Jorma Kaukonen has been a force in rock music for more than a half-century. A founding member of two groundbreaking bands – Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna – the singer-guitarist has just released his new autobiography, Been So Long: My Life and Music. Read More
When Grace Slick quit her own band The Great Society to join Jefferson Airplane just before their second album, they became San Francisco’s first supergroup. Their magical blend of folk-rock harmonies, acid-fried electric guitars, and complex jazzy rhythms defined the Summer of Love.
As one of this year’s judges for Mill Valley’s annual Milley Awards, I happily joined my colleagues in voting to give the award for achievement in music to Marty Balin, a founder of the Jefferson Airplane and one of the principal architects of San Francisco psychedelic rock.
“Don’t you want somebody to love?” goes the chorus of Jefferson Airplane‘s best-known hit. Love was more than just an age-old crutch for pop songwriters in 1967, the year the Grace Slick–sung “Somebody to Love” was released; it had taken on a metaphysical dimension, and Jefferson Airplane were at the vanguard. The Summer of Love launched the band into the pop charts, but also into the eye of the psychedelic storm that was brewing in their native San Francisco. But even hippie anthems like “White Rabbit” couldn’t keep the eerie weirdness of the times at bay.
Did you know that Paste owns the world’s largest collection of live music recordings? It’s true! And what’s even crazier, it’s all free—hundreds of thousands of exclusive songs, concerts and videos that you can listen to and watch right here at Paste.com, from Dizzy Gillespie to The Kinks to The Police to LCD Soundsystem. Every day, we’ll dig through the archive for the coolest recording we have from that date in history. Search and enjoy!