C 1978, 2007, 2010, 2025 Harvey Kubernik
Over four decades I interviewed Jefferson Airplane co-founder rhythm guitarist/singer/songwriter Paul Kantner numerous times.
In celebration of his birthday on March 17th, below are his responses culled from our dialogues.
“Jefferson Airplane had the fortune or misfortune of discovering Fender Twin Reverb amps and LSD in the same week while in college. That’s a great step forward. One of the reason I started a band was to meet girls. And to this day it beats giving guitar lessons at a guitar store. I did that, too.
As Jefferson Airplane we had played at the Monterey Jazz Festival. We were invited because we were the new hip band. They were stretching out that year which was the nature of the times. Thank God what a great nature that was. When we earlier played the Monterey Jazz Festival, (critic) Leonard Feather wrote ‘we sounded like a mule kicking down a barnyard fence.’
By the time we did the Monterey International Pop Festival we had a record deal with RCA and an album out that we recorded in Hollywood. Years before I had a house in Venice with (David) Crosby and (David Frieberg). Crosby is my friend too, and the early days with the Byrds and hanging around with them. I hung out with the Byrds before I even started a band. Hanging out with them and their scene. That was fun. I always played an acoustic 12-string as a folkie, so it was just a natural switch over to the electric Rickenbacker.
The nature of our whole band is six very different people. Musically and personality wise. None of us played blues. Jack (Cassidy) wasn’t so much a blues player as an orchestral something or other. Jorma was blues. Gary Davis. Grace was Grace. Marty was Marty from show biz. We were very different people. At Monterey, Spencer Dryden had replaced Skip Spence, He was an amateur guitar player and we needed a drummer. And he just wanted to be in a band. ‘I’ll be the drummer.’ He had a good energy to him, although he wasn’t disciplined. Spencer on the other hand was very jazz oriented and knew a lot of licks. And neither of them was the drummer I would want. On the other hand, they were. If you know what I mean. As the drummer we had, And it worked out pretty good. So who is to complain?
We went into it our normal selves. That’s why I like to leave ourselves open and that’s why we did Monterey. We did not know what was going to happen, And there was all that L.A. stuff versus San Francisco. It went on. I didn’t pay any attention to it. I enjoyed bands from both towns.
As far as San Francisco being suspect of L.A. and Hollywood people, we always tried to get above that if possible as a general rule. People didn’t like the Doors. ‘Cause they were from L.A. (laughs). So there’s an immediate antipathy and I liked the Doors a lot and toured with them. I created that lack of that antipathy in myself. I rejected the suspicions of L.A. as a general rule. I throughly enjoyed L.A. and New York. I could make myself comfortable in either one of those cities. I liked San Francisco a lot.
FM radio was one of the many things that showed up and was going on in those days. So many things were going on you didn’t take that kind of notice of them. You just assumed that was going on, and go with it. We didn’t analyze it. We didn’t think to wonder about it. It was just another thing that was going on along with the music, the clothes, the book stores, the poets, the artists, there was a plethora of things and you did not have time basically to take it all in. It existed. It’s part of a whole.
In San Francisco we had no restrictions. We never thought about being in an independent record label for cred. It came to us. All we had to do was roll with it. I liken it to white water rafting. There was so much going on you didn’t worry about what was around the next curve. Or what are you going to do on the third curve. ‘Cause you are right in the river.
Monterey Pop was just a continuation of the park, really, for us. A step in the right direction of the park. All it was playing in the park a little bigger and a little more organized. Monterey was a step away from that with elements of that into a commercial event. Originally it was designed that way. I had friends at Monterey and bands from England. A combination of elements. I had been listening to Ravi Shankar for years so I wasn’t waiting for him. He played a lot in the Bay area, even during our folk days in Berkeley. Crosby was the one who brought everyone’s attention to him. David was out of the folk mode of the early sixties that Fred Neil was one of the early components of.
There’s no name for what we did. It’s not rock n’ roll. It’s not folk music. I don’t know what it is. It’s just we all took up and started in folk music and then branched out. Like I say, Fender Twin Reverb and LSD in the same week was a big step forward. But I really didn’t get into electric amps even then. I did like the sound of the reverb, even with our acoustic guitars and stuff. I liked Crosby’s tunings.
