Random Recollections: Paul Kantner, R.I.P.

Paul Kantner passed away this week, and with all such passings there are many memories associated. Earlier this month we lost David Bowie, Dallas Taylor (drummer for CSN&Y) and Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, and it should now be apparent that until we ourselves make that final goodbye we of the Boomer generation will be tipping the hat to many others who made an impact on our lives through music, film, prose and other media.

As for me Kantner and the Jefferson Airplane were part of this fabric that formed the musical backdrop over which a portion of my life was played. Their "golden years" were the late Sixties and early Seventies, golden in part because we were young and naive. Birthed from the womb of the San Francisco music scene they were a symbol of counterculture rhetoric and lifestyle, and instrumental in the formation of our notions of acid rock.

I first saw the Jefferson Airplane at Wall Stadium in New Jersey, 1971. The weather was beautiful, the skies blue, the stadium packed. Earlier that spring it was rumored the Airplane would be in Washington D.C. for the anti-war rally on MayDay weekend. They were a no-show, proving that rumors are unreliable, though the Beach Boys performed and Phil Ochs turned out after midnight.

For several years I identified with the messages in my of their songs, including "Lather" (Crown of Creation) and "The Other Side Of This Life," which opens side B of Bless Its Pointy Little Head. Some of the music was escapist, and some clearly tapped into the nerve of youth's confusion and rage against the machine.

The Wall Stadium concert featured many of the songs from their Volunteers album, and introduced the crowd to Papa John Creach, who began playing bars in 1935 Chicago, entertained us with some sizzling electric violin licks. I have many good memories associated with that summer afternoon.

In the early Nineties, while walking around the Douglas County Fair with our kids I heard a band playing "Crown of Creation" in the Superior Speedway. It sounded like the Airplane and stopped me in my tracks, causing me to go check it out, see who was performing. It seemed strange for me for it was indeed them, or a pale reflection of what was left of them. A young dark-haired clone took the place of Grace Slick. Marty Balin had left in the early Seventies around the time Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy split to create Hot Tuna. It seemed like there were only fifty or so people in the speedway stands and a couple dozen more on the dirt track where stock cars usually run. Pathetic turnout. I couldn't help feel an emptiness as I recalled the concert twenty years previous, when our ideals were inflamed to believe that love would win and materialism would be overturned to be replaced with a new world.

Drugs and fame knocked off quite a few of the rock heroes whose names were familiar to all of us. Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones... Fame casts a harsh spotlight. Those who achieve it aren't always comfortable with what it brings.

As Jim Morrison himself observed, "no one here gets out alive."  It's what we do while we're here that matters. Paul Kantner made music. He tried to deliver a message that he believed was needed: hope. It's something everyone needs, especially when they are young.

The Cover of the Rolling Stone

Well, we're big rock singers
We got golden fingers
And we're loved everywhere we go...(That sounds like us)
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth
At ten thousand dollars a show...(Right)
We take all kinds of pills that give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we've never known
Is the thrill that'll getcha when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rollin' Stone
~Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show

It was one of the fun songs of its time. There are no deep thoughts buried in its lyrics. The band was out to have fun, and why not? Those were the days.

What's interesting is how quickly Rolling Stone magazine moved to center stage as a vehicle for reflecting popular culture. Jann Wenner was barely drinking age when he co-founded the publication with Ralph Gleason, an established music critic who had been covering the San Francisco scene for two decades. Gleason, who had been a friend of Lenny Bruce and other controversial figures, helped bring jazz and the fledgling rock scene into the public eye. Hunter S. Thompson, who covered the political scene, became a staple of the magazine.

This all came to mind when I saw an article touting a show at the Reading Public Museum featuring 35 iconic Rolling Stone covers. The exhibition, titled Backstage Pass: Baron Wolman and the Early Years of Rolling Stone, will be on display through May 10. The covers show the power of a photographer's lens to shape perceptions of an entire generation.

There's no getting around it... the magazine not only reported on the scene, it also helped define it. Gleason believed that nothing is more revealing about who were are than our music.

Jim Morrison expressed a similar sentiment when he was writing songs for The Doors. He wanted to be a poet, but who reads poetry? A great poetic verse, set to music, will be listened to a hundred times and can reach millions.

There's more to say... but this is enough for now. Keep pressing on.

Was It Suicide or Was It Murder?

When I was a kid, and actually to this day since I am doing it now, I used to ask a trivia question about the Rolling Stones' 1965 hit single Satisfaction. "What was the name of the song on the B-side?" If you guessed, The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man" you win. The 45 had a blue label with the London imprint.

It's a long time ago, but the original front man in the group was not Mick Jagger or the Jagger-Richards combo. The man, a youth actually, who put the Stones into the spotlight was Brian Jones. More than just a pretty face, he was a quite talented musician in his own right. He plays at least seventeen different instruments over the course of several early Stones albums.

