SPEAKING TO A STARSHIP COMMANDER -
THE PAUL KANTNER INTERVIEW
Conducted by Tony Traguardo, 1984
In an issue of Eurodisc Agenda they presented an interview which I conducted with Marty Balin in the Spring of 1984 for a New York radio station. A few months after speaking with Marty Balin, I had the pleasure of speaking to Paul Kantner. Paul was thoroughly pleasant, and spoke freely about all of the topics which we approached. We began, typically, with music; but as the very nature of Paul's work in the past and present would suggest, the topic of music leads into the discussion of politics, drugs and ... of course ... the future. The interview was broadcast only in part in 1984, and it has never before been published in written form. As we mentioned in the last issue, we hope to be speaking to Paul or Marty in the near future for an update on the exciting activities of Jefferson Starship - The Next Generation. Thankfully, the group are keeping an extremely active touring schedule around the U.S. and throughout Europe. If you have not had the chance to see this new incarnation, I strongly recommend them! For now, let's go back to a time shortly after the release of the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra album, as Paul began what would eventually lead into the (temporary) rebirth of The Jefferson Airplane.
EA - How did the Bill Graham tribute go?
PK - Well, we were gonna do something with Crosby and Stills but they didn't show up.
They got hung up on something ... you know Crosby. But Marty put together a whole
video thing, and there was a great singalong at the end.
We're thinking about doing a reunion next year. We're putting a band together right
now.
EA - Who has been giving input to the new band?
PK - Well, people like Jack Casady and Ronnie Montrose..
EA - Marty said you had been spending some time with Jorma?
PK - Just fooling around a bit, I mean, we may all do something next year, but right
now I'm concentrating on the new band ... and shimmying out of the old band (the
Jefferson Starship - Ed.).
EA - Has Grace reflected any interest in working with you guys?
PK - I haven't spoken to Grace. She's off working with Starship, and we're sort of at
war right now. That situation's kind of like a divorce. I'm having to deal with a whole
bunch of situations that aren't civilized.
EA - The corporate rock thing.
PK - Yeah, and it's nice to get away from it. it was getting too out of hand ... too
"usual" for me. We got into this common, heavy metal approach to music, which is
much too derivative for me, and less adventuresome than I would have liked it. The
new stuff will be a whole other level. There'll be touches of what I do, and what Marty
does, with touches of what other people do. We hope it'll be out sometime around
springtime.
EA - So, we'll see recorded product soon?
PK - Well, we may not go the usual route. We may start a scene here. We may not do
the " ... well, here is our demo, sir ... " approach. We're more interested in creating
some surprises, which for me always begins and ends with the live process. Recording
and all the publicity is all just a pale photograph of the reality. The reality is ...
playing and moving people, and having it talked about; rather than just shopping a
record around.
EA - Events.
PK - Surprising events ... magical events. Its not just going to be a band standing there.
We're hoping to make each song somewhat theatrical ... a happening or an occurence.
Each song will have a little memorable piece to it. More or less a variety show; a
small circus of events. We have about seven hundred ideas, and we have to knock them
down to about thirty.
EA - What about videos?
PK - Well, I'm sort of put off by MTV right now. With most of the stuff I see on there ...
it's kind of reached the boredom level for me. I like MTV and I like its potential, but
there's a certain quality of locking a song down to a reality which takes something
away from it. I'd like to get into less of a reality when you're dealing with songs,
because songs mean so many different things to so many different people. The
process of making videos is like making a little movie, but people treat it like its
publicity. It's a quick shoot and they get it out and ... well, its a new area and we want
to step delicately in there. It's reached a plateau and levelled off and people are
looking for something new to happen. It's a real growing field. I just hope it doesn't
lock music down too much.
EA - People are writing for the potential videos.
The music is getting like it was in the fifties. We're getting so locked into certain
channels such that there's no room for the experimental or the strange and unusual.
Those people have to really push and struggle to get in. In one way that gives me hope,
because that's the way it was when the Airplane started. We had to sort of create our
own area, which is what I'm looking forward to doing again, on a new level. Surprise is
the element.
EA - Were you happy with the response to the last album, Planet Earth Rock and Roll
Orchestra?
PK - Well, right before the release of the last album I got into a brouhaha with RCA
executives ... I told them to fuck off ... and that that was the guy that controlled the
publicity ... (laughs). So, it didn't get out to all the places I wanted it to go, but it got
to some places. I got some cards and letters from it. The exec got fired eventually
anyway.
EA - How has your relationship been with Grace since the split up of the band? Were
there individual members you had trouble with? Marty Balin implied in our interview
that you had trouble getting songs into the band.
PK - Well, Grace sort of chose to stay with the band. I'm not really a fighter. I don't
want to get down and be a bully. I mean, I could be, but I would much rather move on
and do something positive than stay around and deal with something negative. Certain
elements are shattering to walk away from, but to get something new started is
exhilarating, so it's a two-fold thing.
EA - "Mountain Song" on Planet Earth has a lengthy dedication to Mickey H. and Jerry G.
and David C., and to a summer when, it seems, you guys almost all got together.
PK - Well, yeah, there was one summer when me and Garcia and Mickey Hart and Crosby
almost did something together, but all of our schedules precluded it. Everybody was
real big and real busy at the time. That song, though ... that "lick" was one of the songs
that we had been working on.
EA - I notice a few mentions of John Lennon on the album. You dedicate "Lilith's Song"
to him.
PK - John was a real inspiring person in my life, as he was in many people's lives. As a
musician particularly, he opened up a certain freedom to a lot od people to do things
that they didn't think they could do.
PK - "Lilith's Song" gives you a feeling ... I sort of think of Yoko when you talk about the
"lost lover" in the song.
