Marty Balin: guitar, vocals
Grace Slick: piano, organ, recorder, vocals
Paul Kantner: rhythm guitar, vocals
Jorma Kaukonen: lead& rhythm guitar, vocals
Jack Casady: bass, rhythm guitar
Spencer Dryden: drums
Produced at R.C.A. Victor, Hollywood by Rick Jarrard
Released: February 1967
Highest chart place: U.S. Billboard 200: 3
January 1966 saw the San Francisco hippie scene’s first key event. Unavoidably detained out of town, Jefferson Airplane missed the three-day Trips Festival, which featured instead The Grateful Dead and a pre-Janis Joplin Big Brother& The Holding Company. Promoter Bill Graham was assisted by Augustus Owsley Stanley III, aka the Bear, a colourful sound engineer and acid chemist whose self-styled psychoactives ‘factory’ would soon be the Bay Area’s go-to source for gold-standard product. The festival took place at the Longshoreman’s Hall, a little-used union meetinghouse destined, under freaks’ collective the Family Dog, to become a proving ground for the mushrooming acid rock scene. Supported by The Great Society, Airplane had played the same venue three months before at a gig that was doubly notable: for catching the ears of theSan Francisco Chronicle’s influential jazz critic Ralph J Gleason, and for Airplane’s first experience of the force of nature fronting The Great Society, Grace Slick.
Gleason quickly became a fan. Thanks partially to his patronage, on 3 September 1966 Airplane became the first rock group to play the Monterey Jazz Festival. This was an outrage too far for Gleason’s conservative colleague, Leonard Feather. ‘All the delicacy and finesse of a mule team knocking down a picket fence,’ Feather thundered, only to see his rage fall on stony ground as an amused Airplane co-opted his words for an album advertisement. On 15 October, Signe Anderson sang with Airplane for the last time. ‘I want you all to wear smiles and daisies and box balloons,’ Signe gushed to the Fillmore audience, as Marty Balin presented the family-loving vocalist with flowers and effusive thanks for services rendered. ‘I love you all. Thank you and goodbye.’ On which note, Signe returned to her husband, her three-month-old baby Lilith, and rock’n’roll obscurity.
The next evening, at the same venue, Grace Slick sang with Jefferson Airplane for the first time.
Back in the spring, Skip Spence had exhibited an early capriciousness that would tragically escalate. Cueing inevitable comparisons with Syd Barrett, Skippy’s natural talents would be blurred by an inability to cope with an operatic drug consumption. For now, the troubled musician returned from an unannounced Mexican holiday to find his paycheque cancelled and himself out of the band. Following a recommendation from Earl Palmer, Spencer Dryden was drafted in from the strip joints of L.A., bringing an approach to percussion that was subtle and jazz-inflected, with an instinctive sense of timing and of what felt right for Airplane’s blossoming adventurism. He and Jack Casady would knit perfectly, maturing into one of the most innovative drum-bass sections in all of rock’n’roll.
Signe had been unhappy for months. Airplane felt the same about her husband, then on the payroll as lighting director. Unlike his wife, Jerry Anderson was a committed stoner, his appetite for booze and hard drugs reinforcing an already overbearing manner. Signe cared still less for Airplane’s flamboyant, cape-cla