Ar Monterey Pop, Grace was with Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin was at Monterey. Janis did that every night I saw her. She used to play in clubs around town. Probably the reason that Janis died was that she got too popular and left her band. To her credit, Grace didn’t leave the band and probably survived as a result. There’s a big difference between the two. Grace got, as you can imagine, all sorts of offers to go solo. On one level she didn’t feel confident enough I know a little bit. On another level she didn’t want to leave the band the way it was.
The set at Monterey. We did want we wanted to do. I mean, Grace spent a whole year not doing ‘White Rabbit’ if I’m not mistaken. I had seen Grace do ‘White Rabbit’ with The Great Society. And I just liked Grace as a singer and the band overall. I saw them playing it down at a club on Broadway, actually. I liked Grace from the very start. I thought she had something. Apparently she did. We did ‘High Flying Bird.’ Signe (Anderson) drove that song well. The song carries itself. The idea is that songwriters should write good songs.
We had a lot of songs so it didn’t matter. We did Fred Neil’s ‘The Other Side of Life.’ ‘Somebody To Love.’ I’m still not tired of playing it. I’m still fascinated largely by the metaphysic, if you will, of the music itself. And the why it effects people the way it does. How such a relatively simple combination of elements, be it a large orchestra, or a simple 3 piece rock ‘n’ roll band, is able to communicate emotion to people. That connection still remains a mystery to me. And I plummet every night when we play and live it to hell and don’t need to find out the why of it. If I do it might ruin the whole thing, you know. But being able to manipulate it as we do and do this and the other things, is always fascinating to me.
‘Today.’ Marty and I worked it up together. We wrote several things in those days. He’d bring a piece and I’d bring a piece and we’d put them together and weave them. And they fell together in the studio. (Jerry) Garcia played on the track in the studio. When we took it out on stage and did it with our group and it became piano driven.
Monterey International Pop Festival June 1967…Quicksilver Messenger Service. Quite good. Johnny Cippolina. I knew them. John was unusually unique guitarist. He created his own distinct sound. To bad he’s gone. In all the bands that came out of San Francisco not very many people were good singers. We had the luxury of having both Grace and Marty (Balin) in our band, who were both excellent. Just the texture of their voice. Very attractive. And they’re good, too. And David Frieberg has a voice that is very on, powerful, clear and ringing. Very sonic and sings well.
I wasn’t aware of the record business, or music scouts at Monterey, either. We just came to have a good weekend and play, basically. We had the light show and took it around with us when we started touring. It was one of those things that appeared. I don’t know the genesis of it. It simply was. Why did I have a guitar? It was one of the things that was there. We just played and never thought of it as good or bad. Even without the light show we still had really good music, singers and songs. The light show was just an added enhancement where we could get it involved and traveled with us after a while. Expensive.
I enjoyed just the overall whole thing of the Monterey International Pop Festival. There were great moments like (Jimi) Hendrix and Otis Redding. Jimi was impressive. He was Hendrix. It was impressive. You can’t define it. You don’t have too. If you saw it you knew what it was.
The Who were OK. Never been knocked out by the Who too much. I liked their one song ‘I Can See For Miles.’ That’s a beautiful song. Generally, I don’t like that guitar hero too much. They play too many note too fast too long. What’s the point? I’d like to hear a melody. And people who could play great lines. Like Cream did in their early days did some great guitar work and were a great band. I liked the Who but not overwhelmed.
Jimi, Janis, Otis. Ravi, too, in his own way. Moby Grape were a good band. They were a killer band and Skip was in his element in that band as well. That’s what Skip always wanted to be and Skip was like that. Unfortunately with us he was the drummer. So he couldn’t be up in front of the stage being so joyful. Which he was. A character.
Monterey was just a step. Miami Pop. Woodstock. Monterey was just a booking. Another step. No one viewed it as some great momentus bruha. But it became more than that. As many things did in those days. It became what it became.