PK - Yeah, I was thinking of it in terms of losing John. A huge moment. In context of a
novel I've written that goes along with the album, the woman's lover does get killed
and there is a sense of that, but I reversed it when I wrote it for Grace to sing it.
EA - A novel?
PK - The novel is being edited right now. The album is sort of a soundtrack to the
novel. It's about a rock-and-roll band who gets a hold of a lot of telepathic
amplification equipment, essentially, that the government starts coming after. That
begins an adventure of them going cross-country. They wind up in a settlement in
Australia, and eventually get off the planet in a unique sort of way. There's a sort-of
picture of it on the album. People in New York are working on making presentations
and editing it.
EA - Have you thought about it becoming a film?
Well, the problem is it would be like a ninety million dollar budget ... (laughs) and I'm
not ready to deal with Hollywood. I also don't want it to end up an hour long TV special
done by some cokehead in LA, and it ends up not meaning anything.
PK - Speaking of TV specials, the Jefferson Starship did a TV appearance on a "Star
Wars Christmas Special" back when "Light the Sky On Fire" was released. How did that
come about?
PK - That was a long time ago. Well, they were just interested in us, and ... well, it
wasn't very successful, I don't think. It had some good special effects but, it was just
... more TV. They opened up a phonograph and there we were. It was supposed to be
like a laserdisc.
EA - Could we hit you with some song titles and see what comes to mind?
Sure.
EA - What about "War Movie" (from Bark - Ed.)? That was the first time you would
mention the recurring "summer of '75". Where did that come from?
PK - (Laughs) I don't know where it comes from, it just sort of, comes in. That was the
first time that the Starship incarnation took off. I had envisioned a larger, sort of
worldwide situation going on when i had written those songs, and it might have have
happened. I didn't see it, but it might have happened. Like the birth of Jesus, you don;t
necessarily see it when it happens. It turned out, in our case, to be the year that the
Starship sort of exploded.
EA - About two years ago, there was a controversial book that said that Jesus Christ
had a son by Mary Magdelene, and that there was actually proof being withheld. It had
the idea in the song "Son of Jesus", from Long John Silver, written all over it.
PK - Well, ya' see, I'm not just this big mouth (laughs). I had gotten started watching
all of these christian gospel programs, everything from Katherine Coolman(?) she's a
real dramatic, and humorous on a certain level, preacher ... and it just derived from
there. They really abused Jesus' name, in terms of raising money and in terms of
manipulating people. Everyone from Jim Jones to the PTL club. This song was sort of a
reaction to that in saying that if there had been a bastard son of Jesus, God would have
loved him just as much as any other one of his creatures. On the other side of other
coin, I had all these horrible reactions from church people, and the head of RCA
records, who was an Italian Catholic who was afraid that his mother would hear the
record. It caused a great furor (laughs) ... which is sort of what I wanted to do anyway.
It worked out quite well. I have somewhere in my house about eight, ten or fifteen
cassette tapes of me on the phone with the head of RCA records discussing that
situation ... and some of it is quite surreal, actually. I remember the book you
mentioned passing through the media, on TV, and it was a big deal.
EA - You have, in many songs, made references to author A.A. Milne. There's "House at
Pooneil Corners", "Ballad of You, Me and Pooneil" and some references on the new
album. Was he a strong influence?
PK - Milne is a strong psychic influence, yeah. There is a certain element of returning
to the innocence of children. I mean every philosopher, from Jesus to Mohammed,
speaks of having the purity of a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. On the other hand,
Milne is quite vicious on some levels. every character in Milne represents a certain
weakness in the structure of mankind. From the overabundant "amphetamine rock" of
Tigger, to the sort of shy, humble, self-disparaging Eeyore ... I don't know if you know
the books but Eeyore's line is always " ... well, thanks for noticing ... " (laughs). He's
just this little guy that sort of struggles through it all somehow, almost a Walter
Mitty type (a character featured in a series of American films in the 1940's - Ed.).
They all illustrate various weaknesses as well as strengths in the human animal. As a
whole, I think it's a real neat allegory.
EA - There is a book called "The Tao of Pooh".
PK - Yeah, I haven't read it all yet, but I have it. I'm writing a new song now called
"Pooneil Goes to America", which, if it ever sees fruition, is going to involve this huge
epic, sort of like a Sergio Leone movie with a " ... Once upon a time in America".
There'll be various sections of America, returning to both the goodness and badness of
America and what America is.
EA - How will the character of Pooneil survive in modern America?
PK - God only knows. But having looked all over the world, as we have, and gone
through all the various philosophies and religions and countries, ideologies ... there is
something to be said for what we are. For all the railing we did against it in the
sixties, there is a quality in America that transcends even the mystical. There's
something here that's real ... magical. We were fighting against people who abused it,
like fighting against those preachers who used Jesus to their own ends, there are
people ... I mean the world is full of nasty assholes ... who mis-abuse and do things not
necessarily in the name of good. One line I'm working on is " ... there is not a great
immigration problem in Russia". You don't see too many people going east over the
Berlin wall. I don't want to sound like Reagan (laughs), but there's a certain quality
here that I think if fostered and helped in the right direction will take this experiment
that's been going on for two hundred or so years and go forward with it ... make it
better. And I've got about two hundred or so pages of lyrics now (laughs) ... and if I
could narrow it down somehow to one three or four minute song ... I'm looking forward
to it. So, Pooneil lives.
"House at Pooneil Corners" was the chaos and the apocalypse of nuclear war,
essentially. And somehow, cheerily, like Winnie The Pooh, bouncing through it. "Well,
here we are!"
EA - That's how we all seem to get along every day.
