Paul Kantner was born in the Sunset district, which is a good thing because it provided him the cover he needed.
“When it’s foggy, God can’t see what you’re doing,” he says. And lord knows, in between the sex, the drugs and the rock ’n’ roll, Kantner did a lot.
Kantner may well be San Francisco’s best-known ’60s survivor. As the co-founder of Jefferson Airplane and the leader of the band’s various incarnations for decades after, Kantner has been part of almost every wave in the music and concert business, and now at age 70, still tours with his merry band of pranksters and musicians.
Few people know better what a long strange trip it’s been. Amazingly, he remembers most of it.
I caught up with Kantner at Café Trieste, one of North Beach’s iconic gathering spots, which is not far from the long-gone Drinking Gourd, the club where Kantner performed one night in 1965 and was spotted by balladeer-supreme Marty Balin, who was forming a band.
There was no grand plan. Kantner considered himself a folk artist whose hero was Pete Seeger. He was friends with Jorma Kaukonen, a guitarist he knew from Santa Clara University who saw himself as a bluesman. They called bassist Jack Casady. They recruited a few other musicians and out of that partnership, Jefferson Airplane was formed.
“Everything we did was accidental,” Kantner said. “It just happened that simply.”
Read on......and check out the Gonzo Artist Page for Jefferson Starship you know it makes sense
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