turn of conversation.

Grace: There’s Spencer, bouncing off the main point.

Thompson: They ought to make a recording of this and then play it back to him, just like they do in drunk therapy. They get guys drunk and film them. Then when they sober up, they show them the film.

Spencer: I’d like to have three copies made and project them on three walls of my home simultaneously.

Thompson: Of what?

Spencer: Of that movie.

Thompson: What movie?

Spencer: The movie you’re gonna have the doctor take of me when I’m rapping.

H.P: There are constant rumours of hassles within the group. Are they true?

Spencer: Yeah, but that’s true with every group. Steve Stills, who was just here, same scene. And, of course, David Crosby, same scene. Charles Lloyd, same scene. We talked to the Doors, same scene. It’s really a universal thing. Any time you’re dealing with emotions and business, which it always turns into because that’s the structure we’re using, you’re going to have hassles. So they are always there. This band is kind of incredible as far as having not one direction but six different ones.

Paul: Sometimes eight.

Spencer: We’re not consistent, but we’re interesting. We really don’t have a leader. We just have people who get mad and rap about their ideas and other people rap how they feel about it and somebody else gets involved and we try one and try the other and then work, come back tomorrow and work or look at it fresh. It’s really strictly non-organizational. We all want the same thing but there are so many roads to get there and everybody has about six or seven roads of their own that they see possible.

Paul: It all works out somehow.

Spencer: I would like to communicate to younger kids as well as the older ones. The older people relate more to what we’re doing. The younger ones are still on that programmed thing. It is changing, but I’m still surprised that I find the biggest audience reaction to things that go thump thump thump thump (he bangs his hand on the table) and maybe a drum solo for a half hour. You have to do that if you’re going to relate to a commercial market, not commercial just in terms of money, but commercial because of actual potential of getting through to the next generation. ‘Cause what we’re all really trying to do is to improve the situation, right? Our own and what surrounds us. What I think you should do is get through to, not only the older kids who are on our level, that in-between war years thing, but get the ones after the war, get the ones who are going to be doing the thing.

One Act Play Starring Jefferson Airplane

H.P: Grace, you came from the Great Society. Who was with you in that group?

Grace: My brother, my husband and two other people, sometimes three other people. It all fell apart at the same time. A couple of guys were interested in Indian music almost exclusively, so that caused part of the break.

Paul: And we heard rumours that they were breaking up, so we asked Grace to join us.

Spencer: One guy left, they were down to a quartet, and then there was one of those things, can we work, can we get our heads together, what’s happening, why aren’t we making it? Trying to fill in with four people where five were. We went through our scene about the same time (Signe Anderson had left the Airplane to have a baby) and it just seemed logical. We had all talked about it just from digging Grace with that band.

H.P: How do you like being in this group?

Grace: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Same thing with everybody else in the group. Sometimes it drives you crazy, other times it’s better than anything else you can do.

H.P: You have used “Alice in Wonderland” and “Ulysses” as literary sources for two of your songs. Do you read much?

Grace: Every time I read a book I write a song about it. That’s how much I read. One book a year. I used to read before I started singing. I read tons of magazines and magazines and television and radio seem to overcome books, not only for myself but for a lot of people.

H.P: Are you particularly fond of James Joyce?

Grace: Yes. Obviously.

Spencer: There are parts in “rejoyce” that were written by Lenny Bruce, you can go into a whole thing.

Grace: Some of “rejoyce” was taken from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, some of it was from Stephen Daedelus and some of it from Bloom. It was the same three hunks the book was written in. And there was Lenny Bruce and bumper stickers and stuff like that.

H.P: Has Marty been writing much?

Spencer: Marty has about eight tunes in the works plus he has about 40 old ones that he feels bad about or something. I have heard about 10 of Marty’s tunes that I think are very good and I still get that argument, “They’re old.” There are some things can relate always, man.

Grace: Now wait a minute. You’re a packrat, like you save magazines from 1947, so you do the same thing with music. Every time anybody has some kind of an idea, “Save it, save it, don’t throw it away.” But the person who writes stuff knows when he’s writing good stuff and when he’s writing bad stuff.

Spencer: I don’t think that’s always true, because people can say, “Hey, that’s schlock, man, that’s not good material!” And you might have poured your heart into it.

Grace: Right. But you have to allow the person who writes it the right to throw it away.

Spencer: I do, but I also have to allow him to think very objectively about it and not take just one other person’s viewpoint, but to look at it from many peoples’ viewpoints. Especially when you’re dealing with mass audience who, whether you like it or not, they are the ones who are putting you where you are, those are the kids like in the middle of the country, that wasteland, and those are the ones, man, if they’re turned on by it, they’re just simple human beings, and if you’re connecting with them, you’re doing like one of the greatest services. So what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with being real?

Grace: I don’t know. We got way off the subject. You’re talking about being real, I’m talking about can I throw away a song . . .

Spencer: (over her) I’m talking about a cat writing tunes.

Paul: Spencer gets off the subject weirdly. He’s like that Irwin Corey. Your thought patterns are very similar to Irwin Corey’s.

Spencer: I am Irwin Corey. I just left my sneakers at home. (A question about the group’s relations with a former manager draws Jack Cassidy into the conversation, but he gets momentarily tangled up in his words.)

Grace: He plays good bass anyway.

Paul: Well, let’s get the bass out. (Laughter.)