PK - Well, I don't think we have much of a choice (laughs). Most of us don't have much
control over this, whatever this is that we're in, and you sort of just catch as catch
can. It's like a boat on the rapids of a river. You're going down the river and you don't
have much time to philosophize about the river bank or the rapids three miles down,
because you're right in the middle of the white water now, with just a paddle to keep
afloat (laughs). Now and again you'll run into some peaceful place, hopefully, and
where you can cruise for a while and ruminate on what's going on, but that's very
infrequent. And as soon as you start to do that something else comes around the bend.
And it's white water again and ... "Oh my God, what are we gonna do now?". But until
we die, we get through it. And when we die, well, God knows what's gonna happen. But
that's another whole song. (Pause) "Pooneil Dies". Wow, that could be a great song. I'm
going to write that down.
I don't think anybody on this planet has a clue as to what goes on after we die. All
these religions, and all these philosophies ... I haven't seen anybody who looks like he
knows. There are all these people who are going throught his white tunnel and they see
the old man beckoning them or an angel ... I just don't think anyone has the faintest
idea as to what's going on. They say that they see their family or their friends and I
think it's all ... hallucinations ... just the body freaking out, shorting out essentially ...
and causing hallucinations. It's all just theories. I just feel there's no point in
worrying about it all right now. There's enough to do when things happen, and enough
going on to take care of here and now ... things that need taking care of ... the white
water again (laughs).
EA - I was thinking of the song "Your Mind Has Left Our Body", from Baron Von Tollbooth
and the Chrome Nun when you mentioned the things people have seen ...
PK - (Laughs) Yeah, well that happens occasionally. Some people call it insanity. Some
people call it drugs. Some people call it religion.
EA - It happened with the Airplane, I'm sure. The LSD use during that time was pretty
well documented. How do you feel about it these days?
PK - Yeah, I think that once you take that stuff, you open a certain door that you don't
need to keep opening. I mean, I didn't. It sort of became repetitive after a while. We
just moved on naturally, it seemed, after a certain point, to new dimensions, and I
haven't really found the need to open that door. It seems pretty open now. I can open
and close it at will, and I don't really need to watch the walls crawling around too
much anymore, or ever again. Also the times that were involved in all that were very
innocent times, and to take it today could cause extreme hallucinatory paranoia with
all that's going on all around us today.
EA - I guess now you're more aware of what's going on around you.
PK - Back then we didn't pay attention to all of the bad stuff. That's what happened in
The Haight (-Ashbury section of San Francisco - Ed.). The bad stuff came in, the police
came in in their jack boots and started tromping all over people, and the people weren't
prepared to deal with it. They were naive children. We all were, hoping for the good,
the Oz-like ideals, to triumph, while not expecting to have to do anything to support it.
We just asssumed it would triumph, but it didn't, so we ... evolved.
EA - Maybe the naivete is gone, but the creativity survived.
PK - Well, a lot of us survived, but some of us didn't survive. We learned, grew up a
little, but not too much fortunately (laughs) ... but just enough to preserve our lives
against all these assholes ... all these violent things that are around you ... by taking
stock of them and creating some sort of protective element in relation to them.
EA - The Grateful Dead are survivors.
PK - Yeah. And that'll go on. There's an element of people that will just go on. It's not
like pop music, where there's this group that lasts for two years and then it's gone.
There was something there then, and there's something here now ... and it relates to
more than just a record company or a record deal, it involves a whole society. Patty
Smith talked about a rock and roll generation that all grew up having a certain set of
similar values. They're all connected by many different things, from holding those
same values, to having seen the same television programs, simultaneously almost,
nationwide, to experiencing Kennedy's death on television, to experiencing landing on
the moon, all in one great mass, which is unheard of in the history of mankind. There's
a lot there among that generation, and there is a certain set of values that they carry
through all this ... stuff ... that I think is just not gonna go away. And it's showing up
now in politicians and lawyers and doctors, the good side of it, and the bad side of it,
and will probably not stop (laughs). And there's a new generation coming around the
corner every four years with their own set of stuff. The generation that's alittle ahead
of you, that's in vogue right now, is a very self-centered, economy minded generation
that votes for Reagan with aplomb, and without a though of what they're really voting
for. But I don't worry about that too much. I think that things like that take care of
themselves, like Nixon did. They sort of bury themselves ... hopefully.
EA - Without taking us with them, though, we hope.
PK - Now the practical side to my science fiction band is that once a certain element
gets off the planet, it has essentially freed the universe, and is free of planetary
madness. The race, essentially goes on, whether or not the planet blows. That's not
necessarily an escape theology that I'm talking about, but there's an element of that to
it. It's evolution. It's like a termite flying off and starting a new termite shell, that's
really all it is.
EA - Well, if a starship is still leaving in 1989, you can put me down for it.
PK - Yeah, me too. It would be a great adventure.
EA - Jumping back in time to some of your early works; you had a very unique way of
arranging the vocal harmonies with the band. Is it a conscious "method" that you used?
PK - Well, at first it was conscious, but then as we started to know each other -
Marty, Me and Grace particularly - it beacame more where ... well, on the first album
we had to write things out. We'd sit down at the piano and, I mean, I don't know music
at all, but I know it enough to write out notes on a music staff and to figure out fifths
and fourths flatted sevenths and stuff ... so we'd write that out on a certain basis and
you'd see what worked. As we started working together, all I'd have to do was give
them a starting point. It would be like " ... you take this note and work around this
range, more or less, and I'll stay over here in this range", which worked naturally. You
know music, and you sort of know what notes not to sing, so it turned eventually into
being half-and-half. Marty and I are together again, and as we sit down to write, he'll
bring in a new song that he's found or has written and he'll start singing it, and I'll
naturally be able to fall into three or four different harmony parts. I don't know who
we're gonna use for the third harmony or the fourth but ... I trust that'll come in its
own time.
EA - I've been listening to a tape (now available on CD - Ed) that's been circulating of
you guys doing some interesting run-throughs of the material on After Bathing at
Baxters. It may be live with no audience or in the studio, I'm not sure, but the
harmonies are different.
