Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane

Jann Wenner, editor-in-chief and publisher of Rolling Stone, wrote, "the classic [Jefferson] Airplane lineup were both architects and messengers of a psychedelic age, a liberation of mind and body that profoundly changed American art, politics, and spirituality. It was a renaissance that could only have been born in San Francisco, and the Airplane, more than any other band in town, spread the good news nationwide."

Jefferson Airplane, the most successful and influential rock band to emerge from San Francisco during the 1960s, created the sound of a generation. Their smash hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" provided the soundtrack to the Summer of Love, virtually inventing the era's signature pulsating psychedelic music, and came to personify the decade's radical counterculture. Their appearances at the landmark Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and Altamont rock festivals — the only band to play at all three — placed them on the front lines during one of the most exciting, tumultuous times in American history. Their confrontational lyrics and alternative lifestyles often cast them as "outlaws in the eyes of America." Jefferson Airplane didn't just dominate American popular culture at the peak of the '60s; they transformed it.

Got a Revolution! is the first full-length biography ever written about Jefferson Airplane. Jeff Tamarkin, veteran music writer and historian, has worked closely with the former members of Jefferson Airplane for more than a decade and penned more than twenty-five Airplane-related album liner notes. Those who lived it tell the story: the band members, their families, friends, lovers, crew members, and fellow musicians. The book's all-star cast includes Fellow rock legends David Crosby, Janis Joplin, Donovan, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, and Paul McCartney, to such larger-than-life cultural figures as Robert F. Kennedy, Bill Graham, Abbie Hoffman, the Hell's Angels, and even Richard Nixon. It's a tale of complex people with complex relationships living under the spotlight during a complex time.

To the public, they were prototypical free-loving, good-time hippies, but to their inner circle, Jefferson Airplane was a paradoxical bunch — constantly at odds with one another. Jefferson Airplane's members were each brilliant, individualistic artists who became the living embodiment of the ups and downs of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle.

In an era when rock was the musical accompaniment for a vast cultural upheaval, Jefferson Airplane provided the soundtrack for a generation. Acclaimed music journalist Tamarkin's exhilarating and exhaustive "Got a Revolution!" chronicles the band's long, convoluted history in crisp, engaging prose and informed by scores of insider interviews.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [386]-393) and index.

Jeff Tamarkin has been a professional music journalist for more than twenty-five years. Currently the editor of Global Rhythm magazine, he was previously the editor of Goldmine, and has written for dozens of other publications. He has also authored more than twenty-five liner notes for Jefferson Airplane-related CDs. He has been and advisor to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, with his wife, the novelist Caroline Leavitt, and their son, Max.

Contents

Foreword by Jann Wenner

Introduction by Paul Kantner

Prologue: Halfway Down the Stairs is a Stair

1. If Only You Believe Like I Believe

2. Alternate Quantum Universes

3. Let's Get Together

4. Blues Traveler

5. It's No Secret

6. Bass Is Loaded

7. After You

8. Just a Dream

9. A Mule Team Knocking Down a Picket Fence

10. Free Minds, Free Bodies, Free Dope, Free Music

11. Wonder Woman

12. The Great! Society Really Doesn't Like You Much at All

13. Trying to Revolutionize Tomorrow

14. Acid, Incense and Balloons

15. The Love Crowd

16. Doing Things That Haven't Got a Name Yet

17. Life Is Change, How It Differs from the Rocks

18. Can't Help but See the Rhinoceros Around Us

19. When Spencer Met Sally

20. Outlaws in the Eyes of America

21. Blues from an Airplane

22. Never Say "Fuck You" to a Hell's Angel

23. And Your Enemy Is We

24. Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra

25. Gotta Let Go, You Know

26. Reality Check

27. Jefferson Airplane Flakes Off

28. Genesis

29. Hyperdrive

30. Tuna Melt

31. Dis-Grace

32. Thomas' Jefferson

33. We Do What We Want!

34. Hijack the Starship

35. Peace and War

Epilogue: Whatever Happened to Wishes Wished on a Star?

Sources and Resources

Discography

Bibliography

Index