Early on, however, their manager Andrew Loog Oldham felt that Jagger and Richards should be pushed closer to the spotlight and Jones accepted this re-arrangement of significance. In watching the Beatles rise to prominence he recognized that there were financial benefits to writing your own music. (Oldham proved influential in helping another famous rock star emerge, bringing Jimi Hendrix home to England at the urging of Keith Richards' girl friend. Hendrix's career ignited overseas.)

The flamboyant Jones was also a notorious party animal and did all the drugs that were in vogue at the time. He was highly visible in "the scene" and could be seen with all the top draws both East Coast and West Coast. In '67 he had a high profile relationship with Nico of the Velvet Underground, for example, and introduce Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Music Festival.

Ultimately, these "no boundaries" lifestyles take a toll, and Jones ended up at the bottom of a swimming pool after binging on alcohol and barbituates. Within a few short years, Jimi, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison would all join him on "the other side." Rock star self-destruction is undoubtedly a side effect of too much fame when mixed with the right concoction of personal instability, taking down many famous names. Just a few from the short history of Rock 'n Roll... John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), Tim Buckley, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Rick Grech (Blind Faith), Brian Epstein (manager of the Beatles), Keith Moon (The Who), Kurt Cobain, Billy Holiday, Sid Vicious, and so many more.

When they found Jones in the bottom of that pool, the arc of his career had already declined. That it was a self-destructive act, or accident, seemed self-evident. His estrangement from the band, mood swings, and drug excesses led to an easy conclusion.

In the 1990's, however, a builder who had been present at that time, allegedly made a deathbed confession that he had killed Brian Jones. This led to a book, and then another. And yesterday, two months and forty years since that drowning, police re-opened the investigation of Brian Jones' death.

Was it suicide or was it murder? Will we ever really know?

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Morrison

“Then I saw things as they really are, that I am, to a degree, just a puppet controlled by forces I understand only vaguely.” ~ Jim Morrison

He became a rock star, a megastar actually, a burning asteroid leaving a luminous trail of disintegration from horizon to horizon. He died, but traces live on. Many called him heroic, but in the end he died pathetic… a tragic symbol of drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll gone wrong.

This is a brief review of two books: Stephen Davis’ Jim Morrison / Life, Death, Legend, and Morrison’s own posthumously collected poems called Wilderness, Volume 1.

I was a Doors fan. I owned their albums, listened to them such an extent that I must have known all the lyrics. I had a vocal range like Morrison’s as well, performing "When the Music’s Over" with a band in the courtyard of Scott Quad at Ohio U my freshman year. Yes, for fifteen minutes or so I became Morrison, possibly a highlight of my singing career.

After his death, I found an emptiness in the efforts of his band to create anything significant after Morrison had departed. Their efforts to milk the fame they’d garnered proved futile.

In 1993 my impressions of the band were confirmed by an extra on the set of Iron Will where I spent near three days in a holding area with 250 extras. While sharing our personal life journeys John Heino, a keyboardist with Minnesota’s Centerville All Stars, told how his band had spent seven years on the road trying to “make it” in the music industry. For a season they recorded in the same studio where The Doors, Post Morrison, were recording. It was evident the trio just didn’t have it.

Davis obviously invested a lot of time researching his book. It details Morrison’s childhood and every significant event along the way to his departure from this world in Paris where he finally broke on through to the other side.

Davis details Morrison’s initial self-consciousness, his explorations with hallucinogens, his self-destruction… and motivations, ultimately calling him a misunderstood genius. Unfortunately, the tone of the book feels off to me. The author appears to almost take glee in sharing the ugliest stories, publishing rumors that have no collaborating evidence that serve no purpose other than to make Morrison look bad. Genius or monster? Davis is too often unkind.

The fact is, it does not require rumor and innuendo to make Morrison look bad. The facts speak for themselves. Despite Oliver Stone’s efforts to whitewash the Miami performance where Morrison exposed himself onstage, revising history in his ’91 celluloid tribute starring Val Kilmer (who was remarkable), Morrison himself crossed all the boundaries and paid the price.

The second book is a collection of poems called The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, or Wilderness, Volume 1. I suppose it is one of those “gotta have it” books if you are a Morrison fan, and I did succumb to purchasing the book based on how the following poem touched me.

A man rakes leaves into
a heap in his yard, a pile,
& leans on his rake &
burns them utterly.
The fragrance fills the forest
children pause & heed the
smell, which will become
nostalgia in several years.

I thought this was a pretty powerful image, and I liked it. Truth is, this was the only quality poem in the book. It’s a rambling mess of notes of uneven quality, deep thoughts that are probably deep only when you are profoundly stoned.

Maybe I am being too harsh. There are some interesting observations, couplets, insights. But it’s mostly… well, my guess is he’d be embarrassed that these notes have appeared in print.

Alas, life goes on. Or as Morrison wrote in his wilderness, “Each day is a drive through history.”