PK - Some of the best things that we do and have done, harmonically, have never been
heard by anyone. I don't know where you got this tape but ... no matter. It's just that
sitting down in the back room getting your vocals ready before a show we would have
sung things like ... "Won't You Try" at one time, or "Ride the Tiger" later on, just by
ourselves, with an electric guitar, not plugged in, just to get the voices in tune.
Practicing, just around the room, is some of the best stuff we've ever done. I've been
trying to figure out ways to get that across and do it live but I guess I'm a little shy
about doing it for some reason. Maybe we'll do it on this next ... incarnation.
EA - That would be very interesting.
PK - I'd like to hear a copy of that tape.
EA - We also found tapes of the Levi's commercials (a few of which were released
years later on 2400 Fulton Street -Ed.).
PK - Wow, I'd love to hear those.
EA - We also discussed the radically different mix of Volunteers that was released by
RCA in quadrophonic.
PK - Well, back then, every take we did was radically different (laughs). It's not like
we were a regular band that would go in, have an arrangement, and try to plot it all out
until is was perfect. We'd have a set of chords, and we'd go in and play the song. And
the next time we played it, it would be something totally different. Harmony has a
really magical element to it that I can't explain. It does something to your spirit, or
whatever it is you have inside you ... your soul or whatever you want to call it. It
elevates you, and hopefull elevates the people who are listening to you as well when it
works. We always played too loud, thunderously, to really appreciate the full balance
of what that does, but I think that when we hit that right combination it was a really
magic element ... some magic evenings.
EA - You did some work with Ronnie Gilbert of The Weavers recently. Now there was a
group who also had incredible harmonies.
PK - I just had the pleasure of meeting Pete Seeger for the first time in my career, and
he's one of my super heroes of life. Ronnie Gilbert did some stuff on my album, not
singing but writing - I hope to snag her for some singing eventually -and she has a
magic quality to her voice. We've become friends from a distance and I don't know
what that's gonna bring.
EA - She had some co-writing credits on the album "Nuclear Furniture".
PK - I actually just took some words that she had said in the Weavers' documentary
"Wasn't That A Time". She was talking about The Weavers and what they were and what
she thought they meant and I almost unconsciously wrote down a few good lines and
phrases that she said, which I do now and again when I hear them on TV or the radio,
and when I was writing a song I used them. As we were mixing the album, they played
the documentary again on TV and I heard the words (laughs) and I thought - on the
songs "Rose Goes To yale" and "Champion" - well ... I better give her some credit,
because these are her lyrtics. They're not really lyrics, but spoken documentary words,
but I was so proud to have used them and I went over and asked her if she minded and
she said "oh, no ... nobody's ever given me credit for anything" ... (laughs)
She's a really darling person. In the documentary it happens when she's talking about
The Weavers and she says, like us in the Haight, "we believed that if we sang strong
enough, and if we could sing loud enough, that all of this evil would go away". It's a
little conversation that she has that turned into the chorus of " ... Rose". I manipulated
and moved it around a little bit, but the basic spirit of the choruses is Ronnie's.
EA - There's an example of the ideals from a generation back staying around.
PK - Well, most of what I consider my ideals come from Pete Seeger and The Weavers,
and what they were trying to do in the fifties and forties. They sort of naturally
erupted, when I was in college, into the civil rights movement, and they got me
involved in life ... and reality. As I got involved in music, it was natural for it to
follow through into what was all the benefits we used to do in the sixties
for everything from the Haight-Ashbury Medical Center to bail bonds to the sixties
movement ... And still it goes on today.
I spoke to Bill Graham last night and we were talking about once a year getting all the
groups together to do a benefit for the Haight-Ashbury Medical Ceneter (laughs). We're
planning one. They'll always need money, as long as we're around
In fact, I'm hustling Bill right now to start "The Old Folks Rock and Roll Home".
Somewehere down the line when we're all dottering old fools laying out in the gutter
drooling, there'll be someplace where we can all go drool together. Somebody pointed
out that there are no old rock-and-rollers yet (laughs). That's true. But it's just a
thought that I had.
EA - Looking ahead to the next generation, was China into singing "Declaration of
Independence" (a Pete Seeger song - Ed.) on the Planet Earth album?
PK - Originally, when I first conceived the album, China was about seven years ... and
originally the idea of the song came from a guy who had heard his child singing the
song in the bathtub ... a little boy. I just maneuvered it. With the women's movement
and the ascension of powerful women in the last decade or so, I though it would be neat
to make a little boy's song into a little girl's song. So I had China, a little girl, sing
the same thing, being a "Declaration of Independence". She was seven when I thought of
it, but by the time I got around to recording it she was ten or eleven and getting into
rock and roll, so she thought it was very uncool to be this "little girl". I had her
singing it in a faltering kind of `little girl in a bathtub' thing, and she was sort of
embarrased by it. So I kind of pushed her through it. Then I offered to pay her, and she
said (excitedly) " ... oh sure, alright ... more clothes, more records ... alright" ... That's
that generation (laughs).
EA - There's a point in there where she giggles, and it sounds just like Grace ...
PK - What's really eerie is, if you put China's voice through a harmonizer, and take it
down an octave or so it sounds just like Grace. I hope she can sing as well as Grace ...
at that age, then i feel my future will be okay. She can just take care of this old daddy
(laughs) ... when he dotters on into old age.
EA - She's already received credit as a co-writer.
PK - Yeah, she's written some neat things. More spoken things and ideas rather than
her consciously sitting down to write something. She'll just say something neat and
I'll pull it out and use it.
EA - She received credit on the song that has the classic line "washing my brains in the
public fountain". Was that one of her lines?
PK - No, that was mine (laughs).
