Jefferson Airplane

In November 1965, Jefferson Airplane received a $20,000 advance from RCA Records - the largest advance ever paid to any rock band at that time. Their career went on to document the 60s adventure from naive optimism through excited experiment to messianic self-indulgence. 

Following their folk rock debut, Takes Off (1966), the arrival of former model Grace Slick brought a new musical (and sexual) excitement.  The resultant Surrealistic Pillow was psychedelia at its best, practically inventing the idea of San Francisco back in 1967.

Songs such as Today, Somebody To Love and White Rabbit said and did more in two and a half minutes than the same year's After Bathing At Baxter's would manage in endless formless jams. The Airplane played at Monterey, Woodstock and Altamont, but these huge hit singles meant that they also got to appear on prime time TV shows like The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Perry Como Special. In September 1972, the band played their final gig and divided into two bands: Hot Tuna and Jefferson Starship.

Jefferson Airplane reformed in September 1989, instantly winning Rolling Stone's Most Unwelcome Comeback Award. The classic but now wizened line-up of Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady recorded many of the tracks of their new album separately and mailed them in to their producer!

Former Sounds journalist Jon Savage recently wrote "few big names from the late 60s have dated worse than Jefferson Airplane" - reflecting a widely-held prejudice that, apart from a couple of spectacular early singles, the group that offered the Yin to The Grateful Dead's Yang in San Francisco's hippie cosmos was ultimately little more than an exercise in bloated ego-tripping and drugged-out self-indulgence. But for a superb window on a band that flew higher than most, get thee to a copy of the Fly Jefferson Airplane DVD and judge for yourself.