Marty: He talks with his hands.

Spencer: You could do a thing with him in Hollywood, like Clarabelle and his horns, have Jack answer with nothing but his bass, people ask him questions, like Clarabelle with his horns. That would be a great bit. But the weird thing is that every song that Grace and I write, this is one cat who can fit in.

Grace: Because on all bits, Jack Cassidy has got to be the face.

Spencer: (to Paul) You’re pretty definite, you know, but how can you define that (pointing to Jack)? It’s Anyface. Al Capp should get a hold of you. I’d like to see an interview with Al Capp. (Jack had drifted to the telephone during the latter part of their analysis of him and had dialled a movie theatre to check the times of a show. “Oh,” he says. “Okay. Thank you. Thank you.” He hangs up and a disembodied Top 40-like voice blares from somewhere around the phone, ” . . . phone number of the Groovy Games . . . ” and Jades suddenly. A mysterious occurrence for a mysterious interview. The Airplane dissolve into laughter.)

Spencer: Tell people in your article to listen to the album loud on good equipment. This begins a discussion of the group’s sound problems in recording and an analysis of albums of other groups.

Paul: The English people are the only ones whoever put long sides on and made it sound good.

Spencer: Love did it, man, they got 21 minutes on one side and 19 on the other and the clarity is beautiful.

Jack: Yeah, but there’s not that much going on.

Spencer: That is true.

Jack: I’ve listened to the Love album. If we’re going to put all the stuff that we’re going to have to . . .

Spencer: You can’t put all that stuff on and have it come out. (Confused babble of disagreement.)

Paul: If the Beatles can put “A Day In The Life” on a record and all that stuff clear as well as the stuff . . .

Spencer: There’s nothing going on in “A Day In The Life.”

One Act Play Starring Jefferson Airplane

Grace: You’re right, that one really isn’t as full as some of theirs.

Paul: “I Am the Walrus.”

Jack: “Walrus” was the first one that sounds horrible on the radio.

Paul: I don’t think so.

Grace: It’s not that bad for the amount of stuff that’s going on.

Spencer: The thing is, they’re doing it at a low level, a low volume. When they rap with all those voices and all those different levels, it’s all very well controlled. We scream in the studio.

Jack: The bass player is going thump, thump, thump, thump. I play a different kind of bass that fills up more sound. There’s not a 12-string going blam, blam, blam, there’s not a feedback guitar that’s going through every track. That makes a big difference. As long as you fill up that much sound in there, you’re not going to hear it. It’s not going to be clear.

Paul: We should give a set of headphones away with each album.

Spencer: Right. Jack and Jorma, most notably, do not play like Bill Wyman and Keith Richard with that clean studio tone. Jack roars and Jorma roars, Paul clangs. There’s a huge big thing going on. I don’t care how big a booth you put around your singer, you’re gonna have all that stuff feeding into that mike and you’re not gonna get clarity of sound. We don’t have much luck with singles. We can’t pick them. Some people played the cuts of “Surrealistic Pillow” on the stations and the kids heard it, picked up on it, the nation focused on San Francisco, we were the first band in San Francisco What scene to record, so it was one of those luck-out things. I would like to reach people through singles because I think we can do it.

H.P: What is the current San Francisco musical scene like?

Spencer: There’s more going on now. I don’t know if it’s getting around as much. It used to be pretty centrally located, you’d go to three places, the Matrix, the Avalon or the Fillmore. Now it’s sort of spread out. The Straight Theatre finally opened after two years, there’s a place at the Print Mill. They’re doing more film things now, they’re opening that up, there’s many more light shows than there ever were. I think that because of this huge big thing last year, people just sort of retired. They’re still doing it, they’re just maybe not making a concerted effort.

Marty: I disagree. I think they’re still doing it, but the national recognition has gotten so used to it that nobody pays that much attention.

Spencer: Yeah. Well, that’s basically what I’m saying. It was a scene giving birth, man. Now that a kid’s two years old, you don’t make such a big deal of it.

Paul: The whole Haight Street thing basically fell apart and failed, but I’d really like to see about 4,000 more things fail like that.

H.P: Is the Jefferson Airplane consciously moving in any direction as a group?

Paul: We’re not conscious of anything.

Jack: Are we consciously?

Paul: No, there’s no conscious. You write a tune and that’s where you are that day.

You do an interview and that’s where you are that day, bent and hooked enough to listen to “After Bathing at Baxter’s” loud through earphones. Spencer is right. Much better. Some of their quotes read better through a glass of water. In a bright light.

Lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen may be the smartest member of the group. He spent the cloudy Los Angeles afternoon cruising around in his car, his mind free from the tangled hexalog spinning inside a cloudy room.

After the interview, the group began work on their next album, which will be called “Greasy Heart” after the Grace Slick soul which has been released as a single. Other tunes include Jorma’s debut as a singer in a Dylan-flavoured song, three numbers by Marty, among them “Share A Little Joke With The World,” the flip side of their last single, an improvisational percussion number by Spencer and (possibly) a song written by David Crosby called “Triad.”

When “Greasy Heart” was issued as a single, the sextet made a promotional film which may be expanded into a one-hour television special built around the new album. In August, they will undertake their first European tour, with the Doors. Before that they may appear in another film, “Amatibha,” directed by Conrad Rooks, who made “Chappaqua.” The Airplane were asked to portray a futuristic rock, group.