EA - And that same song has the line "I want to go outside and play".
PK - Well, that was mine too (laughs). That's a feeling that never dies ... "I just want
to get out of here and go play ... don't bother me ... and she will just do nothing at all ... "
(all are lines from the Planet Earth album - Ed.).
EA - Well, on that note, I'm going to let you get out and go play ... and we look forward
to seeing you play out here soon.
EA - Thanks for speaking with us.
PK - Been a pleasure.
------------------------------------------------------------
Many thanks to Paul Kantner; for granting this interview and for the many years of fine
music.
Just let us know when the ship is ready to go, Paul!
PK - Well, we were gonna do something with Crosby and Stills but they didn't show up.
They got hung up on something ... you know Crosby. But Marty put together a whole
video thing, and there was a great singalong at the end.
We're thinking about doing a reunion next year. We're putting a band together right
now.
EA - Who has been giving input to the new band?
PK - Well, people like Jack Casady and Ronnie Montrose..
EA - Marty said you had been spending some time with Jorma?
PK - Just fooling around a bit, I mean, we may all do something next year, but right
now I'm concentrating on the new band ... and shimmying out of the old band (the
Jefferson Starship - Ed.).
EA - Has Grace reflected any interest in working with you guys?
PK - I haven't spoken to Grace. She's off working with Starship, and we're sort of at
war right now. That situation's kind of like a divorce. I'm having to deal with a whole
bunch of situations that aren't civilized.
EA - The corporate rock thing.
PK - Yeah, and it's nice to get away from it. it was getting too out of hand ... too
"usual" for me. We got into this common, heavy metal approach to music, which is
much too derivative for me, and less adventuresome than I would have liked it. The
new stuff will be a whole other level. There'll be touches of what I do, and what Marty
does, with touches of what other people do. We hope it'll be out sometime around
springtime.
EA - So, we'll see recorded product soon?
PK - Well, we may not go the usual route. We may start a scene here. We may not do
the " ... well, here is our demo, sir ... " approach. We're more interested in creating
some surprises, which for me always begins and ends with the live process. Recording
and all the publicity is all just a pale photograph of the reality. The reality is ...
playing and moving people, and having it talked about; rather than just shopping a
record around.
EA - Events.
PK - Surprising events ... magical events. Its not just going to be a band standing there.
We're hoping to make each song somewhat theatrical ... a happening or an occurence.
Each song will have a little memorable piece to it. More or less a variety show; a
small circus of events. We have about seven hundred ideas, and we have to knock them
down to about thirty.
EA - What about videos?
PK - Well, I'm sort of put off by MTV right now. With most of the stuff I see on there ...
it's kind of reached the boredom level for me. I like MTV and I like its potential, but
there's a certain quality of locking a song down to a reality which takes something
away from it. I'd like to get into less of a reality when you're dealing with songs,
because songs mean so many different things to so many different people. The
process of making videos is like making a little movie, but people treat it like its
publicity. It's a quick shoot and they get it out and ... well, its a new area and we want
to step delicately in there. It's reached a plateau and levelled off and people are
looking for something new to happen. It's a real growing field. I just hope it doesn't
lock music down too much.
EA - People are writing for the potential videos.
The music is getting like it was in the fifties. We're getting so locked into certain
channels such that there's no room for the experimental or the strange and unusual.
Those people have to really push and struggle to get in. In one way that gives me hope,
because that's the way it was when the Airplane started. We had to sort of create our
own area, which is what I'm looking forward to doing again, on a new level. Surprise is
the element.
EA - Were you happy with the response to the last album, Planet Earth Rock and Roll
Orchestra?
PK - Well, right before the release of the last album I got into a brouhaha with RCA
executives ... I told them to fuck off ... and that that was the guy that controlled the
publicity ... (laughs). So, it didn't get out to all the places I wanted it to go, but it got
to some places. I got some cards and letters from it. The exec got fired eventually
anyway.
EA - How has your relationship been with Grace since the split up of the band? Were
there individual members you had trouble with? Marty Balin implied in our interview
that you had trouble getting songs into the band.
PK - Well, Grace sort of chose to stay with the band. I'm not really a fighter. I don't
want to get down and be a bully. I mean, I could be, but I would much rather move on
and do something positive than stay around and deal with something negative. Certain
elements are shattering to walk away from, but to get something new started is
exhilarating, so it's a two-fold thing.
EA - "Mountain Song" on Planet Earth has a lengthy dedication to Mickey H. and Jerry G.
and David C., and to a summer when, it seems, you guys almost all got together.
PK - Well, yeah, there was one summer when me and Garcia and Mickey Hart and Crosby
almost did something together, but all of our schedules precluded it. Everybody was
real big and real busy at the time. That song, though ... that "lick" was one of the songs
that we had been working on.
EA - I notice a few mentions of John Lennon on the album. You dedicate "Lilith's Song"
to him.
PK - John was a real inspiring person in my life, as he was in many people's lives. As a
musician particularly, he opened up a certain freedom to a lot od people to do things
that they didn't think they could do.
PK - "Lilith's Song" gives you a feeling ... I sort of think of Yoko when you talk about the
"lost lover" in the song.
PK - Yeah, I was thinking of it in terms of losing John. A huge moment. In context of a
novel I've written that goes along with the album, the woman's lover does get killed
and there is a sense of that, but I reversed it when I wrote it for Grace to sing it.
EA - A novel?
PK - The novel is being edited right now. The album is sort of a soundtrack to the
novel. It's about a rock-and-roll band who gets a hold of a lot of telepathic
amplification equipment, essentially, that the government starts coming after. That
begins an adventure of them going cross-country. They wind up in a settlement in
Australia, and eventually get off the planet in a unique sort of way. There's a sort-of
picture of it on the album. People in New York are working on making presentations
and editing it.