Monterey is a scrapbook. All sorts of music going on. That became that because of what we did in San Francisco and encouraged Bill Graham. The real he had all those strange combination of acts on the bill. We didn’t think of them as opening acts. We just thought of them as other acts that are really good. We encouraged Bill to book those kinds of bookings. And that eventually wound up what Monterey was. No chains. And that was what was so glorious about San Francisco in those days. A lot of people fucked things up, too. It took it too far. These big huge gatherings that were not very interesting.
The reason that people came to the Fillmore was not the band. People came to the Fillmore much like a Harvest festival. The same reason they came to the Human Be In. To be there. And if there were food bands playing that was an added plus. But not many people were coming as fans of the band. Not many. Some. That wasn’t the draw of the Fillmore and the Avalon. I went to the Human Be In. The summer before the summer of Love I always mention. Everything was possible. And plausible, even. And we got away with it all. More or less. Mostly. You went to the park, the Fillmore, Monterey, to get absorbed in the whole whatever it was going on.
Again, getting to the heart of the matter. The point is if you find something that makes you joyful take note of it. Amplify it if you can. Tell other people about it. That’s what San Francisco was about. Both musically, idealistically, and metaphorically and every other way. That’s what we did here. We were in a place that encouraged and nourished that kind of thinking and still does to this day and we took full advantage of it. We weren’t up on soap boxes complaining like the Berkeley people. And we need those people too. Those people are very valuable but that’s not what we did.
Our message was a subtler. There was a message there but we didn’t blare it out. We just tried to show by example what you could get away with basically. We tried to propose a real alternate quantum. And did.Enjoying our day. And that’s all we tried to put across.
You can enjoy your day. Hedonistic or Dionysian on some levels. That existed. And San Francisco was very good, I think, particularly the musicians at transmitting the goodness of the day, rather than complaining about the badness of the day. Creating another universe if you will, or at least a semblance of another alternate quantum that worked for us. And God knows why we got away with it 90 per cent of the time if not more. We should have been in jail, dead, run over by trucks and a number of things over the years.
I like bouncing ideas off people who like to work together. There’s a little magic in a band when people decide to put their heads and minds to one thing and it works. It becomes more than the people involved. With the Airplane we thought we could do it all. It was a reaction against the corporate structure trying to impose certain limits on you. “We revolted against that, which was the other extreme, which is doing it totally ourselves. And it was like putting a five-year-old in ah automobile reeling down the street. It may make it down the street but the car may get a few dents along the way.
We just went to the inth degree. As such, it is a rather difficult and faulted album. Many faults on it, But the push and the drift and the pail is what I enjoy about that album. There’s all sorts of stuff on it. Mistakes become part of the arrangement. As jazz people used to say. Or as Jorma used to say, ‘when you make a mistake on a guitar repeat it.’ Everybody thinks it’s part of the arrangement.
On our earlier songs, like Crown of Creation album, it was sort of a comment on the state of affairs, not news driven so much as situation driven. I wrote just regular songs and then got a little out there like we all did on After Bathing At Baxter’s. Still one of my favorite albums just for the stretch that went from Surrealistic Pillow to Baxter’s.
We put it out in the universe and see where it lands. Sometimes you keep a little control over where it lands more often than not. I like things going out connecting with other things. I’m very much on collaboration as a writer and a player. I like collaborating. I like the friction that happens and the fire that occurs as a result of that friction that comes out in music in other way that comes from collaborating in other levels. There was a message there but we didn’t blare it out. We just tried to show by example what you could get away with basically. We tried to propose a real alternate quantum. And did. Enjoying our day. And that’s all we tried to put across.
So many things were going on you didn’t take that kind of notice of them. You just assumed that was going on. All right! And go with it. We didn’t analyze it. We didn’t think to wonder about it. It was just another thing that was going on along with the music, the clothes, the book stores, the poets, the artists, there was a plethora of things and you did not have time basically to take it all in. It existed. It’s part of a whole.
On our first U.S. tour we were in cities where all the kids came in prom gowns and tuxedos. Then we came back to Iowa a year later and they were having nude mud love-ins and everybody had their faces painted.”
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015’s Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016’s Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017’s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His book Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll Television Moments) is scheduled for 2025 publication.
Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival. During 2006 Kubernik spoke at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series).