EA - Have you thought about it becoming a film?
Well, the problem is it would be like a ninety million dollar budget ... (laughs) and I'm
not ready to deal with Hollywood. I also don't want it to end up an hour long TV special
done by some cokehead in LA, and it ends up not meaning anything.
PK - Speaking of TV specials, the Jefferson Starship did a TV appearance on a "Star
Wars Christmas Special" back when "Light the Sky On Fire" was released. How did that
come about?
PK - That was a long time ago. Well, they were just interested in us, and ... well, it
wasn't very successful, I don't think. It had some good special effects but, it was just
... more TV. They opened up a phonograph and there we were. It was supposed to be
like a laserdisc.
EA - Could we hit you with some song titles and see what comes to mind?
Sure.
EA - What about "War Movie" (from Bark - Ed.)? That was the first time you would
mention the recurring "summer of '75". Where did that come from?
PK - (Laughs) I don't know where it comes from, it just sort of, comes in. That was the
first time that the Starship incarnation took off. I had envisioned a larger, sort of
worldwide situation going on when i had written those songs, and it might have have
happened. I didn't see it, but it might have happened. Like the birth of Jesus, you don;t
necessarily see it when it happens. It turned out, in our case, to be the year that the
Starship sort of exploded.
EA - About two years ago, there was a controversial book that said that Jesus Christ
had a son by Mary Magdelene, and that there was actually proof being withheld. It had
the idea in the song "Son of Jesus", from Long John Silver, written all over it.
PK - Well, ya' see, I'm not just this big mouth (laughs). I had gotten started watching
all of these christian gospel programs, everything from Katherine Coolman(?) she's a
real dramatic, and humorous on a certain level, preacher ... and it just derived from
there. They really abused Jesus' name, in terms of raising money and in terms of
manipulating people. Everyone from Jim Jones to the PTL club. This song was sort of a
reaction to that in saying that if there had been a bastard son of Jesus, God would have
loved him just as much as any other one of his creatures. On the other side of other
coin, I had all these horrible reactions from church people, and the head of RCA
records, who was an Italian Catholic who was afraid that his mother would hear the
record. It caused a great furor (laughs) ... which is sort of what I wanted to do anyway.
It worked out quite well. I have somewhere in my house about eight, ten or fifteen
cassette tapes of me on the phone with the head of RCA records discussing that
situation ... and some of it is quite surreal, actually. I remember the book you
mentioned passing through the media, on TV, and it was a big deal.
EA - You have, in many songs, made references to author A.A. Milne. There's "House at
Pooneil Corners", "Ballad of You, Me and Pooneil" and some references on the new
album. Was he a strong influence?
PK - Milne is a strong psychic influence, yeah. There is a certain element of returning
to the innocence of children. I mean every philosopher, from Jesus to Mohammed,
speaks of having the purity of a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. On the other hand,
Milne is quite vicious on some levels. every character in Milne represents a certain
weakness in the structure of mankind. From the overabundant "amphetamine rock" of
Tigger, to the sort of shy, humble, self-disparaging Eeyore ... I don't know if you know
the books but Eeyore's line is always " ... well, thanks for noticing ... " (laughs). He's
just this little guy that sort of struggles through it all somehow, almost a Walter
Mitty type (a character featured in a series of American films in the 1940's - Ed.).
They all illustrate various weaknesses as well as strengths in the human animal. As a
whole, I think it's a real neat allegory.
EA - There is a book called "The Tao of Pooh".
PK - Yeah, I haven't read it all yet, but I have it. I'm writing a new song now called
"Pooneil Goes to America", which, if it ever sees fruition, is going to involve this huge
epic, sort of like a Sergio Leone movie with a " ... Once upon a time in America".
There'll be various sections of America, returning to both the goodness and badness of
America and what America is.
EA - How will the character of Pooneil survive in modern America?
PK - God only knows. But having looked all over the world, as we have, and gone
through all the various philosophies and religions and countries, ideologies ... there is
something to be said for what we are. For all the railing we did against it in the
sixties, there is a quality in America that transcends even the mystical. There's
something here that's real ... magical. We were fighting against people who abused it,
like fighting against those preachers who used Jesus to their own ends, there are
people ... I mean the world is full of nasty assholes ... who mis-abuse and do things not
necessarily in the name of good. One line I'm working on is " ... there is not a great
immigration problem in Russia". You don't see too many people going east over the
Berlin wall. I don't want to sound like Reagan (laughs), but there's a certain quality
here that I think if fostered and helped in the right direction will take this experiment
that's been going on for two hundred or so years and go forward with it ... make it
better. And I've got about two hundred or so pages of lyrics now (laughs) ... and if I
could narrow it down somehow to one three or four minute song ... I'm looking forward
to it. So, Pooneil lives.
"House at Pooneil Corners" was the chaos and the apocalypse of nuclear war,
essentially. And somehow, cheerily, like Winnie The Pooh, bouncing through it. "Well,
here we are!"
EA - That's how we all seem to get along every day.
PK - Well, I don't think we have much of a choice (laughs). Most of us don't have much
control over this, whatever this is that we're in, and you sort of just catch as catch
can. It's like a boat on the rapids of a river. You're going down the river and you don't
have much time to philosophize about the river bank or the rapids three miles down,
because you're right in the middle of the white water now, with just a paddle to keep
afloat (laughs). Now and again you'll run into some peaceful place, hopefully, and
where you can cruise for a while and ruminate on what's going on, but that's very
infrequent. And as soon as you start to do that something else comes around the bend.
And it's white water again and ... "Oh my God, what are we gonna do now?". But until
we die, we get through it. And when we die, well, God knows what's gonna happen. But
that's another whole song. (Pause) "Pooneil Dies". Wow, that could be a great song. I'm
going to write that down.
I don't think anybody on this planet has a clue as to what goes on after we die. All
these religions, and all these philosophies ... I haven't seen anybody who looks like he
knows. There are all these people who are going throught his white tunnel and they see
the old man beckoning them or an angel ... I just don't think anyone has the faintest
idea as to what's going on. They say that they see their family or their friends and I
think it's all ... hallucinations ... just the body freaking out, shorting out essentially ...
and causing hallucinations. It's all just theories. I just feel there's no point in
worrying about it all right now. There's enough to do when things happen, and enough
going on to take care of here and now ... things that need taking care of ... the white
water again (laughs).
EA - I was thinking of the song "Your Mind Has Left Our Body", from Baron Von Tollbooth
and the Chrome Nun when you mentioned the things people have seen ...
PK - (Laughs) Yeah, well that happens occasionally. Some people call it insanity. Some
people call it drugs. Some people call it religion.
EA - It happened with the Airplane, I'm sure. The LSD use during that time was pretty
well documented. How do you feel about it these days?
PK - Yeah, I think that once you take that stuff, you open a certain door that you don't
need to keep opening. I mean, I didn't. It sort of became repetitive after a while. We
just moved on naturally, it seemed, after a certain point, to new dimensions, and I
haven't really found the need to open that door. It seems pretty open now. I can open
and close it at will, and I don't really need to watch the walls crawling around too
much anymore, or ever again. Also the times that were involved in all that were very
innocent times, and to take it today could cause extreme hallucinatory paranoia with
all that's going on all around us today.
EA - I guess now you're more aware of what's going on around you.
PK - Back then we didn't pay attention to all of the bad stuff. That's what happened in
The Haight (-Ashbury section of San Francisco - Ed.). The bad stuff came in, the police
came in in their jack boots and started tromping all over people, and the people weren't
prepared to deal with it. They were naive children. We all were, hoping for the good,
the Oz-like ideals, to triumph, while not expecting to have to do anything to support it.
We just asssumed it would triumph, but it didn't, so we ... evolved.
EA - Maybe the naivete is gone, but the creativity survived.
PK - Well, a lot of us survived, but some of us didn't survive. We learned, grew up a
little, but not too much fortunately (laughs) ... but just enough to preserve our lives
against all these assholes ... all these violent things that are around you ... by taking
stock of them and creating some sort of protective element in relation to them.
EA - The Grateful Dead are survivors.
PK - Yeah. And that'll go on. There's an element of people that will just go on. It's not
like pop music, where there's this group that lasts for two years and then it's gone.
There was something there then, and there's something here now ... and it relates to
more than just a record company or a record deal, it involves a whole society. Patty
Smith talked about a rock and roll generation that all grew up having a certain set of
similar values. They're all connected by many different things, from holding those
same values, to having seen the same television programs, simultaneously almost,
nationwide, to experiencing Kennedy's death on television, to experiencing landing on
the moon, all in one great mass, which is unheard of in the history of mankind. There's
a lot there among that generation, and there is a certain set of values that they carry
through all this ... stuff ... that I think is just not gonna go away. And it's showing up
now in politicians and lawyers and doctors, the good side of it, and the bad side of it,
and will probably not stop (laughs). And there's a new generation coming around the
corner every four years with their own set of stuff. The generation that's alittle ahead
of you, that's in vogue right now, is a very self-centered, economy minded generation
that votes for Reagan with aplomb, and without a though of what they're really voting
for. But I don't worry about that too much. I think that things like that take care of
themselves, like Nixon did. They sort of bury themselves ... hopefully.
EA - Without taking us with them, though, we hope.
PK - Now the practical side to my science fiction band is that once a certain element
gets off the planet, it has essentially freed the universe, and is free of planetary
madness. The race, essentially goes on, whether or not the planet blows. That's not
necessarily an escape theology that I'm talking about, but there's an element of that to
it. It's evolution. It's like a termite flying off and starting a new termite shell, that's
really all it is.
EA - Well, if a starship is still leaving in 1989, you can put me down for it.
PK - Yeah, me too. It would be a great adventure.
EA - Jumping back in time to some of your early works; you had a very unique way of
arranging the vocal harmonies with the band. Is it a conscious "method" that you used?
PK - Well, at first it was conscious, but then as we started to know each other -
Marty, Me and Grace particularly - it beacame more where ... well, on the first album
we had to write things out. We'd sit down at the piano and, I mean, I don't know music
at all, but I know it enough to write out notes on a music staff and to figure out fifths
and fourths flatted sevenths and stuff ... so we'd write that out on a certain basis and
you'd see what worked. As we started working together, all I'd have to do was give
them a starting point. It would be like " ... you take this note and work around this
range, more or less, and I'll stay over here in this range", which worked naturally. You
know music, and you sort of know what notes not to sing, so it turned eventually into
being half-and-half. Marty and I are together again, and as we sit down to write, he'll
bring in a new song that he's found or has written and he'll start singing it, and I'll
naturally be able to fall into three or four different harmony parts. I don't know who
we're gonna use for the third harmony or the fourth but ... I trust that'll come in its
own time.
EA - I've been listening to a tape (now available on CD - Ed) that's been circulating of
you guys doing some interesting run-throughs of the material on After Bathing at
Baxters. It may be live with no audience or in the studio, I'm not sure, but the
harmonies are different.
PK - Some of the best things that we do and have done, harmonically, have never been
heard by anyone. I don't know where you got this tape but ... no matter. It's just that
sitting down in the back room getting your vocals ready before a show we would have
sung things like ... "Won't You Try" at one time, or "Ride the Tiger" later on, just by
ourselves, with an electric guitar, not plugged in, just to get the voices in tune.
Practicing, just around the room, is some of the best stuff we've ever done. I've been
trying to figure out ways to get that across and do it live but I guess I'm a little shy
about doing it for some reason. Maybe we'll do it on this next ... incarnation.
EA - That would be very interesting.
PK - I'd like to hear a copy of that tape.
EA - We also found tapes of the Levi's commercials (a few of which were released
years later on 2400 Fulton Street -Ed.).
PK - Wow, I'd love to hear those.
EA - We also discussed the radically different mix of Volunteers that was released by
RCA in quadrophonic.
PK - Well, back then, every take we did was radically different (laughs). It's not like
we were a regular band that would go in, have an arrangement, and try to plot it all out
until is was perfect. We'd have a set of chords, and we'd go in and play the song. And
the next time we played it, it would be something totally different. Harmony has a
really magical element to it that I can't explain. It does something to your spirit, or
whatever it is you have inside you ... your soul or whatever you want to call it. It
elevates you, and hopefull elevates the people who are listening to you as well when it
works. We always played too loud, thunderously, to really appreciate the full balance
of what that does, but I think that when we hit that right combination it was a really
magic element ... some magic evenings.
EA - You did some work with Ronnie Gilbert of The Weavers recently. Now there was a
group who also had incredible harmonies.
PK - I just had the pleasure of meeting Pete Seeger for the first time in my career, and
he's one of my super heroes of life. Ronnie Gilbert did some stuff on my album, not
singing but writing - I hope to snag her for some singing eventually -and she has a
magic quality to her voice. We've become friends from a distance and I don't know
what that's gonna bring.
EA - She had some co-writing credits on the album "Nuclear Furniture".
PK - I actually just took some words that she had said in the Weavers' documentary
"Wasn't That A Time". She was talking about The Weavers and what they were and what
she thought they meant and I almost unconsciously wrote down a few good lines and
phrases that she said, which I do now and again when I hear them on TV or the radio,
and when I was writing a song I used them. As we were mixing the album, they played
the documentary again on TV and I heard the words (laughs) and I thought - on the
songs "Rose Goes To yale" and "Champion" - well ... I better give her some credit,
because these are her lyrtics. They're not really lyrics, but spoken documentary words,
but I was so proud to have used them and I went over and asked her if she minded and
she said "oh, no ... nobody's ever given me credit for anything" ... (laughs)
She's a really darling person. In the documentary it happens when she's talking about
The Weavers and she says, like us in the Haight, "we believed that if we sang strong
enough, and if we could sing loud enough, that all of this evil would go away". It's a
little conversation that she has that turned into the chorus of " ... Rose". I manipulated
and moved it around a little bit, but the basic spirit of the choruses is Ronnie's.
EA - There's an example of the ideals from a generation back staying around.
PK - Well, most of what I consider my ideals come from Pete Seeger and The Weavers,
and what they were trying to do in the fifties and forties. They sort of naturally
erupted, when I was in college, into the civil rights movement, and they got me
involved in life ... and reality. As I got involved in music, it was natural for it to
follow through into what was all the benefits we used to do in the sixties
for everything from the Haight-Ashbury Medical Center to bail bonds to the sixties
movement ... And still it goes on today.
I spoke to Bill Graham last night and we were talking about once a year getting all the
groups together to do a benefit for the Haight-Ashbury Medical Ceneter (laughs). We're
planning one. They'll always need money, as long as we're around
In fact, I'm hustling Bill right now to start "The Old Folks Rock and Roll Home".
Somewehere down the line when we're all dottering old fools laying out in the gutter
drooling, there'll be someplace where we can all go drool together. Somebody pointed
out that there are no old rock-and-rollers yet (laughs). That's true. But it's just a
thought that I had.
EA - Looking ahead to the next generation, was China into singing "Declaration of
Independence" (a Pete Seeger song - Ed.) on the Planet Earth album?
PK - Originally, when I first conceived the album, China was about seven years ... and
originally the idea of the song came from a guy who had heard his child singing the
song in the bathtub ... a little boy. I just maneuvered it. With the women's movement
and the ascension of powerful women in the last decade or so, I though it would be neat
to make a little boy's song into a little girl's song. So I had China, a little girl, sing
the same thing, being a "Declaration of Independence". She was seven when I thought of
it, but by the time I got around to recording it she was ten or eleven and getting into
rock and roll, so she thought it was very uncool to be this "little girl". I had her
singing it in a faltering kind of `little girl in a bathtub' thing, and she was sort of
embarrased by it. So I kind of pushed her through it. Then I offered to pay her, and she
said (excitedly) " ... oh sure, alright ... more clothes, more records ... alright" ... That's
that generation (laughs).
EA - There's a point in there where she giggles, and it sounds just like Grace ...
PK - What's really eerie is, if you put China's voice through a harmonizer, and take it
down an octave or so it sounds just like Grace. I hope she can sing as well as Grace ...
at that age, then i feel my future will be okay. She can just take care of this old daddy
(laughs) ... when he dotters on into old age.
EA - She's already received credit as a co-writer.
PK - Yeah, she's written some neat things. More spoken things and ideas rather than
her consciously sitting down to write something. She'll just say something neat and
I'll pull it out and use it.
EA - She received credit on the song that has the classic line "washing my brains in the
public fountain". Was that one of her lines?
PK - No, that was mine (laughs).
EA - And that same song has the line "I want to go outside and play".
PK - Well, that was mine too (laughs). That's a feeling that never dies ... "I just want
to get out of here and go play ... don't bother me ... and she will just do nothing at all ... "
(all are lines from the Planet Earth album - Ed.).
EA - Well, on that note, I'm going to let you get out and go play ... and we look forward
to seeing you play out here soon.
EA - Thanks for speaking with us.
PK - Been a pleasure.
------------------------------------------------------------
Many thanks to Paul Kantner; for granting this interview and for the many years of fine
music.
Just let us know when the ship is ready to go, Paul!